THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
Five plays, because five games handed me an opinion, and it came back 2-3. Put $140.57 in front of the window and left $27.61 of it there. The bankroll reads $1,069.69, down from $1,097.30.
Denver and Las Vegas played to a 10-7 with the wind at ten. Seventeen combined points against a total of 42.5 is not a cover, it's a mercy. New Orleans and Carolina managed 24 on Sunday night against a 38.5. Those two are the reason this week is a scratch instead of a hole in the floor.
The rest of it: Buffalo lost by seventeen while I was laying eight and a half, the Jets and Browns stacked 47 points on a Monday night total of 37.5, and New England went to Tampa and cleared a 48.5. Four unders in genuine weather and two of them home. That is a coin flip, and a coin flip is the specific thing I tore this model apart last summer to stop doing.
Six miles an hour of Miami breeze, which is a pleasant afternoon and worth nothing to me. Buffalo travels without Shaq Thompson and A.J. Epenesa, Miami is missing Chop Robinson off the edge with Rasul Douglas doubtful behind him, and after the model chews through all of that it hands me the Bills by 8.8 against a board of 8.5. You already know the number that comes next: 50.5 percent, three-tenths of a point, and the smallest ticket on the card.
New Orleans comes to Charlotte without either starting tackle — Taliese Fuaga and Barry Wesley both out — and there is no graceful way to keep a quarterback upright with the third and fourth men on the depth chart. Stand that offense in 15 miles an hour on Sunday night, against a number the book has already dragged to 38.5, and my 37.0 starts to feel timid. Biggest wager of the week at 52.5 percent.
A Monday night total of 37.5 is the house announcing in public that it doesn't trust either of these clubs with a football. Twelve in East Rutherford, Cleveland traveling without Cornelius Lucas at tackle and Isaiah Bond outside, my number at 36.6. Nine-tenths of a point and 52 percent is a modest thing to bet a Monday on, but nine-tenths is roughly what the air is worth and I take it wherever the schedule leaves it lying.
Tampa Bay plays without Chris Godwin and Bucky Irving, which is a receiver and a back with real production between them, and without Haason Reddick on the other side of the ball. The reading is 11, the board wants 48.5 on the assumption that both offenses arrive whole, and I have 47.8. Seven-tenths at 51.8 percent is the thinnest slice I'll accept, and if the air were still I would leave this game alone entirely.
Las Vegas climbs to altitude a quarterback short with Aidan O'Connell out, Denver is again without Pat Surtain II and Marvin Mims Jr., and the wind sits right on my threshold at ten. Market 42.5, model 41.9, 51.6 percent. Nothing about it is dramatic and nothing about it needs to be — a road offense missing a quarterback, in that thin moving air, is the bet in its most ordinary clothes.
“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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