NFL Odds: Josh Allen Injury Has Bills Among Favorites To Avoid
Also, don't be so sure the Raiders will roll over the dysfunctional Colts
It's officially Week 10 in the NFL. The trade deadline has come and gone, and we're beyond the halfway mark of the regular season. The race for the playoffs has officially begun in earnest, and the Super Bowl hunt is as wide open as it has been in a long time.
Laying points with favorites is no sure thing any week in the NFL, but that's especially true with the way this season has played out. Here are three Week 10 betting favorites we'd think long and hard about before betting this weekend.
(-2.5) New Orleans Saints at Pittsburgh Steelers
Look, the Steelers are bad ? but so are the Saints? New Orleans might ultimately be some sort of sharp play, and we'll look like square bozos for steering clear, but it's so hard to lay the points on the road with a team that a) can't get healthy and b) doesn't really do anything well. Football Outsiders' DVOA ranks New Orleans 23rd in the league and Pittsburgh 25th. According to their "past schedule" metric, the Steelers have played the toughest schedule in the NFL to this point. At the risk of sounding simple-minded, it's just hard to see how the Saints are favored here. Maybe that's overthinking it and it's some sort of trap, but it's not like this is the only football game you can bet on this week.
(-5) Buffalo Bills vs. Minnesota Vikings
Maybe Josh Allen plays this week. If that's the case, it's more than possible the Bills roll to another easy home win. But even if he does, just how well can he play with a potentially serious elbow injury? Given the movement of this line, it sure feels like there's a lot of skepticism either about his ability to even suit up or at the very least, play well with the elbow issue. And if he can't go, there's probably more room for this number to fall. Las Vegas oddsmaker Kenny White told NESNBets in September that he sees the difference between Allen and backup Case Keenum worth about 6.5 points. For a game that opened at Buffalo -9, the number should ultimately go lower. Either way, it's hard to lay it with all that uncertainty, and if you like the Bills regardless of who's under center, it might be worth waiting for it to fall even more which means this might be a "favorites you want to avoid at the current number" exercise. The Vikings aren't as good as their record indicates, but this could also be a "Oh, right, he's really good" game for Dalvin Cook, against a rushing defense that has allowed an average of 191 yards per game the last two weeks.
(-6) Las Vegas Raiders vs. Indianapolis Colts
The reasons to fade the Colts are quite clear. They're not very good, especially on offense where they can't protect any of their middling quarterbacks. They're also a mess, as evidenced by blowing out their head coach and replacing him with a former NFL center (Jeff Saturday) who has no coaching experience above the high school level ? where he had a losing record. All of that being said: Have you watched the Raiders play football? Even when things go well, they find ways to choke it away like last week when they built a 17-0 lead only to collapse in Jacksonville. And for as bad as the Colts' offense might be, the defense is actually pretty good, ranked 11th in DVOA and ninth in EPA per play allowed (second in the last three weeks). While it's possible the Colts are a complete mess with an overmatched and underqualified coaching staff, it's also not inconceivable Indy gets a slight bump with a new voice calling the shots. And if Saturday had any good sense, he'd spend his first week as head coach taking every chance he could to remind his players that Raiders coach Josh McDaniels backed out on the opportunity to lead them a few years ago.
