BY ADAM GREENE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In picking the Houston Texans to lose but keep the Kansas City Chiefs from covering Thursday night, I tried to factor in the weirdest offseason in NFL history. There were no OTAs, no rookie camps, no minicamps and no preseason games so it seemed fair to me that both teams would be rusty and while the Chiefs were the superior team, they\u2019d win a sloppy, ugly game. I was only half right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Bill O\u2019Brien is going to Bill O\u2019Brien and, for Houston\u2019s sake as a franchise, let\u2019s hope he does it all season. The Texans were not outclassed on the field, but on the sideline as Kansas City head coach Andy Reid put on a clinic not only on how to call an offensive game during a global pandemic, but to do it blind, as he spent the entire game behind a fogged up face shield. Which was no problem, as he has to deal with the same issues when he presses his face against the display case at the local Krispy Kreme trying to pick out his fourth cruller. Kansas City won 34-20. It’s no coincidence that they’ve attracted the most bets to win the Super Bowl<\/a> of any team (14.96% of bets), according to BetOnline’s oddsmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we get into Week One, it\u2019s important to talk about last season; specifically how incredible I was at picking games. I finished 176-90-1 overall and 150-117 against the spread, picking every game every week and. It was an outstanding season across the board and I did it while making jokes at the same time. So, for me, there\u2019s nowhere to go but down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year I\u2019m doing individual previews for the prime time games, but your Sunday daytime slugfests are picked here in The FAQ. Shall we begin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n SUNDAY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n MIAMI<\/strong> DOLPHINS AT NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (-6.5, O\/U: 42)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Brian Flores took all the interest out of this game the second he named Ryan Fitzpatrick the Dolphins\u2019 starter. The only mystery now is the kind of hat Cam Newton will wear to the victory podium and if it\u2019s not a Revolutionary War-era tri-corner covered in Kakapo feathers, I, for one, will be very disappointed. Patriots 31, Dolphins 17<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n CLEVELAND<\/strong> BROWNS AT BALTIMORE RAVENS (-7, O\/U: 48)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year the Browns were one of only two teams to hang an \u201cL\u201d on the Ravens during the regular season and it wasn\u2019t even close. Cleveland won 40-25, with Baker Mayfield tossing for 342 yards and a touchdown. For Baltimore, you could call this a \u201crevenge game,\u201d but I\u2019m not sure they even remember it happened. Maybe it\u2019ll be more of a \u201cpeeved game\u201d or a \u201chey now, let\u2019s cut that nonsense out\u201d game. Of note, the Ravens have attracted the third-most Super Bowl bets<\/a> of any team (10.62% of all bets). Ravens 27, Browns 17<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n NEW<\/strong> YORK<\/strong> JETS AT BUFFALO BILLS (-6.5, O\/U: 39.5)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why you own a service like NFL Sunday Ticket. So you can switch off this game after the second quarter if you live in New York State. Bills 24, Jets 13<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n LAS VEGAS<\/strong> RAIDERS AT CAROLINA PANTHERS (+3, O\/U: 47.5)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This game is the early nominee for the \u201cOh, I guess that\u2019s still happening\u201d every time it shows up on NFL Red Zone. Raiders 20, Panthers 16<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n SEATTLE<\/strong> SEAHAWKS AT ATLANTA FALCONS (+2.5, O\/U: 49)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s where everyone\u2019s day immediately goes off the rails. The Seahawks are a good team, a likely playoff team. But the Falcons should be too and they\u2019re playing at home. This, to me, looks like one of those \u201cshocker\u201d Week One contests that everyone is talking about Monday morning like it came out of nowhere. It isn\u2019t. Seattle doesn\u2019t have a defensive back that can cover Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley and no pass rush to speak of. Jaws will drop when this score rolls across the bottom of the screen. Falcons 41, Seahawks 23<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To be continued in Part 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow our BetOnline Twitter accoun<\/a>t for the latest sports news and betting odds, and stay tuned on the Instagram feed<\/a> for more good information too.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY ADAM GREENE In picking the Houston Texans to lose but keep the Kansas City Chiefs from covering Thursday night,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13397,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392\/revisions\/13397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}