Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books and it’s safe to say there were some shocks with the top 3 in the AFC betting all suffering defeat in various forms of humiliation, the Kadarius Toney gave the game away for the Chiefs, the Bengals were dismal in rainy conditions and Josh Allen threw three interceptions to the same Jets defender to lose against Zach Wilson after Aaron Rodgers managed 4 snaps of the season before his achilles fell apart.
The NFC was a little more predictable with the 49ers, Eagles and Cowboys all running out comfortable winners in their matches, the Eagles are now 2-0 after a fun win against the Vikings on Thursday night football showing that their success last year wasn’t a one-season wonder. The Lions beat the Chiefs in the opener and will look to go to 2-0 as well as they look to match up to the hype surrounding them the last couple of years.
Some intriguing matchups this week as the Chiefs face the Jaguars as three-point favourites, the Bengals and Ravens face-off in an AFC slug-fest and the Lions host a Seahawks team who are maybe showing they were the one-season wonder. The evening closes out with the AFC East clash between the free-scoring Dolphins and the resilient Patriots.
Best Spread
It’s the final game of the evening that I’m targeting for my favourite spread of the night with the Dolphins under a field goal in New England against the Patriots. I know, I know, never back against Bill Belichick… Well, I did last week and that proved the right move as the Eagles jumped out to a 16-0 lead before sitting back and letting things get a little closer than I’d have liked.
I would expect similar here with Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill showing how good they are when both are on the field last week; It won’t be as easy as that against a well organised Patriots defense and a coach who had made his living stopping the main threat of the opponent but I’m not sure Hill can be stopped. If he is then Jaylen Waddle should have a big game and the trio of RBs they have will do some work as well. The Dolphins should be able to restrict Mac Jones to an extent through the air and I just don’t see the Patriots being able to keep up with the scoring of Miami, so Dolphins -2.5 is my pick for the evening.
Best Total
The totals aren’t easy this week with a lot hovering around 40 points, and despite their game going under by a few points last week, I am tempted to go back in on the Falcons hosting the Packers, the worry there is how run-heavy the Falcons games are likely to be which reduces scoring. So this week I’ll be plumping for Over 47 in the Seahawks @ Lions game. Sure the Lions held the Chiefs to 20 points last week but it easily could have been another 14 on top of that if not for egregious mistakes from their opponents and I do expect the Seahawks to bounce back to at least mediocrity with DK Metcalf leading them in the passing game. I’m not convinced the Lions defense is much better than last season and we have seen they can score quickly if they have to. I like this to be an entertaining matchup in the dome in Detroit.
Brandon Aiyuk celebrates another score; Gene J. Puskar, Gene J. Puskar Credit: AP
Best TD scorer
I said last week that we wouldn’t see Christian McCaffrey around evens again this year and he’s straight back down to 1/2 to find the endzone tonight, which he probably will, but it’s his team-mate Brandon Aiyuk at 15/8 (Paddypower/Betfair) who I like at the price after this double last week. He seems to be the favoured target of Brock Purdy and is a talented enough player to get open against a bad-looking Rams defense. He did manage to score against the Rams last season with Purdy under center and with no Even money shots I think are better than this I’ll take a slightly bigger price this week and plump for Aiyuk. A few others on the shortlist at bigger prices – Jake Ferguson at 7/2 (BetVictor) for the Cowboys vs Jets; he had a lot of redzone targets last week. Adam Trautman at 11/2 (Skybet) for the Broncos, likely to be the TE1 with Dulcich on IR and rounding off the TE treble, Mark Andrews who returns for the Ravens against the Bengals, he’s around 2/1 (11/5 Paddypower) and I don’t think he should be that big a price.
Best Player Prop
After not watching as much of the games as I would have liked last weekend (due to depression as the Bengals got destroyed and alcohol intake at the party in Birmingham) this is more of a struggle for me. I’m going off of my pre-season expectations and box-scores a lot here. Keep an eye out for Nick Chubb over on his receiving yards, he hit it inside the first quarter last week but there’s no lines out on that for one of the Monday night double-headers. I’ll head to the other AFC North game here though and go for Zay Flowers o3.5 receptions at 7/10 (WilliamHill) – not the best of odds but he comfortably led the team in receptions last week with 9 for 78 yards and his 10 targets were more than 3x anyone else on the roster. That will probably drop to 7 or so with Mark Andrews back but he was meant to be the WR1 from chat over the summer and it seems like that will play out in the regular season.
Good luck tonight if you’re following along and post your bets in the comments section, there’s always some gold in there to check out when the games get going!
Adam (@TouchdownTips)
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