NFL Betting Picks: Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins

As the NFL season moves into December teams that are out of the playoff hunt frequently start to ‘phone it in’. That’s evident in some of the pointspreads on the board this week—a perfect example is the 2-9 Oakland Raiders as a +15 home underdog to the Kansas City Chiefs. In theory, double digit home underdogs in the NFL are worth a look but in this situation there’s just no way to trust the effort that Oakland will bring. It’s also hard to step in against the Chiefs who have covered 12 of their last 15 regular season games (12-2-1 ATS). The Arizona Cardinals are +14 underdogs against the Packers at Green Bay. Green Bay is just 4-6-1 this season and the Cardinals will definitely bring more of an effort than will Oakland in the previous example but their offense just can’t be counted on to put points on the board.

The litmus test for viable late season underdogs then is twofold—teams that are still playing hard and that have enough talent on both sides of the ball to compete. That looks like the case with the Buffalo Bills at this stage of the season. The effort is always there for Buffalo and much of the credit for that has to go to second year head coach Sean McDermott. The Bills always play hard for McDermott, a fact that is hopefully not lost on Buffalo management as they assess his status in the offseason. Buffalo made the playoffs last year and has suffered a spate of injuries this season, most significantly to rookie quarterback Josh Allen. The consensus is that McDermott’s job is not in jeopardy and it shouldn’t be. Coaches that can inspire a losing team to turn in a solid effort every week are rare commodities indeed.

Buffalo has now won two straight, beating the New York Jets handily before their bye week and completing a come from behind win against the Jacksonville Jaguars and former head coach Doug Marrone in their previous game. With University of Wyoming product Allen returning from injury last week the Bills could be poised for a solid stretch run. Allen has all of the tools to be a star in the NFL—he’s got a powerful arm, is mobile and can run and most importantly isn’t afraid to throw the ball downfield and try to make plays. This has a downside as it can create mistakes and turnovers but that is to be expected of a rookie quarterback. That shouldn’t detract from the fact that Allen has the swagger and confidence necessary to be a winning quarterback in the NFL.

It’s hard to believe that Ryan Tannehill is in his sixth NFL season, but here he is. Tannehill has had the labels ‘limited’ and ‘pedestrian’ attached to him since he first came on the scene for Miami. He’s spent most of the season behind Brock Osweiler but now finds himself back in the lineup due to the previous starter’s poor performance. Tannehill is definitely not a quarterback that should give Buffalo any problems. The Bills have had a tendency to perform strong down the stretch and particularly against ‘beatable’ teams as evidenced by their 8-2 ATS run against sub .500 teams in December. No reason that the Bills can’t compete throughout here and the outright upset wouldn’t be much of a surprise.

BET BUFFALO BILLS +4 OVER MIAMI DOLPHINS