Week 7 of the NFL season started with yet another wacky "Thursday Night Football" game in which the Cincinnati Bengals upset the Pittsburgh Steelers 33-31 as 5.5-point underdogs. Underdogs have now won seven of the past eight prime-time games outright.
What will the rest of the weekend have in store for bettors?
Our NFL handicapping team of Corbie Craig, Ed Feng and Matt Jacob combine to give their best bets for Week 7 of the NFL season. This article will be updated throughout the weekend.
Odds courtesy of BetMGM.
Los Angeles Rams (-3, 44.5) at Jacksonville Jaguars in London
Feng: Don’t let that game-winning drive against Kansas City fool you: Trevor Lawrence has been bad this season. At The Power Rank, I take a QB’s yards per pass attempt (YPPA), which includes negative plays from sacks, and adjust for opposing defenses.
Lawrence is expected to throw for 5.72 YPPA against an average NFL defense, worse than the 6.18 league average. By contrast, the Rams pass defense has been excellent and ranks fourth by these same adjusted YPPA. The secondary is solid, and Jared Verse and Byron Young bring constant pressure. My new passing yards model based on adjusted YPPA predicts 202.1 passing yards for Lawrence, and the market at BetMGM was 225.5 yesterday.
Bet: Trevor Lawrence under 223.5 passing yards
Las Vegas Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs (-12, 45.5)
Jacob: Six weeks into the season, Patrick Mahomes remains the Kansas City Chiefs’ leading rusher with 222 yards. He’s done that on just 38 carries, which means the two-time NFL MVP (and two-time Super Bowl MVP) is averaging nearly 6 yards per tote.
Not only has Mahomes cleared 30 rushing yards in four of six games, but he racked up more than 55 yards in three of those contests. His only outliers: Weeks 3 and 4 against the Giants and Ravens, when he scrambled for a total of 7 yards on nine carries.
The Raiders’ defense yielded 31 rushing yards to the Chargers’ Justin Herbert and 40 rushing yards to Washington backup Marcus Mariota in consecutive games in Weeks 2 and 3. Otherwise, Las Vegas has done a solid job containing opposing quarterbacks.
I don’t see that continuing Sunday in Kansas City — not with how often (and how effectively) Mahomes has been scrambling this season.
Bet: Mahomes over 29.5 rushing yards (-110)
New England Patriots (-7, 42.5) at Tennessee Titans
Feng: Let’s start with the assumption that Tennessee is the worst team in the NFL. This is what it takes to get a head coach like Brian Callahan fired, and my best numbers at The Power Rank rate the Titans 6.5 points worse than NFL average. To get a road team favored by 7, you have to make New England about 2.5 points better than NFL average.
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Second-year QB Drake Maye has been excellent, but it doesn’t help that WR Stefon Diggs is questionable. The New England defense has been awful, and my most optimistic numbers have the Patriots a half point better than NFL average (based on data from the current season).
Bet: Tennessee +7
New York Giants at Denver Broncos (-7, 40.5)
Jacob: The Broncos have been involved in just one shootout this season — a wild, 29-28 loss at Indianapolis in Week 2. And that shootout was confined to the first half, when the two teams combined for five touchdowns and 41 of the 57 points that were scored.
The final scores in Denver’s other five games this season: 20-12 (Titans), 23-20 (Chargers), 28-3 (Bengals), 21-17 (Eagles) and 13-11 (Jets). Spoiler alert: All five stayed under the closing total.
Throw in a 38-0 victory over a stripped-down Chiefs squad in last year’s regular-season finale — followed by a 31-7 playoff loss at Buffalo — and Broncos games have come up short of the total in seven of their last eight. And of those seven contests that stayed under, six featured fewer than 40 points.
Denver comes into Week 7 with the NFL’s No. 2-ranked total defense, No. 2-ranked scoring defense (15.8 points per game), No. 3-ranked passing defense and No. 6-ranked rushing defense. In other words, don’t expect the Giants and rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart — who produced just 14 points at New Orleans two weeks ago — to light up the Mile High Stadium scoreboard Sunday.
As for New York’s defense? Take out that zany 40-37 overtime loss at Dallas in Week 2, and it is yielding just 20.8 PPG.
This one has a 21-10 final written all over it.
Bet: Under 40.5 points (-110)
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