We have finally strung together a couple of good weeks! Taking us to around 40 points up for December, admittedly we’re still down on the year, but it’s a welcome change to the luck we’ve had for the rest of the season. I hope everyone appreciates the write ups, it’s been a challenging year so far and I’ve had a couple of messages saying how much they enjoy the work I put in each week, so that’s much appreciated. It’s been tough, but hard work and a bit of luck usually pays off in the end! – The 22/1 Winner on Kapri Bibbs definitely helped us yesterday and I’ve got to give credit to @ChrisJBrophy on twitter (and the OLBG blog) for picking him and reminding me that he was someone I was meant to keep an eye on for this week!
The write ups that I and the others put in each week on there are definitely worth keeping an eye on, why have just my opinion when you can get 6 of us! Overall last night we had a 22/1, 11/4, 2/1, 13/8 and 5/4 winner, and annoyingly we would have had a treble winner with @rfltips and @tipsterTss if I’d trusted my gut and gone for Lat. Murray rather than Jay Ajayi but he was odds on and I don’t tend to go for odds on shots. That was a little frustrating!
I’ve got 3 I like for next weekend already as well, one that looks massively wrong in my eyes – Have you seen the Bengals over the last couple of weeks? They had 42 yards of total offence in the first half yesterday and it wasn’t much better after the break and suffered even more injuries leaving with only 2 LBs, one of whom they signed during the week. For the Lions to only be 4 point favourites I think is quite a way off! You can even get -3.5 on Paddypower albeit at 20/23 rather than 10/11. I have them in a treble with the Jaguars who are chasing one of the top 2 seeds in the AFC, they are 4.5 points favourites on the road at San Francisco who are 3-0 with Jimmy G under centre (he’s still yet to lose a game he’s started!) but he hasn’t played anything like these guys. They destroyed the Texans yesterday and I think they’ll do the same next week. The other one in my early treble is the Rams -6.5 at Tennessee. The Titans aren’t a good team, but they seem to find a way to keep things close, they thought they’d won yesterday but Jimmy G launched a quick drive and got his team in field goal drive. The Rams blew away the Seahawks on both sides off the ball and looked better than I’d seen them all season.
- Lions -3.5, Jaguars -4.5 and Rams -6.5 – A treble of around 5/1 on Paddypower (I had my free fiver from the WhatOddsPaddy thing on there)
Atlanta Falcons (-6.5) @ Tampa Bay Bucs – o/u – 48.5
The Falcons are still in line for a playoff spot in closest division in the game. They have won tie-breakers against pretty much all of the other challengers for a wildcard spot, so all they have to do is win out and they’ll get a ticket to the ball, they have all 3 of their divisional opponents left so it’s in their hands. They should start well tonight though.
They will however be without Tevin Coleman who will miss out with a concussion, he had been carrying the load while Freeman was missing out earlier this month, and he repays the favour in allowing Freeman to control the back-field this week. He deserves and needs more time, so it will be interesting to see how he does with more carries. In the time where Coleman was alone, he got 20,20 and 19 carries in the three games, so I would expect Freeman to get similar with the backfield in his care, meaning that annoyingly 365 have set the line very close to where you’d expect at 18.5 attempts. I think he’ll probably top that, but it’s a tad close for my liking. Terron Ward will be the RB2 in the game and he usually chips in with a few carries when needed, (9,6 and 7 when Freeman was out). He’s 8/1 to score on Winner if you’ve got an account there. 13/2 at WillHill is the best you’ll find on one of the major sites, and I think it’s probably worth a small stake, he’s 5/2 and 3s in most other places. Freeman is actually not awfully priced at 4/5 on Skybet. He should score tonight. Added to the info above the Bucs are without their best defensive players in Gerald McCoy and Lavonte David. The Falcons should be able to do what they want tonight.
You may remember that Julio went crazy with 253 yards in a game a few weeks back, that was against the Bucs. They’re the worst passing defence in the league so it wasn’t too much of a shock, and while I think they’ll probably be able to restrict him to under 200 yards tonight, he will probably still break his 100 yard target. It’s another line I won’t touch as it’s triple digits, but he should go over it. The lack of Coleman in the passing game from the backfield could mean more for Mo Sanu in the slot and possibly the very quick Taylor Gabriel, although after speaking to my Falcons contact he doesn’t believe Gabriel is going to really get featured while Sarkesian is in charge of the offence. So Mo Sanu o56.5 at 4/5 seems a fairly decent bet to me, it is a little risky though, especially if they line him up in the wildcat and he’s out there throwing dimes instead of catching them. I didn’t even mention the tight end Austin Hooper, he’s been hit and miss this season, but having more passing targets to go around in the short game, in theory should help him out, his line is as low as 28.5 on Skybet – It’s a little risky as he is so up and down, but he did go for 38 against the Bucs last time out.
It also doesn’t help Sanu that he has a far better passer rating this year than his actual quarterback who has reverted back to the norm after his MVP season last year, he hasn’t been able to really get going this year, he’s thrown no more than 2 TDs in any game this year, and threw 3 INTs last week against the Saints. The previous matchup between these two he had his second highest yards of the season with 317, but just the 1 TD. (Sanu threw for one too)
- Julio Jones longest pass received – o27.5 yards – 4/5 (365) – 2pts
- Devonta Freeman anytime TD – 4/5 (Winner) 8/11 (Skybet) – 4pts
- Freeman 2 or more – 4/1 (PP/Skybet) – 1pt
The Bucs however are capable of putting up points if the mood hits them right.
IF, it’s a big If… they look to the future as they should then they’ll run Peyton Barber all game long rather than Doug Martin. Barber has been a lot more effective in recent weeks and did well once Martin fumbled the ball last week, he’s averaged over 4 yards per carry in the last two games where he’s had some decent volume, while Martin is averaging just over 3 ypc on the season. They’ve also been mixing in Charles Sims more recently, although only for 5 touches in each game and the Falcons haven’t been great against pass catching backs, it takes carries away from the other RBs, and even Jacquizz Rodgers has been getting a few carries, Doug Martin actually had the best game of his season in the first matchup against the Falcons. – Basically it’s a mess of a backfield and the prices don’t really convince me to take anyone.
Will the real Mike Evans please stand up?! He’s been a fantasy bust for anyone silly enough to take him in the first round this year. After a great year last year he hasn’t topped 100 yards at all on the season and last week was a disappointing 25 yards. With Jameis back at QB you would have expected that to have shot up, but apparently not. In fact Chris Godwin the rookie has been getting more targets in recent weeks and actually had one more than Evans last week. DeSean Jackson hasn’t had the connection I expected him to have with Winston which is frustrating, but sometimes these things happen, he’s still got the pace to break out a big run after catch though so you can’t take the unders no matter how tempting.
It looks like OJ Howard is taking over the tight end targets from Cameron Brate, he had a lot more snaps than Brate last week, although Brate is still running more routes than him, and he scored the obligatory TE touchdown from Winston as well, so he’s probably more tempting for me, Howard is 3/1 (365) while Brate is 4s on PP, which actually makes it a tougher choice. I was expecting Brate to be lower priced in all honesty! I’m 50% sure one of them will score, but I couldn’t tell you which one it would be. Logically I’m leaning towards OJ.
Jameis has had a terrible season, he’s at 3:2 TDs to Interceptions in his career now and 14:8 this season, with 2 of each last week. He’s just not reliable, and that doesn’t even count turnovers, if you count fumbles as well then he’s pretty much 1:1, and this season he’s on the negative side of that. He can however put up big games, but the mistakes have been costing his team too much this season and leaving him in too deep a whole to climb out of.
Honestly there’s nothing much I want to bet on from the Tampa side of things so I’ll keep it clean over there.
The Falcons should win comfortably and I would expect them to cover the spread, the Bucs really aren’t very good this season and their issue on defence should allow the Falcons to do whatever they want.
- Julio Jones longest pass received – o27.5 yards – 4/5 (365) – 2pts
- Devonta Freeman anytime TD – 4/5 (Winner) 8/11 (Skybet) – 4pts
- Freeman 2 or more – 4/1 (PP/Skybet) – 1pt
There are a few I’m tempted to back but I don’t want to go stupid on one side of a game, especially on the road team, so I’ll leave it with this.
I don’t think I will be taking anything on the Sky RaB offer, but if I did, I would probably have my freebie on “Atlanta -5, M.Ryan 300+ Passing Yards, J.Jones 80+ Receiving Yards & D.Freeman 80+ Rushing Yards” – It’s the Ryan passing yards that worries me, he’s only gone over 300 three times this year.
Good Luck if you’re following anything today, it’s been a good weekend so I don’t mind aiming a little more at odds-on despite usually avoiding it.
TouchdownTips 
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