What We Learned from NFL Week 8 (Sports Betting)

There weren’t too many down-to-the-wire, gripping games in Week 8, but there were a lot of lessons we learned as we crossed the halfway point of the regular season. Here are our biggest takeaways from Week 8.

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Jets Are a Dumpster Fire
What a week it’s been for the New York Jets. Their young quarterback was exposed by NFL Films for saying he’s “seeing ghosts.” Then they had a massive mess with guard Kelechi Osemele, who they have since released. Later on, they got blown out by a team with a losing record on Sunday.

The Jets were one of the offseason winners after getting Le’Veon Bell and C.J. Mosley, but it’s time to realize that this team is nowhere near good. The coaching staff looks like they’re clueless and quarterback Sam Darnold is starting to move into bust territory.

It was one thing for the Jets to say that they were dealt a bad hand as Darnold was out with mono, but he’s been back for three weeks now and the Jets have been dusted in two of those games. It’s one thing to have a bad effort against the New England Patriots as their defense has made a lot of quarterbacks look bad. However, his 86-yard, four-interception effort was alarmingly bad. It’s another thing altogether to have three picks against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Sure, he was under pressure all day (eight sacks), but he’s going to face a lot of it going forward.

Through four games this season, Darnold is averaging just 204.8 passing yards per game with five touchdowns and 10 turnovers. The good news is he faces Miami next week. The bad news is this team is on the verge of a full-on crisis.

This team is too hard to trust in terms of betting simply because we don’t know what we’ll see from week-to-week or even drive-to-drive with Darnold. For now, I’m staying away from betting this team.

The Bears Are Done
Speaking of hot messes, that’s what the Bears are right now. They made five trips into the red zone on Sunday and came away with just 16 points. The coaching staff has lost all confidence in Mitchell Trubisky as they didn’t even trust him to throw (or run) as the team had over 40 seconds and a timeout in the pocket at the end of the game. They could have gotten closer for a game-winning field goal attempt but opted not to. Then there’s Eddy Pineiro, who missed a makeable game-winning kick.

What’s worse is the coaching staff defending their awful decisions because they were concerned about fumbling away the game or taking a sack to get out of field-goal range. It’s hard to blame them because their offense is complete trash. At the same time, their conservative play-calling contributed to the loss.

Trubisky has 250+ passing yards in each of the last two games while completing 64% of his passes. You’d be hard-pressed to find any stat that’s more misleading as Trubisky is barely serviceable as a backup these days.

Things are going to get a lot tougher for this team as they go to Philadelphia, host Detroit, and visit the Rams in the next three weeks. They’re lucky they got the win at Denver in Week 2; otherwise this would be a two-win team with their season already over. It will be in just a few weeks, anyway.

The Colts Are Good, But Lucky
The Colts are 5-2 and are atop the AFC South. They’re a well-coached team and they deserve a lot of credit for being where they are, considering Andrew Luck retired just a couple of months ago.

At the same time, be very wary betting this team for any futures. All five of their wins came in one-score games (and their two losses did as well). Typically, teams don’t have winning records in these types of close games for long periods of time. The ball might not bounce their way so much going forward.

They are the soundest bet to win this division but don’t jump on any Super Bowl futures with this team. I see them more as a .500 team – or a slightly above .500 team – that’s playing with confidence and is getting some breaks.

San Francisco Is the Real Deal, But Hold Off on the Super Bowl Bets
There’s been a lot of conjecture as to how good the San Francisco 49ers are. At this point, it’s time to start thinking about them as a possible Super Bowl contender, but I wouldn’t be betting them to win it all.

To start, the boat has sailed in terms of a lot of the value on their futures to win the NFC or the Lombardi Trophy. Beyond that, this team has played almost nobody on their schedule. They have wins over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams, Washington Redskins, and Carolina Panthers.

Sure, the Panthers and Rams are decent, but we know they’re not the cream of the crop. Goff has struggled this season and the Panthers are with Kyle Allen right now. The 49ers will continue to get some cupcakes as they play the Arizona Cardinals in two of their next three games and host a beatable Seahawks side, too.

Is this one of the better teams in the NFC? Absolutely. Are they a dynamic offense that’s getting better by the week? Of course. Is their defense one to be reckoned with – and maybe the best in the NFC? Definitely.

Do I want to bet this team to win the Super Bowl? Definitely not.

They’ll have a tough stretch of three games that includes the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Ravens, and New Orleans Saints. That’s when we’ll really know if they’re Super Bowl-worthy. At this point, they’re just a solid team that has done really well against a weak schedule.

The End of the Jameis Winston Era
We’re now seven games into the Bruce Arians-Jameis Winston experiment and it’s time to recognize that this simply won’t work out long term. Arians wants Winston to be aggressive, but also cut down on the mistakes, but those two things apparently can’t coincide. Winston has 14 touchdown passes, which puts him on pace for 32 this season. That would be a new career-high for him. Unfortunately, he’s also thrown 12 interceptions already (his career-high is 18) and he’s added six fumbles to boot.

There are guys like Marcus Mariota and Mitchell Trubisky, who look like busts and they make it clear. Winston teases because he makes incredible plays, but then backs them up with boneheaded turnovers. The quarterback of your team can’t turn it over 2.6 times per game and still give your team a chance to win. The Bucs will have to move on in the offseason and find someone who can cut down on these mistakes.

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Dave Golokhov is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Dave, check out his archive and follow him @davegolokhov.