Back the Under on Monday Night Football

Patriots vs. Cardinals, 8:15 ET

The expectations this season were pretty high for the Cardinals and they have underperformed significantly. The Patriots are just about where you'd expect them to be at 6-6 on the year. I do think there is a possibility that they could win a few games and make a playoff push but that will need to start tonight.

After winning three straight games, the Patriots have dropped the past two contests to the Vikings and the Bills. Both of those games were expected losses. Over their past eight games, they really should've only won one additional game - that was against the Bears at home where they were trounced 33-14. It was a strange game because the Bears weren't playing very well until that point in the season. That game seemed to turn their offense around a bit. The issue with the Patriots still is their offense. Mac Jones hasn't taken much of a step forward this season. He still has a high completion percentage, but he's got equal touchdowns to interceptions. He's also been sacked 25 times in just nine games. Their offense doesn't have that many play makers and even though the Cardinals defense isn't very good, I find it hard to believe that the Patriots are going to make a lot of offensive progress.

The Cardinals came into this year thinking that Kyler Murray was a likely MVP candidate and that they were going to head toward the playoffs with relative ease. Nothing even close has happened this season. Murray looks like he stole a big bag of money from the franchise and has been very disappointing. Although he has thrown 14 touchdowns, he has seven interceptions to go with them. He is actually doing better with his rushing this year though. Over 66 attempts, he has almost as many rushing yards as he did last season. He hasn't had a very healthy offense, or at least not a complete offense that they prepared to use this season, so maybe it isn't all his fault. Either way, Murray is not completely healthy right now and if he can't run or be as effective with his legs, this is an unlikely game for the Cardinals to be able to achieve much on offense.

I'm taking the under. A less-than-healthy Murray, and a Patriots team that doesn't put up a lot of points to begin with indicates to me that points are going to be tough to come by. At 43.5 the line on this seems a little too high for me.

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