Reckless Gambling: Week 3 Edition

One thing you should understand about Las Vegas is that over a long enough timeline they are smarter than you.

Take the replacement referee situation. Over the first couple weeks there have been two trends that the officials seem to be directly responsible for. The under never seems to be a smart play, and home favorites seem to always be covering. One of the reasons for the former seems to be the abundance of pass interference calls, which can cause for a dramatic change in field position. In week one for instance, there were more pass interference calls than in the previous two years’ opening weeks combined. Just think about that for a second. As far as the latter, through the first two weeks there are 23% more penalties being called against the road team. The last two years that number has only been at 7%.

Las Vegas knows all these things and quite a bit more. Deep in the heart of Sin City there are people in top secret bunkers playing with equations that you or I will never understand. Changes will be made in regards to how some of these lines are established. With that in mind, here are some bets for Sunday that I think are safer than others.

“Look at that, we’re not even covering!”

Take the Bucs and the points (+8) against the ‘Boys

It’s tempting to say that this is an obvious bounce back week for Dallas, because…let’s face it, it should be. They came out last week woefully unprepared against a scrappy Seahawks team and got embarrassed. But this premise is based upon the idea that Dallas is a good team that just had an off week. I don’t think we know that for certain yet. After week one everyone jumped on the bandwagon and said that this was finally the year that they turned the corner, but how many times have we thought this in the past? Combine that with the fact that the Bucs have a good front seven and don’t seem to have a problem putting up points. Dallas will probably escape with a win, but I don’t think it will be by more than a touchdown.

Jets (-1) to cover and then some against the Fish

Listen: the Jets aren’t very good. I think they are a 7-9 team at best, but even so they might win this game by three touchdowns. The combination of the Dolphins running into the one team in football (Oakland) last week that might be more of a mess than they are, and the Jets playing a far superior team in Pittsburgh has made this number shrink. I don’t care if this game is in Miami, or on the fucking moon…this is the best bet of the week in my opinion.

The Pats and Ravens will combine for under 50 points

Instead of a coherent paragraph, here is just a list of reasons why I believe this to be true.

1. LOL Patriots O-line
2. Improved Patriots defense
3. Aaron Hernandez is injured and Wes Welker might as well be
4. By the third quarter, the offensive coordinator will forget that Ray Rice exists. Possibly because he’s so short and can’t be found on the sidelines.
5. Ray Lewis will forget to give his crazy pep talk to the offense, leaving then uninspired and Flacco-ey.

Well, that’s it for this week. Feel free to come back in a few days and call me a moron in the comments section!