THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
Here is the entire week in one line of bookkeeping: $74.57 went through the window and not a dime of it came back. Zero for three. The bankroll goes $982.02 to $907.45, which wipes out Thanksgiving weekend and then some.
Two of the three were close enough to hear breathing. Philadelphia and the Chargers quit at 41 on a Thursday total I had bet over at 41.5 — one point, a single extra point at any moment in four quarters, and I am writing a duller column. Denver won in Las Vegas by seven while I was laying eight and a half.
The third was not close and I won't pretend otherwise. Buffalo and Cincinnati stacked 73 points in a 12-mile-an-hour wind, against a number of 54.5 that was already the largest total I have ever taken the under on. Missed by nineteen. There's no lesson stapled to that one. Some weeks you make three bets and all three of them go the wrong way, and the only honest thing to do is write down the figure and turn the page.
Las Vegas takes the field without Michael Mayer, Dont'e Thornton Jr. and Alex Bachman — a tight end and two receivers subtracted from a group that was already short of ideas — while Denver is down D.J. Jones on the interior. Run all of that through and I get 8.8 against a market 8.5. Roof overhead, so there is no weather to lean on, and three-tenths at 50.5 percent is not an opinion, it's a formality. You know why I'm laying it: a football column prints a side.
Philadelphia flies west missing Lane Johnson and Jalen Carter, its best blocker and its best interior rusher, one from each side of the ball, and the Chargers are short nothing but a backup tight end. Sealed building on a Thursday night, so the weather rule sits this one out and I'm working off the bare number: 42.7 against a board of 41.5, 52.2 percent. Forty-one and a half asks two clubs with real offenses to combine for five scoring drives. I think they find six.
Fifty-four and a half. I have spent most of this autumn taking unders on numbers in the thirties, and here comes one built for a track meet. What drags me in anyway: 12 miles an hour in Buffalo in December, Cincinnati traveling without Trey Hendrickson and Jermaine Burton, the Bills without Joey Bosa and Terrel Bernard with Josh Palmer doubtful. My sheet reads 53.5, one point under, 52.1 percent. A point is thin. What December wind actually does to a passing game is worth more than a point, and it never seems to get charged.
“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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