Four plays, two winners, and the ledger barely twitched. $95.25 in front of the window, $6.04 of it kept by the house, $907.45 down to $901.41. After last week I will take a flat tire over another blowout.
The good one was the best kind of good one. Twenty miles an hour in Philadelphia on Sunday night, Las Vegas arriving without its quarterback, and the Raiders proceeded to score nothing at all. Zero. Thirty-one combined points against a 37.5 — that is the whole thesis of this column standing up in public with its shirt tucked in.
Then the other end of it. Washington and the Giants got to 50 on a Monday night 46.5 with Jayden Daniels in a ball cap. And the Jets went to Jacksonville with both listed quarterbacks on the out sheet and helped produce 68 points on a total of 40.5. A road team with no quarterback in an 11-mile-an-hour wind is supposed to be the closest thing I get to a gift. I unwrapped it and there was a Jaguars scoreboard inside.
San Francisco's out list runs five deep and gets all the way down to the third quarterback, Tennessee's contains one cornerback, and the model wants me laying twelve and a half regardless. It prints 12.7 to the market's 12.5 — two-tenths of a point, the narrowest gap I've had all year, which is saying something. Levi's reads four on the wind, so the number stands on its own two feet. Fifty and a half percent, and the smallest stake I write this week.
Twenty on the wind in Philadelphia on a Sunday night in December, and Las Vegas gets off the plane without Geno Smith and without Kolton Miller to protect whoever inherits the job. Philadelphia is again short Lane Johnson and Jalen Carter. The book has clearly read the forecast — a 37.5 in this matchup is not an accident — but it stopped reading a page early, and I've got 35.6. Fifty-two point nine percent, and more of my money than anything else on the card.
Forty-six and a half between two teams down to their spare parts. Washington is again without Jayden Daniels, which takes the legs out of that offense for the second time in three weeks, and the Giants counter with a six-name list of their own topped by Kayvon Thibodeaux. Thirteen in East Rutherford on a Monday night in December. My total is 45.2 at 52.4 percent, and that market number was set for two healthy rosters that are not showing up.
The Jets' quarterback room is on the injury report in its entirety — Justin Fields out, Tyrod Taylor out — and Mason Taylor is gone from the tight end spot besides. Jacksonville's page is empty. Eleven miles an hour, a market of 40.5, my number at 39.9. Six-tenths and 51.6 percent is the least I'll accept before I write anything down, and I'd accept less than that to bet against a team throwing its third-stringer into a moving wind.
“Bet less than you brag, learn more than you lose, and never trust a tout who smiles too much.”
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