This has all the making of the league’s barnburner for Week 1. But will they hype surrounding Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ revival and the optimism surrounding the Jacksonville Jaguars live up to billing on this opening Sunday?
Consider that Rodgers has averaged 32 touchdown passes and eight interceptions per season the past eight years, some of those when he failed to play an entire season. With weapons such as wideouts Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, and Davante Adams and new tight end Jared Cook, finding the end zone won’t be a problem for this unit.
While the Pack averaged 23 points per game last season, Jacksonville topped them slightly with 23.5 points per contest. Jaguars’ third-year quarterback Blake Bortles threw nearly twice as many touchdown passes (35) as interceptions (18), with the vast majority of those scores going to wideouts Allen Robinson (14) and Allen Hurns (10).
Why bring all this up? As of early Wednesday morning (via Odds Shark), the OVER/UNDER for this tilt between the Packers and Jaguars stands at 48. It’s a number that’s sure to entice more than one interested party out there.
Meanwhile, Green Bay is a 4.5-point favorite in this matchup. Last season, Mike McCarthy’s club was 9-7 against the number (5-0 in their first 5 games) and a perfect 2-0 against the line in the playoff split with the Washington Redskins and Arizona Cardinals. And including those postseason tilts, the Packers owned an impressive 7-3 road record vs. the spread (via The Gold Sheet).
Looking for a little encouragement when it comes to the Jaguars? Yes, the team finished 5-11 outright and owned a losing mark (7-9) against the number. But when it came to the OVER/UNDER, this club was 10-6 when it came to that statistic in the games they played in. Of course, when you give up 28 points per game — the second-highest total in the NFL in 2015 — that latter figure is hardly a big surprise.