Dear NFL bettor,

It’s not often that Mr. Peebles calls a game 3 weeks before it actually starts, but by golly, you’d better take the Saints on NFL opening day, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010, or else you’ll be sorry. Even though much of what’s been going on in the Saints camp has been hush-hush lately, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be dogs when the regular season starts. To the contrary, Mr. Peebles sees the Saints continuing as a force to be reckoned with, driven by quarterback Drew Brees’ laser-guided throwing arm and a halfway decent defensive unit to boot.

So Favre is being wheeled out of the QB nursing home for another year? How much money did that cost the Vikings? Will Favre fall and break a hip in the Vikings’ shower room after practice? Mr. Peebles thinks not, but he does begin to question Favre’s resilience. After nearly 2 decades of football, Favre is either going out with a bang or out in an ambulance. That’s just reality folks, and as a result, you should tune your bets accordingly.

On September 9th, the Saints are favored by 4 points. This is a fairly reasonable spread, hinging on Favre and how he musters the offense on day one. If Favre looks like crap in the pre-season, chances are, that spread will open up a bit, perhaps favoring the Saints by a touchdown. Let’s not forget that Drew Brees is no slouch. He put on one hell of show last Super Bowl and picked up a ring in the process. Among the top 3 teams – Saints, Colts, Vikings – you have 3 amazing quarterbacks, all ranked in quality in the same order as their respective teams. We’ll put Brees on top for now, unless Peyton Manning steers the Colts to another undfeated run in the initial weeks of regular season play, in which case he’ll be king of the castle until the post season decides otherwise.

Also, it’s worth noting that sportsbooks are a bit conservative during the first week of regular season play. They’re not going too far out on limbs to make a buck, since they need to get a feel for how to pitch the odds. Mr. Peebles sees conservative lines/odds during weeks 1 and 2, and then things will open up once everyone has the lay of the land. For example, the Bears are currently favored by 7 over the Detroit Lions. That’s reasonable, but if this was week 10 and NOT week 1, we’d see more than7 points for the Bears. The Lions and their St. Louis Rams friends have a lot of room for improvement, and desperately need to get things together in order to make the NFL actually competitive this season.

In the end, it really comes down to how strong the leaders are and how weak the followers are. If, for example, the Colts are so good that they smash the St. Louis Rams by 40 points, the NFL 2010-11 football season will be a bit boring. Instead, Mr. Peebles prefers a stronger bottom end. Suppose the Colts only beat the Rams by 7: well, we’ll have ourselves a halfway decent game and not passing practice for Manning against team no better than some punk high school football squad.

Remember, ALWAYS check your sportsbook’s lines and odds BEFORE betting. Don’t be stupid. Get the facts, then collect the cash. That’s how it works.

Best,
Mr. Peebles

Good Luck NFL Pre-Season Betting!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.