A Blowout Type of NFL Week; MNF at Lambeau tonight

Happy Monday Betting family! And a special happy Monday to all Dolphins fans, who saw something they weren’t sure they were ever going to see again… a win vs. the Bills and a blowout win at that. Go figure.

Anyone, that win at least gave us something to smile about as we only went 5-8 on the week in NFL and 2-2 in CFB. But we have some bounce back spot tonight in the Monday night game in Green Bay.

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Former ESPN Bet host Doug Kezirian joins us this week on Betting with Bearman.

Let’s get into it as we have a Monday night football in Green Bay tonight, an early look at Week 11 and much more, including NBA and NHL slates.

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NFL Main Side/Total Plays (including primetime games): 18-20-1
- Sides: 7-10-1
- Totals: 11-10
Main Props (including primetime games): 60-33 (3-6 in Week 10)
Total: 78-53-1

This should be a great matchup on Monday night football between two teams we could see meet again in January. We saw this matchup Week 1 in Brazil last year, a 34-29 Eagles win and another 22-10 win in the Wild Card Round last year. My lean on this game is the Eagles plus the points but it has come down from the 2.5.

The Eagles added Phillips from the Dolphins to close off one hole they had on defense and have gotten the offense moving the last two games since everyone wrote them off in the 2-game losing streak.

The Packers, meanwhile, have been very inconsistent, looking like best team in the NFL some weeks and losing to the Browns and Panthers other weeks. Maybe they play down to the level of opponent, which would mean playing well tonight or maybe they aren’t as good as we think. The next 2 months will answer that question.

So the lean is Philly, but let’s head to the prop market first, where we love to go in primetime games!

Saquon Barkley under 76.5

They don’t call me the undertake for no reason. Everyone loves overs and scoring and big games, but sometimes you just have to look at the numbers and find those edges. Saquon did rush for 150 yards last week, marking only the 2nd time all season he has cleared this 76.5. He had 88 vs. the Chiefs in Week 3 on a season-high 22 carries, the only week he had received more than 20 carries all season. I do not know why Philly doesn’t give him more than 20 carries, but I won’t argue with the results.

The Packers allowed 130 yards to Rico Dowdle last week, only the third RB to go over 65 yards on the Packers this season, joining Javonte Williams (85) and Quinshon Judkins (94). The Thunder and Lightning in Detroit, JCM, Chase Brown, Jaylen Warren all held under 65. The Packers have the 2nd-best rush defense, allowing 89.4 rush yards per game and that includes the 130 from Rico.

The Eagles will get their yards and Jalen Hurts may even get some on passing downs, but unless Saquon busts a big one out, which is entirely possible, he should be held under 76.5 yards like he has for 6 of 8 games this season. Packers have allowed one 3+ yard run all season.

Plenty of more on this game and on the second Monday night game below

Going to go with some other props we almost took in the main section, move them to some alt lines and boost it back with DraftKings’s 20% SGPx boost. The one issue is they don’t let you take alt-unders in SGPs, so we will need to pivot from the Saquon Barkley under into something else.

Portland Trail Blazers at Orlando Magic (-2.5, 235.5)

Both of these teams rank in the top half of the league in defensive efficiency and the bottom half in eFG%, so that's a good place to start.

The Magic are on the back-end of a back-to-back and a three-in-four situation, making it very likely that Jalen Suggs watches this one after logging a season-high 29 minutes yesterday as a part of his injury management. Moving to a secondary ball-handler naturally slows down the pace or lowers the efficiency bar, if not both, especially when said player had been putting the ball in the bucket at a high rate of late (last three games: 46 points in 70 minutes on 62.5% shooting from the field).

The thought process behind a total like this (235.5) is that Portland's pace (second in the NBA) will win out. There's a world in which it does, but I still think two out of three outcomes favor us. What if a struggling Magic offense just has their struggles magnified in a high-tempo spot?

The other positive outcome is that Orlando has had a strange amount of success in these spots. They have three games played against top-4 pace teams this season and they are 3-0, allowing 107.3 points per game (1-6 otherwise, 120 PPG allowed). Part of that is a quality of opponent thing, but are we sure the Blazers are comfortable with this style of play?

The overall results have been there, but they are the fifth worst shooting team in the league when a shot is taken by a player who had the ball in his hands for less than two seconds. That's not a trait, even over a small nine-game sample, that speaks to this breakneck pace being the most sustainable thing in the world.

I think we dial back the possession count a bit and see both of these teams go through cold stretches at some point. Orlando is favored and has seen 227.3 points scored in their victories over the past two weeks: I think that's closer to where we land in this spot (something like 117-109 Magic) and that'd cash our ticket without much of a sweat late!

Pick: Under 235.5 points

Florida Panthers (+120) at Las Vegas Golden Knights (-142), Total: 5.5

The Panthers conclude their four-game trip out west looking to bounce back from Saturday’s 3-1 loss at San Jose. Florida battles Vegas for the second time this season, as the Panthers blanked the Golden Knights at home last month, 3-0.

Panthers’ goalie Sergei Bobrovsky shut out Vegas that night and is looking to rebound after giving up four goals in the first period of his last two starts against the Ducks and Kings. In his prior six starts, Bobrovsky allowed a total of two goals in the opening 20 minutes.

The Golden Knights are coming off a pair of home losses to the Lightning and Ducks, so they will be looking to tighten things up here.

Vegas has given up two first period goals in the last five home games, while Florida has scored one first period goal or less in seven of eight road contests.

Panthers/Golden Knights 1P Under 1.5 Goals (+105)

In this section, we like to take a first look at the next week’s action and hope to jump on some games before the line moves. These are not official plays unless noted that I took it today. It’s good to get ahead of the market and look for edges.

A perfect example: In NFL’s Week 1, we mentioned Broncos -7.5. If you took it Monday, it was a win. If you waited unless Sunday, when it moved to -8.5, you lost. In Friday’s column, it was still -8, so that was a push.

What we like/monitoring today

We took the under in this matchup in Week 3 and, based on recent performances, think we have even more reason to take the under again.

The Falcons offense, which scored 0 points in this matchup in Week 3, hasn’t shown us much since, now averaging 18.7 points per game, 27th in the NFL. They have failed to break 300 yards of total offense over the last four games, which corresponds with their 4-game losing streak.

The Panthers somehow just got shutdown by the Saints at home, gaining at total of 175 yards. Carolina is behind Atlanta in points, ranked 28th at 17.7 per game. Over the same 4-game span in which we looked at Falcons offense, the Panthers have hit a high of 302 yards. It’s been Rico or bust on the offense as Bryce Young has struggled to generate any passing offense.

The Falcons have been terrible against the run (29th), which will mean more Rico Dowdle for Carolina and ball controlled offense. I do not expect a lot of scoring in this one.
Under 42.5

No I don’t like being on the Bengals anymore than you do. But I also know the Steelers aren’t any good, no matter what their record it. We saw that last night, when they didn’t generate any offense vs. the Chargers. We will be wondering for a long time how they beat the Colts in Week 9, a game we were also fading Steelers in.

Maybe I am picking the wrong spots to fade them, but look no further than the TNF game in Cincy when these teams last met in Week 7. It’s easy to criticize the Bengals because they can’t stop anyone (this is true), but they also have lost by 1 and 5 since beating the Steelers.

They won the first matchup and think they can keep this second one close. Six of the last seven matchups (i didn’t do 6-7 on purpose) have been one score contests and if you wait a little, this might go to 6 or… 7 points.

Bengals +5.5 (but wait and see if it goes up. If it goes down to 5, don’t wait any longer). There’s not much difference between 5 and 5.5, so it’s worth the wait.

Washington Commanders at Miami Dolphins (-2.5, 47.5)

No I am not sold on Miami being anything better than what their record says, but they have shown they will play for their coach and showed they have not quit. Not sure I can say the same about the Commanders, who have lost 5 straight and given up 25+ in all five games.

Miami can lay an egg at any time, as they have shown multiple times this season, but they also can show up and blast the Buffalo Bills and Atlanta Falcons. In between, they lost to the Ravens in a game that could’ve looked a lot different if one or two bad decisions didn’t happen (but that’s why they are 3-7 and not 7-3).

My point is, this Dolphins team heads to Spain playing two of it’s best games of the season over the season over the past 3 weeks, while the Commanders have looked as bad as anyone in the NFL since beating the Chargers in Week 5. After blowing a late lead vs. the Bears, Washington has been non-competitive over the last four games, losing by 21+ in all four games.

I’d rather have the team playing better when flying overseas in a different environment. Miami -2.5

How Did We Do?

The Monday night game will help us out, but unfortunately we had our first losing week of the season (unless we hit our prop and SGP tonight).

Here is a quick recap of how this newsletter did on the weekend (Friday’s newsletter) with full NFL and CFB slates, MLB postseason and NHL underway.

NFL

CFB

NBA/NHL: Went 1-1 in NBA and pushed our hockey bet.

Never Go Higher Than 4 in a Parlay

One of my favorite tips that comes into play often: I try to never go longer than four sides, totals, or props in a parlay. Sure, the payoff is a lot larger the higher you go, and there’s nothing wrong with going for the lotto ticket from time to time, but in the long run, those don’t hit often and are usually a waste of money.

Stick to what you really know and pick three or four sides/totals/props that you’re strong on. There’s a lot more value in that strategy.

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