NFL Football Betting: Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals

By BetOnline September 27, 2019

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The Seattle Seahawks blew a golden chance to move to 3-0 last week when they lost at home to the Drew Brees-less New Orleans Saints. They’ll have a good chance to bounce back in a division road game against the Arizona Cardinals. Arizona has yet to win a game under new head coach Kliff Kingsbury and new quarterback Kyler Murray and is coming off their first blowout loss of the season.

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS AT ARIZONA CARDINALS
NFL ODDS: SEAHAWKS -5
NFL TOTAL: 48

WHY THE SEAHAWKS WILL COVER THE SPREAD

The Cardinals are simply a bad team. They had to rally from an 18-point deficit to tie the Detroit Lions in Week 1 and they trailed for most of the game in Week 2 in Baltimore. In Week 3, they allowed a backup quarterback, Carolina Panthers signal-caller Kyle Allen, to destroy their defense last week when he went 19-of-26 for 261 yards and four touchdowns.

On offense, with the exception of the fourth quarter of the Detroit game in Week 1, the Cardinals’ offense has not been explosive. Murray is talented, but he works with a bad offensive line and he is going through the unavoidable process of learning how to play quarterback at the highest level. Last week was a low-point as he had 30 completions for just 173 yards, two touchdowns and a two interceptions.

The other limitation the Cardinals face is that Kliff Kingsbury coached in the wide-open Big 12 Conference in college at Texas Tech, facing defenses which had enormous weaknesses, often at cornerback and safety. In the NFL, every player is a good player relative to college and Kingsbury cannot easily exploit defenses in the pros the way he did in college. It is showing in the Cardinals’ lack of offense as they’re averaging just 21.3 points per game. This might improve as the season progresses but so far, the system just isn’t working very well.

WHY THE CARDINALS WILL COVER THE SPREAD

The Cardinals will cover the spread because the Seahawks have not yet played a complete game this season.

Seattle has trailed at the half in all three of its games so far this year and the offense has been noticeably inconsistent. Running back Chris Carson has fumbled in each of the Seahawks’ three games and Russell Wilson doesn’t have a lot of reliable receiving options outside of Tyler Lockett. As for the defense, it hasn’t been bad, but it has not risen to the high standards head coach Pete Carroll has for the unit. They allowed Andy Dalton to compile a career-high 417 passing yards in Week 1 and couldn’t get off the field on key downs versus the Teddy Bridgewater-led New Orleans Saints last week. The Seahawks are not accumulating a lot of sacks and quarterback hits. New acquisition Jadeveon Clowney has not been anything close to a dominant player as he has just one sack and two tackles in three games. The secondary is inconsistent and has been dogged by injuries.

Arizona struggled last week but they were mostly competitive in Weeks 1 and 2. This Seattle team has flaws on both sides of the ball, which should give the Cardinals a good chance to compete here.

TAKING A LOOK AT THE TOTAL

The Cardinals play at such a fast pace that you have to consider the overs with all of their games. They lead the league in pass attempts and are sixth-last in rushing attempts. Seattle will of course come out and try to run the ball and they should have success, but I expect Seattle to score plenty here with Arizona contributing about 20 points to get us over the number.