Carolina Panthers (1-5) at Chicago Bears (5-1)
I normally hate laying more than a touchdown, but I like the Bears this week for several reasons. The first reason is simply that I think they’re the best team in the league in this wide open NFL (the undefeated Falcons have played a cupcake schedule and won their last 3 by a combined 12). The Bears sit at 5-1 and their only loss was in Green Bay on Thursday Night. I’m not saying don’t count that game, but you shouldn’t put too much stock into a team playing poorly on the road against a good team in short rest when they’ve played very well the rest of the time, especially when they lost running back Matt Forte early in the game.
Other than that, they’re 5-0 on the season and with the exception of last week’s game against the Lions, they’ve won all 5 games by 16 or more. Even last week’s 13-7 win over the Lions was way more lopsided than the final score indicated as they held a shutout and a 13 point lead with about 30 seconds to go before Detroit got a late garbage time touchdown.
With that exception of back door cover and the Green Bay game, they’ve covered every game this season and they would have covered this 7.5 point spread on every game as well. And they’re not playing bad teams either, with the exception of Jacksonville. St. Louis and Indianapolis look like more impressive blowouts now than when they happened. Dallas is a playoff contender and they lost by 16 at home (24 until a garbage time score). Detroit isn’t terrible. Carolina is probably the 2nd worst team they’ve played this year.
Dating back to last year, Jay Cutler is actually 10-1 in his last 11, with that one loss being the Green Bay loss, further proof of how fluky that loss was. Those 5 straight wins he had last season before getting hurt came by margins of 29, 6, 6, 24, and 11 and the Bears covered in all 5. Dating back to 2010, Jay Cutler is 23-10 straight up over the last 2 and a half years, including playoffs. This year, they’re even better because of the addition of Brandon Marshall.
Because the Bears are the best team in the league, in my opinion, I feel we’re getting line value with them and the usual metrics of measuring “real” line agree, which is the 2nd reason I like the Bears this week. The yards per play method says this line should be only -3 in favor of Chicago because these two teams actually have the same yards per play differential (3 points for home field advantage). This isn’t because Chicago is bad in that statistic. In fact, they rank tied for 7th. However, Carolina is particularly good in that statistic.
Carolina is one of the reasons I decided to create a complimentary statistic known as rate of sustaining drives to use along with yards per play to determine “real” line. Yards per play overrates teams that get a lot of big plays, but struggle to stay on the field or don’t allow a lot of big plays, but struggle to get off the field defensively. Those are the exact same teams rate of sustaining drives underrates because what rate of sustaining drives cares about is how often you convert a given set of downs for a first down or a score in comparison to how often your defense allows the opponent to do so. Because of this, they work in tandem well together.
Sure enough, Carolina is really bad in this statistic, ranking 31st, while Chicago is around where they are in yards per play differential, ranking 4th. The “real” line calculated using this metric says Chicago should be -17. Again, neither one of these metrics alone is right, especially with that kind of difference, but we can use them together to get a much better estimate of “real” line. In this case, Chicago should be around -10 and that’s counting all of Chicago’s games equally, which I don’t think is the case because I feel the Green Bay game was fluky. We’re getting line value with the Bears.
The 3rd reason is all of Carolina’s injuries. Already a struggling team, Carolina will be without Ryan Kalil, Jon Beason, and Chris Gamble for this game and likely without all 3 for the season. That’s a huge loss. Ryan Kalil is not their best offensive lineman because of left tackle Jordan Gross, but he’s easily a top-3 center in the league. Beason is not the player he was 2 years ago, but his absence still hurts because it means up and down rookie Luke Kuechly will have to become an every down player and Thomas Davis will have to become a starter. Davis has had 3 torn ACLs as a pro, so it’s unclear if his knees can handle that. Meanwhile, Gamble is not only their best defensive back, but he’s also their only good defensive back and, when healthy, one of the better and more underrated cornerbacks in the league.
The 4th reason is that Carolina could be really flat this week. They had very high hopes for this season, only to start 1-4. They put everything into last week against the Cowboys off a bye and still lost a close one at home. Now their season is effectively over. Cam Newton’s body language looked really bad in his press conference and GM Marty Hurney has been fired. They’re missing key players. This game means nothing to them anymore and they could be really flat and just get blown out by a very good Chicago team that seems to be blowing out everyone.
The 5th reason is the only relevant trend I could find, but the Bears should be in a good spot off a close win over the Lions on Monday Night. Teams are 22-13 ATS off a divisional win of a touchdown or less on Monday Night, excluding teams coming off a bye. You might say, well that game wasn’t as close as the final score would suggest. That is true, but teams are 10-6 ATS off a Monday Night shutout, 5-2 ATS off a divisional Monday Night shutout. Favorites off a divisional shutout in general are 34-22 ATS.
The 6th and final reason is something I’ve referenced in most of my picks. I expect the disparity between favorites and dogs to close up. Dogs are 63-39 ATS this year. Neither dogs nor favorites have gone more than 10 games above .500 in a given year in at least the last decade. Because of that, any time you can take a favorite without betting on a heavy public lean (there’s a slight public lean on Chicago right now), you have to do it unless there’s a good reason not to. These games work double for the odds makers. They make them money (they always make money on slight leans because of the juice) and they help the disparity close so the public doesn’t start locking in on dogs. I like Chicago for a small play.
Public lean: Chicago (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 Carolina covers)
Sharps lean: CAR 21 CHI 0
Final update: This is weird. I’m dropping a unit down.
Chicago Bears 31 Carolina Panthers 13
Pick against spread: Chicago -7.5 (-110) 1 unit
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