Let’s chalk last week up to the Thanksgiving holiday. With that, I’m sorry. Here are the five best bets against the spread in the NFL in Week 13.
Hopefully you had a nice holiday for your family. If you took your hard-earned paycheck and put all your money on my games, well, I’m sorry. It happens to the best of us, maybe, but yes, I did go 0-for last week in my best bets. The Thanksgiving holiday was a most joyous time for me, but not with my best bets.
It started off bad when Matthew Stafford’s Detroit Lions lost by a touchdown at home on Thanksgiving afternoon to the Minnesota Vikings. The Philadelphia Eagles carved up Mitchell Trubisky’s Chicago Bears like a dead roasted turkey.
Matt Ryan’s Atlanta Falcons were able to swallow 10 points to beat my Doppelganger Ryan Fitzpatrick’s newest team in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Smitty, you could just put two dudes on Julio the whole time? Come on!
Starting Paxton Lynch was a bad idea from the start, Denver. Had you put Trevor Siemian sooner you might have been the mighty fighting Michael Crabtrees of the Bay Area. Then you, 49ers. Just play Jimmy G and you could have maybe thought about beating the Seattle Seahawks.
The lesson learned here, gang, is that it doesn’t matter how many points you’re giving a team if their quarterback play is horrendous. This week, I will try to get back over .500 and take a few quarterbacks that don’t suck too bad in the process. Here are my five best bets for the week. All lines are by OddsShark.
Cincinnati Bengals (+6.5) vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
We’ve got a division rivalry on our hands for Monday Night Football this week. Both teams have playoff aspirations, but only one of them is winning the division. In this AFC North battle between the Pittsburgh Steelers (9-2) and the Cincinnati Bengals (5-6), I’m taking the Bengals getting 6.5 points.
Pittsburgh may have improved to 9-2 on the year, but they almost lost to Brett Hundley and the Green Bay Packers at home on Sunday Night Football. The Steelers needed essentially the best game of the season from their big three in Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown to beat a hapless Green Bay team by a field goal at home in primetime.
Though the Bengals and Steelers hate each other, this is a road game for Pittsburgh. That means it won’t have the home crowd backing them up to lift this highly emotional football team late in the game. With a wild card berth possibly in sight, the Bengals know that they will have to play their best game of the season to have a shot at winning.
The Steelers will win the AFC North with probably a 12-4 record. They will probably lose to the New England Patriots when they square off in a few weeks. So where is that fourth loss coming? Possibly on the road to a division rival in Cincinnati in primetime. Andy Dalton doesn’t exactly thrive in primetime games, but the Steelers are a different team on the road. Take the Bengals getting points.