Buffalo Bills (1-1) at Cleveland Browns (0-2)

Before the season, I identified 5 overrated and 5 underrated teams, with the idea of betting on them (or against them) until they proved me wrong or the odds makers caught up. This served me well as I’m 10-4 this year on games involving those 10 teams. One of the 4 losses was because I abandoned shipped on the Bills after week 1 and picked the Chiefs last week. In doing so, I broke one of my own rules, never overreact to one week (I also broke another one of my rules last week, never bet heavily on Jay Cutler, those two losses were two of just five. I should listen to myself.)

I had the Bills making it into the playoffs on the good defense, good running game, conservative offense, don’t make mistakes, easy schedule model, but after their week 1 loss, I overreacted and dropped them. However, the Bills bounced back big time this week and beat the Chiefs by 18 in a game that was 35-3 after the first 3 quarters before 2 garbage time scores. They looked exactly like what I envisioned they would and they can definitely continue to beat up on crappy competition like that. And for the record, no this is not an overreaction to one game. I’m simply undoing my previous overreaction. Without Fred Jackson, CJ Spiller looks like one of the best running backs in the league and the defense looks like I thought they would, which makes live easy for Ryan Fitzpatrick.

The Browns count as crappy competition, definitely. Without Joe Haden, they are probably the worst team in the league and at the very least they’re one of the worst. This is the type of team Buffalo should be able to establish their game plan against and dominate. I feel like the Bills are once again being really underrated, even more so than the beginning of the year.

In the beginning of the year, they were a popular sleeper and even with the Jets in the odds makers book, but one bad game and one good game and now all of a sudden they’re just -3 at a Browns team that should never be bet as anything other than dogs of 3+ against anyone other than really crappy teams. The Bills aren’t and I’m taking one of my original underrated teams to dominate them in Cleveland.

As long as I get field goal protection, this is a moderate sized bet and I do get field goal protection at -3. The only reason this isn’t a huge bet is because New England is next on the schedule for the Bills (and after that, San Francisco. They could be caught looking forward to that one. Still, I’m certainly not taking the Browns to win this game, even at home, and with such a small spread, that’s basically what you have to be comfortable doing if you take Cleveland.

Public lean: Buffalo (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 Cleveland covers)

Buffalo Bills 27 Cleveland Browns 16

Pick against spread: Buffalo -3 (-105) 3 units

[switch_ad_hub]

[switch_ad_hub]

[switch_ad_hub]