Week 8 NFL Betting Recap: Coaching has hit rock bottom

The eighth Sunday of the NFL season is in the books and it was merely an average one from my perspective. I finished 3-3 ATS with my recommended wagers, losing a little bit of juice in the process. I spent the majority of my Sunday asking myself what I saw in the Chicago Bears and will probably continue doing that for weeks to come. At least the day finished on a positive note with the New Orleans Saints routing the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football.

I will continue with the format from last week in which I’ll highlight my takeaways from the week instead of delving into each game individually. Let me get things started on a positive note.

More Sunday morning football, please. I don’t know about you but I rather enjoyed waking up to a football game on Sunday. It didn’t hurt that this week’s venture into London turned out to be one of the games of the week, with the Atlanta Falcons blowing a 21-point lead to lose in heartbreaking fashion. It also didn’t hurt that I put my future children through college by live betting the Detroit Lions at almost every television timeout in the second half (some of the prices offered on a Detroit comeback were insane). This will never happen but I’d love to see the NFL rid us of Thursday Night Football and replace it with a weekly game overseas.

Last week’s recap featured these two points:

1. The Atlanta Falcons are really, really, really bad.
2. Matthew Stafford and Andy Dalton are nothing more than average quarterbacks.

After this week’s action, nothing has changed on that front. The Falcons got off to a great start before their offensive line and defense predictably fell apart as the game wore on. Atlanta will have the luxury of a bye next week and could still be dangerous at home down the stretch, but I don’t think they have a second-half run in them. As for the Lions, it was probably too early to anoint Detroit as a legitimate contender, but they probably are a legitimate contender. Detroit has spotted big leads to the Saints and Falcons in back-to-back weeks, which is always a cause for concern, but they still found a way to win both of those games. The Lions boast one of the league’s top defenses and they’ve been surviving without Calvin Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Reggie Bush. The only thing holding back Detroit is its coaching, although Jim Caldwell is still probably an upgrade over what they had a season ago.

Caldwell isn’t the only coach that looked inept on Sunday though. NFL coaching has hit rock bottom. Here are just a few of the coaching atrocities that I can remember off the top of my head:

1. Mike Tomlin asking Ben Roethlisberger to punt in the second quarter. This is nothing new for the Steelers, who have been known to have Big Ben lay down a pooch punt, but this was most certainly not the time in the game to try something foolish. If you’re going to punt, bring out your punter.
2. Mike McCarthy dialing up a red zone pass to Julius Peppers, which predictably ended in the way that everyone thought it would end. I will never be able to comprehend McCarthy’s thought process here. I guess Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb and Davante Adams aren’t legit red-zone targets.
3. I mentioned Caldwell’s ineptness above, but I have yet to highlight any specific examples. Caldwell’s decision making was questionable to say the least, attempting field goals inside the five-yard line on two separate occasions in the second half; one when trailing by 21 and the other when trailing by 11. The field goal to make it 21-3 was particularly infuriating because it was still a three-possession game, regardless of whether the field goal was good or not. And of course, this somehow all worked out in the end, so maybe I’m the idiot and Caldwell knew what he was doing all along.
4. The Jets coaching staff put their heads together to design a trick play on a kickoff return. I imagine they spent the entire week figuring out how to effectively use newly acquired Percy Harvin and this is what they came up with. SMH. 

I could dig deeper and try to uncover more examples of coaches not knowing what the hell is going on, but I’d rather not suffer an ulcer this morning. The good news for NFL coaches is that they’re not the only ones not doing their jobs because NFL referees are getting increasingly worse by the week.

If you’ve been watching football this year, you know that the state of officiating is already piss poor, but this week was something else. I don’t think there was a five-minute stretch that went by at any point in the day where I was wasn’t left scratching my head by some bizarre call. Even rival fans are taking to Twitter now to question calls against teams that they were bred to hate. There is no consistency from game to game or from week to week and, as a fan (and bettor), that’s extremely infuriating. At one point in the Cardinals/Eagles broadcast, the commentary crew spent two minutes discussing how the officiating crew for that game is “known for calling illegal hands to the face penalties.” Known for it? How can you be known for calling a specific type of penalty? Either it happens or it doesn’t. I nearly had a stroke hearing that.

As for the stuff that went down on the field, Joe Flacco continues to blow on the road. Three weeks ago, Flacco went off against a porous Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense, throwing for a whopping five touchdown passes. Aside from that though, he’s been a train wreck on the road for the better course of the past few seasons (and his career). Check out Flacco’s numbers in his last six contests on the road, removing the Bucs game from the equation.

Keeping with the theme of overrated quarterbacks, the Philadelphia Eagles aren’t going anywhere with Nick Foles under center. I’ve been preaching Foles’ lack of skill for quite a while now and with this week’s loss to the Arizona Cardinals, it’s a great time to delve deeper into this. The Eagles may be 5-2 but they’ve benefited from seven non-offensive touchdowns this season. SEVEN. Foles’s yards per attempt has dropped from 9.1 a season ago to 6.8 this season, while his touchdown-to-interception ratio is a mediocre 12-to-9. Chip Kelly’s postgame comments about Foles were also particularly concerning yesterday. Philadelphia’s defense has stepped up with strong performances in back-to-back games against the New York Giants and Cardinals, but eventually they’ll need to get something out of their quarterback in order to succeed and I don’t think they have a winner under center.

With the Eagles’ loss this week, I still don’t know what to make of the NFC East. Dallas and Washington battle on Monday Night Football tonight and the Giants are on a bye, so Philadelphia was the only NFC East team in action yesterday. It’s no secret that the Eagles and Cowboys have been beating up on poor competition this season (for the most part), so it’s really tough to gauge where either team is at right now.

It’s also still tough to gauge where the Cardinals are at. I should be more impressed by Arizona than I am. The Cardinals beat an Eagles team that had two weeks to prepare for this contest, which is certainly a tough task. But after Arizona pulled off the 24-20 victory, I couldn’t help but think that the Eagles blew the game, rather than the Cardinals won it. Maybe I’m just not giving Arizona enough credit because they aren’t winning with flash. They have playmakers on both sides of the ball and have one of the best head coaches in the league in Bruce Arians, so maybe it’s time for me to hop on board the Cardinals’ bandwagon.

Remember last week when I said to avoid laying points with bad teams and bad quarterbacks at home? Well, you won’t get a better example of that than this week, where the Bucs and New York Jets were both laying points and lost outright on home turf. The Bucs had two weeks to prepare for the Vikings and they still couldn’t find a way to win! As for the Jets, I could write an opus on how bad that team is. I’ll spare you.

In other action, the Jacksonville Jaguars continue to find ways to not cover. This is particularly upsetting for me because my numbers have a huge edge on Jacksonville next week, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull the trigger. Jacksonville outgained Miami on the day and were actually the better of the two teams for long stretches in the game, but two Blake Bortles’ pick-6s did them in. I’m not sure if Bortles is getting advice from Chad Henne throughout the week, but it would probably be in his best interest to ignore anything that Henne is telling him.

It was the week of the 50-burger, with the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers each putting up 51 points in lopsided home victories. The Patriots are for real, the Steelers aren’t. Pittsburgh is starting to garner some attention after back-to-back victories over Houston and Indianapolis, but I’m not sold just yet. The Steelers offense has some elite talent in Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell but that defense is just gross. Sure, Pittsburgh held Andrew Luck in check early on, but they were more lucky than good. William Gay’s 33-yard pick-6 was the result of a blown coverage that just happened to see him end up in the right spot. The Steelers will be in tough against teams that have any semblance of a defense, as they were on Monday night before the Texans gifted them the game.

As for New England, talks of their demise were obvious very premature. Even if the Patriots lose at home to Denver next week, it’s safe to say that they’re still a legitimate Super Bowl contender as long as Rob Gronkowski is healthy. Gronk is a matchup nightmare for every opposing defense right now and Tom Brady has found his form after a terrible start to the season. Like Pittsburgh, New England’s defense has some major holes, but you can trust their offense on a weekly basis.

Here are some other observations from Sunday:

• The bye week comes at a perfect time for the Chicago Bears because that team is in complete disarray. 
• The Seattle Seahawks continue to get the best effort out of every opponent that they play.
• Zach Mettenberger stinks.
• Andy Dalton still does a lot of stupid things.
• The final score in Browns/Raiders is very misleading. Oakland was driving in Cleveland territory trailing 9-6, when Darren McFadden put the ball on the turf and completely changed the course of the game. Don’t buy into Cleveland and don’t be quick to fade the Raiders.
• The Saints took advantage of an Aaron Rodgers injury, but I’m still impressed with back-to-back strong performances against the Lions and Packers.

Monday Night Football

Disclaimer: I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan

Now that that’s out of the way, let me start by saying that the Washington Redskins are abysmal and that I have no faith in them whatsoever.

With that being said, it’s hard to pass up taking double-digit points in a divisional game. Dallas hasn’t covered a spread of 6+ points in their last seven tries and the Redskins may find some life now that Kirk Cousins has been relegated to the bench.

It’s hard to find faults in the Cowboys’ game right now, but their defense is still suspect, which makes laying this many points very difficult to do.

I won’t have any action on tonight’s game but even as a Cowboys’ fan, I’d have to lean with the Redskins +10. I also think that both teams will be looking to establish the run in this contest, which means the clock will be running constantly. Under 48.5/49 could also be worth a look.

#SuperContest

The OddsShark.com Super Computer challenged some of the sharpest NFL experts to some friendly competition in this year’s WestGate SuperContest. I left my picks up to a random number generator this week (I wish I was joking), and I finished the week with a disappointing 2-3 record. If you’re interested, you can track my progress here.

Here’s a quick recap of what I played this week. Again, there was no thought process behind which five games that I chose. There weren’t any games that stood apart from others and I’ve been terrible at selecting top plays this season, so I left it to chance.

Lions -3.5 (L) – This probably would have made my card if I had picked the plays myself anyways. I still have no issues with this one at all. Detroit asserted its dominance in the second half, but its early struggles cost the team any chance of covering.

Bears +5.5 (L) – I did like Chicago quite a bit this week but I could have probably got away from this one because of the bad number. Anyways, this was one of those games where I knew it was a loser within the first 10 minutes.

Bengals -1 (W) – Another bad number because Cincinnati closed as an underdog, but I just couldn’t fathom the Ravens getting so much respect on the road. Andy Dalton nearly gave me a heart attack though.

Raiders +6.5 (L) – In my opinion, this was a case of “right side, wrong outcome.” Oh well.

Saints -1.5 (W) – An easy winner in a SuperContest play? I can’t recall not having to sweat a play in the second half this season. Special thanks to Aaron Rodgers for tweaking his hamstring or this game would have come down to the wire.

Week 9 Early Thoughts

It’s never too early to start taking a look at the next week of action. Here are my early thoughts on every game, using early consensus lines.

Saints @ Panthers (NL) – It’ll be a square play, but I’m almost certain I’ll be on the Saints this week, provided that they’re an underdog. New Orleans looks poised for a big run.

Chargers @ Dolphins (-2.5) – Is it just me or is the wrong team favored here? Great line value with San Diego following their blowout loss at Denver.

Jaguars @ Bengals (-12) – A.J. Green or no A.J. Green, I can’t fathom the Bengals laying this many points. Jacksonville’s defense is extremely improved.

Bucs @ Browns (-6) – The Buccaneers may actually be worse than we think but laying points with the Browns is not desirable at all. This looks to be the right number.

Redskins @ Vikings (NL) – The Vikings will likely be three-point favorites and I’ll likely take the points with Washington. Not ready to trust Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater as a favorite.

Eagles @ Texans (+2.5) – Maybe another case of the wrong team being favored. Houston will definitely be an appealing home dog.

Jets @ Chiefs (-9.5) – Kansas City just destroyed St. Louis and the Jets are awful, but this looks like a lot of points. Anything more than a touchdown looks to be solid value with New York.

Cardinals @ Cowboys (NL) – I can’t figure either of these teams out so I’m not sure I’ll be able to bet on this one, although I’m sure the Cardinals will look appealing as 4/4.5-point dogs.

Rams @ 49ers (-9.5) – Lots of points for a divisional contest but I’m not exactly enamored by the thought of betting against the 49ers off of a bye.

Broncos @ Pats (+3.5, +100) – This line really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think Denver matches up well with New England. Most likely a pass for me.

Raiders @ Seahawks (-15) – Oakland is bad but they’re still playing hard looking for that elusive first win. Seattle doesn’t score enough to be laying this kind of number.

Ravens @ Steelers (-1.5) – I hate the thought of betting Flacco on the road, but this is the third game where I believe the wrong team is favored.

Colts @ Giants (+3.5, +100) – The Giants have had an extra week to prepare, but I don’t have much faith in them right now. Probably a pass.