THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
One and two. Eighty dollars and change in front of the window — $80.43 — with $35.03 of it gone, and the bankroll slides from $1,097.41 to $1,062.38.
Both unders missed. The coin flip cashed. Thursday night in Jacksonville had 12 miles an hour of wind and 59 points, a sentence that ought to be grammatically impossible. Then Minnesota and Cleveland, two rosters carrying maybe one healthy quarterback between them, sailed over a 35.5 that already looked like somebody's typo. Meanwhile Detroit covered ten and a half on the road, and I'd have argued you out of that one if you'd asked me nicely.
Thirty-five dollars off a week where the book only ever saw eighty of mine is not a catastrophe. It's rent. Same card Thursday, same reasoning, probably some of the same lousy weather.
This week's coin flip has Detroit laying 10.5 on the road with Taylor Decker doubtful, Alim McNeill out, Zach Cunningham out, Khalil Dorsey out and Sione Vaki out — an injury column long enough to need its own paragraph. My number still comes back at 11.1, which is the model insisting that Cincinnati, minus Shemar Stewart, can't get anybody off the field. Fifty and a half percent, same as every side I've run this year.
Twelve miles an hour on a Thursday night, a board total of 45.5, my sheet at 44.8. Jacksonville is down Yasir Abdullah and Kansas City turns up with a clean report, so the injury page has no opinion and neither do I beyond the obvious one. This is the wind bet in its plainest possible clothes: 51.8 percent, no garnish.
Thirty-five and a half. I looked at the screen twice, and then I bet it lower at 34.8, with the wind at 14. Minnesota is without J.J. McCarthy and most of the men who block for whoever replaces him — Ryan Kelly, Brian O'Neill, Michael Jurgens and Donovan Jackson are all out — while Cleveland hasn't menaced a total since opening weekend. The market walked this one a long way down. Ten years of data say it never walks far enough.
“Bet less than you brag, learn more than you lose, and never trust a tout who smiles too much.”
— The Betting Fool
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