NFL Preseason Betting for August 13, 2016
The first week of NFL Preseason action will continue on Saturday. Here’s our top plays:
NFL PRESEASON BETTING FOR AUGUST 13, 2016:
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS AT KANSAS CITY CHIEFS:
The Seattle Seahawks have a reputation for being a much better team at home than on the road. Even so, the price on this game–Kansas City -3′–is curious and particularly given the nature of preseason football. For a couple of teams that enjoyed a similar degree of success last year and expect the same this year it’s downright inexplicable. It could be that the public is overrated the impact of Marshawn Lynch’s retirement. It remains to be seen how they’ll replace him during the regular season but his absence is a non-issue in the preseason since in reality he would have played very little here, if at all. In a counterintuitive way, Lynch’s absence works to Seattle’s advantage from a betting standpoint since it’s another open roster spot where practice and preseason performance could determine who fills it. Players that are ‘hungry’ and in situations like this are often the best preseason football bets.
Seattle is a franchise that always enters the year with high expectations and even though they went 10-6 last year and made the playoffs there’s a perception that it was a ‘down year’. They were dispatched in the divisional round by eventual NFC Champions Carolina. The Chiefs had a roller coaster season. They went 1-5 in their first six games but ‘ran the table’ after that to finish 10-6. The New England Patriots would eliminate them in the divisional round demonstrating that no amount of momentum is a guarantee of playoff success.
While the Seahawks are trying to figure out how to replace Lynch it seems that Kansas City has a significant amount of ‘evaluation’ going on for a team that finished 11-6 and particularly on the defensive side of the ball. Throughout his time in KC coach Andy Reid has taken these games somewhat seriously using them to see what players can do. He went 8-0 in the preseason during his first two years with the Chiefs but has ‘dialed down’ his emphasis on preseason as the team has improved going 4-4 in the last two seasons. Now he has a solid nucleus that he knows he can count on. That means the goal in the preseason is keeping them healthy. The starters will make only a token appearance here and a number of impact players are recovering from injury and won’t play at all. This list includes some ‘impact players’ including Justin Houston, Tamba Hali, Jamal Charles and Eric Berry. The quarterback situation is fairly stable with Alex Smith #1 and newly acquired Nick Foles #2. That leaves Tyler Bray, Kevin Hogan and Aaron Murray to compete for the #3 job. Smith and Foles won’t see much action here.
Perhaps the most significant component of this handicap is ‘past performance’. We can just take a look at last year’s preseason when Seattle played at Kansas City in a horrible offensive display where neither coach wanted to ‘show his hand’ in an exhibition game. KC won 14-13 and there’s every reason to expect a reprise of that performance. This makes the price on the game all the more curious. We’re getting a full field goal plus and covering the ‘key number’ of three meaning that we’ll be on the underdog Seahawks.
BET SEATTLE SEAHAWKS +3′ OVER KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
SAN DIEGO CHARGERS AT TENNESSEE TITANS:
This could be one of the strongest preseason situations that you’ll see this year. More specifically, the ‘musical chairs’ of NFL coaching sets this one up for us perfectly. A constant refrain that we sound during the preseason is that you simply can’t approach it the same way you do NFL regular season games. Both the Chargers and Titans are coming off of losing seasons. In San Diego’s case it was something of a surprise. In Tennessee’s case it was expected to some degree–though not as bad as 3-13. This necessitated changes in the coaching staffs of both teams. Titans’ head coach Mike Mularkey took over midway through last season. He impressed management enough that he got the ‘interim’ tag removed this off season and is now the full time head coach. This is important for this handicap since it negates the ‘new coach in his first home game’ angle. Mularkey isn’t making his first appearance in front of the Nashville fans.
Former Titans’ head coach Ken Whisenhunt landed on his feet. Actually, he landed in San Diego in a job he held during the 2013 season as the Chargers’ offensive coordinator. Whisenhunt, quite frankly, is a lousy head coach. He wasn’t too bad in Arizona but he had some good talent on hand. He was a dumpster fire in Tennessee. Whisenhunt was 12-21 in the preseason which is worse than any currently active NFL coach. He went 3-18 during his run in Tennessee. Whisenhunt experienced the common dynamic–an excellent assistant finally gets the call to be a head coach but it becomes very apparent that he’s better suited as a coordinator. In fact, he’s highly respected as an offensive coordinator.
This gives us a situation where Whisenhunt would love to shred his former team’s defense, even if it is a preseason game. And he’s got the knowledge to do so being as he was the team’s head coach less than a year ago. He’s also got some help from the personnel, specifically Zach Mettenberger whom he drafted and coached in Tennessee. Mettenberger not only has first hand knowledge of the Titans’ personnel he’s also fluent in the Whisenhunt playbook. Mettenberger should get a lot of playing time here as the Chargers have a battle for the backup quarterback spots. This means we not only have a coach and player that would love to ‘get revenge’ on the team that threw them under the bus but have the type of unique knowledge and insight that can facilitate that.
BET SAN DIEGO CHARGERS +3 OVER TENNESSEE TITANS