Minnesota Vikings (1-0) at Indianapolis Colts (0-1)

Before the season started, I identified 5 teams I thought were overrated and 5 I thought were underrated. The idea was to bet these teams (or against these teams) until I was proven wrong or until the odds makers caught up. It served me well last week. Of the 7 games involving these 10 teams, I nailed 5, including my pick of the week. I unfortunately went 3-6 on my other 9 to finish at .500 for the week ATS, but it’s good to see that my overrated/underrated choices seem to have been pretty accurate. I’ll try to use those this week, unless I feel the odds makers caught up, with two exceptions (San Francisco and Buffalo, two I got wrong last week).

Here, I don’t really feel the odds makers caught up and there’s a good reason for that. Cincinnati got blown out last week, as I predicted they would, but they did it against Chicago. Chicago is also one of my underrated teams. In fact, I think they might be the best team in football. In 2010, they went 11-5 and made it to the NFC Championship game. In 2011, they started out 7-3 before injuries struck to Jay Cutler and Matt Forte. Cutler and Forte are back. Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery are in and both had great debuts. And their offensive line doesn’t look as overmatched as they did under Mike Martz, allowing Cutler to be pressured on just 11 of 37 drop backs. And then, of course, they still have one of the league’s better defenses.

There’s no shame in losing to the Bears in Chicago, even in blowout fashion. That doesn’t mean the Colts are going to have a terrible season. They’ll probably still get at least the 6 wins the Panthers got last year. Andrew Luck is the real deal; he just had a very tough test to start his career. They won’t make the playoffs or anything and Dwight Freeney is expected out for this contest, but, at the very least they’re not worse than the Vikings, who needed a late comeback to even beat the Jaguars in Minnesota. In Indianapolis, this line should be about -3 or -4 (3 points for home field advantage. Instead it’s +1.5. Ordinarily, I would think this could be a trap line, but the action is pretty equal on both sides. There’s just considerable line value with the Colts.

The Vikings don’t really deserve to be road dogs over anyone. I’ve mentioned before that teams that finished with 6 or fewer wins cover at about a 30% rate as favorites of 6 or more. Well, the Vikings aren’t favorites of 6 or more, but they’re road favorites of 1.5, which would translate to -7.5 in Minnesota. The trend isn’t as strong in this situation, but the logic is the same; they’re just not good enough to be favored on the road over anyone.

On top of that, this could be a seen as a breather contest for the Vikings, seeing as they have to go home and play the 49ers next week. The trend isn’t as strong as it is for sandwich games (favorites before AND after being dogs), but favorites before being dogs are 90-109 ATS since 2010 and 173-223 ATS since 2008. This makes sense. Teams can’t bring the same level of intensity every week in the NFL. It just doesn’t happen; that’s why upsets happen. Teams are typically flatter in easier games before tougher games.

This is one of my favorite plays of the week. I’m pretty confident that Luck will get his first NFL win here at home against a Minnesota defense that just made Blaine Gabbert look like a functional NFL quarterback. Instead of putting 4 units on the spread +1.5 (-110) and one on the money line at +110, I’m putting all 5 on the money line. 1 point games account for about 2% of games in the NFL, so it’s just not worth the extra +20 to protection against a 1 point Minnesota win.

Public lean: Minnesota (new thing I’m adding, siding with the odds makers on bets is not a bad thing to do since they make so much money, so I’m listing this here to allow readers to “fade” the public, if they so choose, in this example, the odds makers win if Indianapolis covers)

Indianapolis Colts 27 Minnesota Vikings 20 Upset Pick +110 5 units

Pick against spread: Indianapolis +1.5 (-110) 0 units

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