Zimmer strong vs. spread
With no Thursday Night Football to kick off Week 13, our staff immediately looked ahead to Sunday’s slate. Find the spreads they’ve already bet below. Vikings -9.5 vs. Jaguars Kickoff: 1 p.m. ET
Matthew Freedman: Not since his first season with the Vikings in 2014 has head coach Mike Zimmer had a losing record. But at 5-6, Zimmer has disappointed in 2020 — his team is barely in the running for the final NFC wild card.
But this is a get-right spot for them.
Since 2014, Zimmer is an A-graded 66-40-1 against the spread (ATS) for a 21.1% return on investment (ROI).
With his elite ATS record, Zimmer has exhibited all sorts of regular-season edges throughout his tenure:
Zimmer is a focused, no-nonsense, risk-adverse, process-oriented, defense-directed “manager,” and the Vikings have historically been a disciplined team that doesn’t often make big mistakes.
They don’t waste the natural advantage they have at home. They don’t play down to the level of their underdog opponents. They don’t present a known and easy challenge to teams that aren’t familiar with them.
This week, the Vikings are in a “solar eclipse” spot with all of Zimmer’s historical edges lining up. As non-divisional home favorites, the Vikings are 19-7-1 ATS (41.4% ROI).
As for the Jaguars, opponents have been profitable against them each year of the post-hype era following their near-Super Bowl run back in 2017.
In total, opposing teams are 24-17-2 ATS (13.8% ROI) against head coach Doug Marrone’s Jags since 2018.
I would bet them to -10 (-110). Raiders -7.5 at Jets Kickoff: 1 p.m. ET
Brandon Anderson: Recency bias is a heck of a drug.
Remember the Raiders a week ago? Everyone was feeling pretty great about them, and rightfully so. They came a two-minute drive away from sweeping the Chiefs for
the season. Derek Carr was playing great football, and the Raiders offense could run or pass or do pretty much anything they wanted. They scored at least 31 points in three straight games (and six on the season).
Everyone moved the Raiders into the top 10 of their power rankings and penciled Vegas into the playoffs. And then Sunday happened.
The Raiders played their worst game of the season by a wide margin, getting absolutely crushed by the Falcons in an ugly 43-6 loss. It was the proverbial game from hell. The Raiders turned it over five times, and the game got completely away from them.
But the thing about those games is that they happen sometimes, and they almost never repeat again the following week.
The Jets have lost every game this season by an average of 15.5 points. That’s… a lot of points. Take the Raiders in a big bounce back spot before this line gets too high, and throw them into an early teaser under the same premise.
Patriots +1 at Chargers Kickoff: 4:25 p.m. ET
Raheem Palmer: When I pulled up the odds on Monday morning, this game immediately jumped out to me: Is there a bigger coaching mismatch this season than Bill Belichick vs. Anthony Lynn?
Coaching is the one place in professional sports that allows a team to buy an edge without impacting the salary cap, and these teams are the polar opposite in this regard. With the emergence of rookie quarterback Justin Herbert, Lynn appears to be a lame duck coach — he’s just 29-30 during his tenure and an abysmal 8-19 since the start of the 2019 season.
Even more troubling, the Chargers are 4-16 in one score games since the beginning of 2019, by far the worst in the NFL. Lynn and his coaching staff are essentially the Murphy’s Law of NFL coaching, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong: Poor clock management, calling a run and not a spike to stop the clock, down two scores after completing a Hail Mary, calling a quarterback sneak with the offensive line in pass protection ... you name it.
Not even Herbert and his 3,015-yard, 23-touchdown season can overcome it.
How can you trust this coaching staff against arguably the greatest coach in NFL history?
With the Patriots’ run-heavy attack and substantial coaching advantage, I like them to win this game and move to .500 for the first time since Week 4. My projections make the them -2.40 in this matchup, so at +1 (down to a pick’em), this is a +EV proposition.
At +1, I recommend adding them in 6-point teasers to cross out key numbers of 3, 6 and 7. And at a PK, I recommend adding them in 7-point teasers. You can tease them with Titans (-6 to PK)