Steelers pull up lame in one-sided game
It could have been the most hyped showdown of the NFL regular season. Instead, with Ben Roethlisberger on the sideline wearing a gray shirt and a frown, the Pittsburgh Steelers were destined to go down.
Roethlisberger is a gunslinger. Replacing him with Landry Jones is similar to subbing Barney Fife for John Wayne in a Wild West shootout.
Sometimes, we make this handicapping exercise too complicated. Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were not losing to Barney Fife on Sunday, and all they had to do was cover seven points. The public got paid by arriving at a simple conclusion.
“Obviously, we needed the Steelers. It was the biggest game of the day,” Westgate sports book director Jay Kornegay said. “We kind of knew what to expect from Landry Jones, and so did the betting public.”
Brady passed for 222 yards and two touchdowns, LeGarrette Blount rushed for 127 yards and two touchdowns, and Jones led one of the worst last-ditch drives ever witnessed as the Patriots put away Pittsburgh 27-16.
“The key was the Patriots’ game. That was the biggest decision for us,” said Nick Bogdanovich of William Hill sports books, where approximately 90 percent of the money wagered on the game was on the favorite.
Jones attempted to replace Roethlisberger, who was out after knee surgery, and he did a respectable job at times. The Steelers had problems with their defense, special teams and hurry-up offense.
“I was hoping for the backdoor cover,” Kornegay said, “but it wasn’t going to happen with Jones.”
With three minutes to play and Pittsburgh trailing by 11, Jones guided the Steelers on a painfully slow march that covered all of 29 yards in 11 plays and ended with a hopeless incompletion near midfield with 12 seconds left.
“We lost our three biggest decisions,” Kornegay said. “But we won a lot of the smaller ones, so it was pretty much a break-even day.”
Aside from the Patriots, the public hit it big with plays on the Bengals and Raiders.
Cincinnati, bet up to an 11½-point favorite, covered in a 31-17 victory over Cleveland. On a weekly basis, bookmakers are stuck rooting for the Browns, who do clumsy things such as allowing A.J. Green to pull down a 48-yard Hail Mary pass on the final play of the first half.
“That’s why they were 11½-point underdogs to a mediocre team,” Kornegay said, disgust in his voice. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with this Browns team. Those guys are just pathetic.”
Betting the Browns and Jaguars could be called a get-poor-quick scheme.
Oakland, a 2-point underdog at Jacksonville, rolled to a 33-16 win. Public bettors in Las Vegas suddenly love the Raiders, who win everywhere but in Oakland, where they are 1-2. The Raiders also have won at Baltimore, New Orleans and Tennessee — running their road record this fall to 5-0, if counting the new stadium vote they won in Nevada.
The Raiders and six other ’dogs — Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego and Tampa Bay — posted outright wins. Upsets staged by the Chargers and Eagles helped the books the most.
Sam Bradford and the Minnesota Vikings, 18-2 against the spread in their previous 20 regular-season games, went to Philadelphia and belly-flopped in a 21-10 loss.
“The public was all over the Vikings,” Mirage sports book manager Jeff Stoneback said. “That was by far our biggest winner of the day.”
San Diego rallied from a 27-10 deficit to defeat Atlanta 33-30 in overtime. The Falcons, who had covered five straight games, opened as 6½-point favorites and closed minus-5. Sharp bettors were riding Philip Rivers, and the public overloaded the favorite’s bandwagon until the wheels fell off.
“I don’t know how the Chargers do it,” Kornegay said. “Rivers is just amazing. He continues to make plays.”
The Rams’ Case Keenum made plays to help rally the New York Giants to a 17-10 win over Los Angeles in London. Keenum tossed four interceptions on some throws that would embarrass a bad high school quarterback.
Often a goat, Matthew Stafford played the hero role for the Lions, who drove 75 yards in the final minute to beat Washington 20-17 on Stafford’s 18-yard touchdown pass to Anquan Boldin. The Redskins opened as small ’dogs and closed as 1-point road favorites.
Did you watch the Oklahoma-Texas Tech shootout on Saturday night? The Seattle-Arizona slugfest was the opposite Sunday night. The Seahawks, 2-point ’dogs, covered in a 6-6 overtime tie in a lame offensive game interrupted by penalty flags on seemingly every other play and marred by a pair of missed point-blank field-goal attempts in OT.
Week 7 was full of too many dull games. The NFL’s TV ratings are down, and Landry Jones is not to blame.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports betting columnist Matt Youmans can be reached at myoumans@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2907. He co-hosts “The Las Vegas Sportsline” weekdays at 2 p.m. on ESPN Radio (1100 AM). Follow on Twitter: @mattyoumans247