Tampa Bay beat New England 19-17, but the vast majority of bettors lost on the game because the Buccaneers failed to cover as 7-point favorites.
Todd Dewey
Todd Dewey covers sports betting for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
tdewey@reviewjournal.com … @tdewey33 on Twitter. 702-383-0354
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the New England Patriots on Sunday in Tom Brady’s return to the city where he won six Super Bowls with Bill Belichick as coach.
Bettors were all over the Raiders, who outlasted the Dolphins 31-28 in overtime as 3½-point favorites after squandering an 11-point fourth-quarter lead.
On the lookahead line at the Westgate SuperBook, which posts lines for NFL games 12 days in advance, the Raiders opened -1 over the Dolphins and that number has shot up to -4.
The Raiders are arguably the most surprising 2-0 team after traveling across the country on a short week and beating the Steelers 26-17 on Sunday as 5½-point underdogs.
One of the biggest challenges for bettors is to not overreact to what happens one week, especially in Week 1 of the NFL season.
New Orleans, which whipped Green Bay 38-3, delivered the biggest win on a monster day for the books as underdogs went 10-3 ATS with eight outright upsets entering Sunday night.
The biggest line move has seen the New Orleans Saints drop from 3-point home favorites over the Green Bay Packers to 4-point underdogs in a game that was moved to Jacksonville.
Florida resident Mark DeRosa won $300,000 on Lamar Jackson to win the 2019 NFL MVP and more than a half million on Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.
Professional sports bettor Cris Zeniuk claimed second and fifth place in the Circa Million II contest (3,148 entries) last season for $244,444 in prize money.
The NFL determines strength of schedule by opponents’ winning percentage from last season. For a better barometer, we combined opponents’ 2021 season win totals at Las Vegas sportsbooks.
Pro bettors account for most of the exhibition action, which explains why the preseason limits at sportsbooks are one-tenth of what they are during the regular season.
San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is 125-1 at BetMGM to win MVP and 100-1 at Circa, where the 49ers have a win total of 10½ and are 14-1 to win the Super Bowl.
BetMGM has posted regular-season win totals on 115 FBS schools, and Alabama and Clemson top the list with 11½ wins each, followed by Ohio State and Oklahoma at 11 apiece.
Circa sportsbook made each team’s alternate high total one win higher than its standard season win total and each team’s alternate low one win lower.
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