Odds, point spread, pick for Thursday Night Football: Bills -4 at Patriots

Short second Golden Age in Buffalo, eh?

Going into the season, the Bills were the prohibitive favorite to win the AFC and the Super Bowl. The 6/1 opening odds on the Bills in the “To Win Super Bowl LVII” proposition bet reflected some rare forward-thinking in the world of NFL betting: Buffalo’s favored status stemmed instead from the general upward trending of the team through to the AFC divisional game in which only the magic of Patrick Mahomes cost them a shot at the Cincinnati Bengals.

And sure enough, the Bills started 2022 about as hot as they’d ended the postseason, their 5-1 SU/4-1-1 ATS run as the average game ended in a 29-14 Buffalo win; going back to 2021, that run goes to a nicely lucrative enough 10-2 SU/8-3-1 ATS mark. But after that revenge win at Kansas City in week 6 and the subsequent bye, things have gone well south for the Bills, currently on a 3-2 SU/1-4 ATS jag.

Additionally, Buffalo has sunk to second place in the AFC East behind the red-hot Miami Dolphins and with the now Mike White-led New York Jets at no. 3 with a bullet. Big-name, big-money free agent acquisition Von Miller is likely gone for the season as well. Which brings us to this:

Buffalo Bills -4 at New England Patriots, over/under 43½ points

The performance 2022 New England Patriots, currently at 6-5 SU/7-4 ATS, is not entirely surprising: This is a marginal team whose legendary head coach and mostly outstanding defense are allowing them to meet expectations.

And talk about playing to the level of the competition: Would you believe these Patriots are 1-4 SU/2-3 ATS as an underdog? Just to meddle things up, though, the Bills are just 2-3 SU/1-3-1 ATS against teams currently with a winning record, 6-0/4-2 ATS in all others.

After watching Mac Jones finally apparently playing with the coaches’ confidence last week against Minnesota, there’s just one factor holding us back from taking the Patriots at home and Bill Belichick knowing that his Patriots need a win to stay in the picture: Going back to 2020, the post-Brady Patriots are just 1-4 SU/2-3 ATS versus the Bills, including losses of 3, 29, 12 and 30 in chronological order and the sole win that bizarre 2021 game in which Mac Jones went 2-of-3 for 19 yards passing.

Are five games enough to constitute a trend and call for regression to the mean? NFLbets isn’t quite ready to call the Bills’ season a complete failure, but we can easily see the nadir continue for a while yet. Take the New England Patriots +4 vs Buffalo.

– written by Os Davis

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