There are 11 games on today’s National Football League schedule as six teams enjoy a bye week. Seven of today’s games are played outdoors, and all have mild weather conditions with no rain in the forecast.
The NFL and gambling world has long been in partnership. It didn’t start just a couple years ago when the NFL jumped into advertising agreements with businesses they used to publicly condemn as evil. No one in the NFL front office is naive to the fact that wagering on NFL games enhances their product exposure. Yet, until a few years ago, the NFL reaped the benefits of gambling while supposedly distancing itself from the activity.
In fact, the NFL’s relationship with the NFL goes back nearly 80 years when they introduced injury reports as a required weekly practice for teams. There was a scandal in the 1946 championship game in which a team hid injuries and inside information offered gamblers a huge edge. The integrity of the game was called into question, and to quell the dissenting voices the NFL adopted the practice of each team having to submit an injury report to alert everyone of what players were active and what players were possibly or certainly going to miss an upcoming game.
That is why both the gambling world and the NFL is up in arms this week when the Baltimore Ravens appear to have cheated on the availability of quarterback Lamar Jackson for today’s game against the Chicago Bears. Jackson has been sidelined for weeks with a hamstring injury and no team in the league is more reliant on their quarterback than John Harbaugh’s Ravens.
With him, the Ravens are a Super Bowl threat.
Without him is a major reason they come into action today with a 1-5 record … only the winless New York Jets have fewer wins than the Ravens.
The books figured Jackson would be available following the Ravens bye week and the point spread on their game against Chicago reflected that assumption. The 1 and 5 Ravens were installed on Sunday night as a 6½ point favorite over the 4 and 2 Bears.
The Ravens listed Jackson as questionable on their injury report, but insiders noted that he was not practicing with the first team, but rather his Friday work was served with the scout team. When he was announced out, replaced by backup Tyler Huntley, the league office and gambling world cried foul.
For their part, the Ravens had been quoted on Friday saying, “Lamar Jackson was present for and participated fully in our entire Friday practice ahead of Sunday’s game against the Bears.”
That statement was dramatically misleading, and the team was forced to come out with a new statement on Saturday that read, “Upon further evaluation today and after conferring with the league office, because Lamar didn’t take starter reps in practice, we updated our report to reflect his practice participation.”
Updated your report!? You mean, I believe, you covered your deceit with an entirely different story on the availability of Jackson.
Now, because NFL wagering is not parimutuel you get the point spread at the time of the wager regardless of line shifts. In this case, the books dropped the line from the Ravens favored by as many as seven points to one-and-one-half. This morning, that number has creeped back up to where Baltimore is a 2½ point favorite.
Individuals who thought they were having to lay the big spread because they had Jackson playing for their team, like the books thought too, are seemingly stuck with a bad line. But here is a little solace for those stuck with that bad line, more often than not when something like this happens the team with the bad line goes on and wins the game and covers the bloated number.
Still, both the gambling world and NFL do not like to be juked by a team clearly manipulating their injury report. I suspect the league will dish out penalties on the Ravens.
As far as the public is concerned, they like three plays the best this week that don’t involve the Ravens or Bears. The most bet game this week is the New England Patriots (-7) over the Cleveland Browns. The next two most popular plays are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-3½) over the New Orleans Saints and Cincinnati Bengals (-6) over the New York Jets.
As for the Qoxhi Week 8 selections, they are now posted on this site and if a Bullet Play develops in the final hour leading up the first kickoff of the day, that game will be added to the list of recommendations by 9:45 a.m. Pacific Time.