THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
Three and two, and the first green ink since October. Risked $130.01, kept $29.51 of it, and the bankroll climbs from $952.51 to $982.02.
Thanksgiving weekend finally sent some weather and I did with it what I'm supposed to do. Twenty on the Cleveland lakefront and the Browns and 49ers stopped at 34 on a 35.5. Eighteen in Philadelphia on Sunday night, 39 points on a 43.5. Sixteen in Pittsburgh on Monday, 33 on a 44.5. Three unders in hard wind, three winners, and not one ounce of cleverness in any of them.
The losses came where they usually do. Carolina beat the Rams outright while I was giving ten. Denver and Washington needed 53 points to spoil a 43.5, which is nine and a half more than the game had any business producing. So: thirty dollars back, and I sit $17.98 below the thousand I started with. Thirteen weeks of being fundamentally correct about the wind and I'm still short bus fare. Same card Thursday.
Carolina plays without Jaycee Horn, the best defensive back it has, and without Cade Mays in the middle of the line, and the model converts all that into the Rams by 10.3 against a board sitting on ten. Three-tenths of a point, 50.5 percent, and three on the reading, so there is nothing in the air worth a nickel to me here. Smallest bet on the card, which is exactly what it deserves.
Second Cleveland home game this month with the wind at twenty, and this time San Francisco makes the trip without a kicker — Eddy Pineiro is out, which in that gale is not a footnote, it's a scoring plan with a hole punched through it. The Browns are down Alex Wright up front. My number is 33.6 against a 35.5 that already assumes the afternoon will be miserable, 53 percent. If the rebuild was for anything, it was for this game.
Chicago brings a defense to Philadelphia with six men on the out list, T.J. Edwards and Tyrique Stevenson among them, and that is the honest case against this bet. The case for it: 18 miles an hour on a Sunday night in late November, Lane Johnson missing from the Eagles' line, and ten years of Novembers insisting a total in that kind of air is still priced too high. Model 41.8 against a market 43.5, 52.8 percent.
Buffalo goes to Pittsburgh on Monday night without both starting tackles in Dion Dawkins and Spencer Brown, and without Terrel Bernard on defense; the Steelers are short Broderick Jones on their own line. Sixteen in Pittsburgh, a market of 44.5, my sheet at 43.0, 52.6 percent. If this one goes over I will want to see the film, and I say that fully aware I said something in that neighborhood about a Buffalo game two weeks ago.
Washington takes the field without Jayden Daniels, which removes the legs that make that offense worth fearing, and without Noah Brown outside. Denver comes in short Jonah Elliss and Nate Adkins. Thirteen miles an hour, 43.5 on the board, 42.4 on mine, 52.1 percent. A backup quarterback throwing into moving air on the last Sunday of November — I'll take the low end of that arrangement all day.
“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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