Outkick Bets: Thursday's Football Special
We are back to the pro/college combo platter of betting tonight and there's some legitimate value in this evening's games. The NFL and college game will give us some fireworks, one way or the other and tonight, I think points are going to rain.
The belle of the ball is the New England Patriots and even more specifically, the New England Patriots. If you have been under a rock, these Pats are getting all kinds of national love and some of it is deserved. You've seen the numbers including a four-game winning streak and a point differential of a smooth one hundred. It also includes a 4-0 mark ATS and a 3-1 tally for the game overs. In fact, after starting the year with four consecutive UNDERS, five of their last six have gone OVER. The Falcons are one of the worst defenses in the NFL if you pay attention to stats like points allowed. Their offense also struggles to maintain any type of consistency, partially because they can't sustain a rushing attack, ranking 29th in the league in the respect.
The line has moved up from 5.5 to 6.5 now on FanDuel and it could be partially because underdogs are 21-9 ATS in primetime games this season. However, Thursday games are only 6-4 in favor of the dogs. Atlanta has covered in three of their last five games and I think we may be getting a little recency bias on this line movement. New England looked phenomenal last week while Atlanta barely looked like an NFL franchise in the same weekend. Also, this could be an iffy spot for the Patriots because the Titans are up next. I'll take the chance on the Falcons to cover and a tough spot for the Pats.
So let's get this out of the way now... it's going to be really hard to keep David Cutcliffe for another season. It's been reported that he is likely retiring after this season and that's something that has been looming for a couple of seasons and he deserves to leave on his own... as long as it's soon. His team is giving up 500.1 yards per game. The remainder of the Blue Devils' numbers aren't better and too innumerable to just pump into a piece to make a point but suffice to say, the ball will move a lot on Thursday night.
Before we get too excited on the Cardinals' side, we should mention this Louisville team is far from a slam dunk in a spread bet here. Louisville has been agonizingly inconsistent and difficult to read but something we can probably glean from them is that the ability to score is there. Last week we watched them hammer 41 on Syracuse and that was a 'cuse team that was 8-1 ATS before then. I don't think the emotions of a fond, hard-fought farewell for a potentially departing Cutcliffe will be there because Duke still has one more home game against Miami but I'd be lying to you if I believed Louisville covers a 3 TD spread. The other two times that Duke was near that spread, Pitt and UNC did cover but those are elite offense, Louisville is not. I prefer to play the total game tonight. I think both teams are scoring tonight so I will play the total, over 60.