There are few sports handicapping scenarios more pervasive\u2014and more overrated\u2014than the \u2018must win\u2019 situation. The reality is that teams in \u2018must win\u2019 situations rarely do. At the very least, they\u2019re almost never a good betting value. The \u2018must win\u2019 aspect of a matchup is baked into the line meaning you\u2019re paying a \u2018premium\u2019 to bet what is often an inferior team. During the late stages of the 2018 NFL regular season no team has faced as many \u2018must win scenarios\u2019 as the Carolina Panthers. The narrative is that at some point the veteran laden team will respond to the urgency and show up with a strong effort. The latest opponent for the \u2018must win\u2019 Carolina Panthers is a tough one\u2014the NFL South champion New Orleans Saints.<\/p>\n
New Orleans has already clinched their division winning 11 of their 13 games this season with a single loss at home and on the road. They\u2019ve run away with their division to an even greater extent than the NFC West champion Los Angeles Rams. At least the Rams have another winning team in their division (the 8-5 Seattle Seahawks). For New Orleans, their closest rivals are the second place Panthers who limp into this game with a 6-7 record and riding a five game losing streak. The Panthers have had many problems this season but one of the major ones is inconsistency\u2014they\u2019ve been very strong at home with only one loss against five wins. On the road, however, they\u2019ve won only once against six defeats.<\/p>\n
Carolina head coach Ron Rivera remains a \u2018true believer\u2019. Of course it\u2019s in his best interest to do so since it\u2019ll be his job in serious jeopardy if the Panthers don\u2019t pull off a very unlikely playoff run. The Panthers have a tough challenger in this game and a loss will make it six straight\u2014the team\u2019s first six game losing streak since 2010. That was John Fox\u2019s last year at the Panthers helm as the team finished 2-14 making them the worst team in the NFL. Things aren\u2019t quite that bad this season though that dubious upside won\u2019t be enough to keep Rivera gainfully employed. After last week\u2019s loss to the (formerly) lowly Cleveland Browns, Rivera opined that \u201cThere’s a chance – five percent. That’s what they are giving us, so that’s what we will take. … All you need is a chance.”<\/p>\n
Rivera apparently doesn\u2019t have a career as a math teacher to fall back on. The Panthers have a slightly better than five percent chance to make the playoffs\u2014between 6 and 9% depending on who you ask. Even veteran defensive end Julius Peppers is drinking the postseason Kool-Aid: ”That would be a great story wouldn’t it? If we won this game and then won two more and made it in?” It might not be a redux of Jim Valvano\u2019s North Carolina State NCAA Championship run but it would be somewhat improbable.<\/p>\n
The reality here is that this will be the sixth \u2018must win\u2019 game for the Panthers this season and they\u2019ve lost their previous five. They haven’t won a football game since November 4 (beat Tampa Bay 42-28) at which point they were in great shape with a 6-2 record. They\u2019ve had plenty of opportunities to retake control of their playoff destiny but every time they haven\u2019t closed the deal. To be fair, other than a 52-21 blowout loss at Pittsburgh on November 8 the Panthers have been competitive in every game. Four of the five games during their losing streak were on the road where they dropped verdicts to Detroit by 1, Tampa Bay by 7 and Cleveland by 6 along with a 3 point loss to Seattle at home.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest issue for the Panthers is the poor play of Cam Newton. Newton has been bothered by a nagging right shoulder injury all year and it\u2019s clearly hurting him and impacting his performance. His accuracy has been horrific and it\u2019s also limited Newton\u2019s ability to throw downfield. Rivera plans to stick with Newton this week and not hand the reins over to Taylor Heinicke in his third year out of Old Dominion University. Another injury of note\u2014kicker Graham Gano will miss his second straight game. It\u2019s very tempting to take Carolina getting nearly a touchdown at home on the NFL betting odds<\/a> board. Against many teams, it would be a no-brainer. New Orleans is just too good and still have a very significant goal as they try to lock up home field advantage throughout the playoffs. The Panthers just have too many injuries, too little intensity and have themselves in too big of a hole.<\/p>\n BET NEW ORLEANS SAINTS -6.5 OVER CAROLINA PANTHERS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are few sports handicapping scenarios more pervasive\u2014and more overrated\u2014than the \u2018must win\u2019 situation. The reality is that teams in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4901","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\/4901","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=4901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4903,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions\/4903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}