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Patriots Favored by a Touchdown over Bengals

Colts Home Underdogs to Eagles

8/20/09

Two games on tap for Thursday Night Preseason Football as the Bengals head to New England to take on the Patriots and the Eagles head to Indianapolis to take on the Colts. The Patriots are a whopping 7 point favorite over the Bengals while the Eagles are favored by 3 over the Colts. The Colts, Eagles and Bengals will all be looking for their first wins.

Carson Palmer won't be playing tonight but that shouldn't slow down the Bengals. The Bengals had over 300 yards against the Saints in the first half alone last week. While the starters weren't able to put the ball in the end zone, they had no trouble moving it which should bode well against a Pats defense that gave up 25 points to the Eagles.

Meanwhile Tom Brady and the first string offense looked flawless last week. With that in mind you'd have to take a close look at the over 36 in this tilt. If you're going to do that, then you'd also have to take a good look at the Bengals getting +6.5 or +7 in this spot. Yeah, it's the Patriots and Tom Brady but 7 is a big number for a pre season game.

Out in Indy, Peyton Manning and the Colts expressed some concern over their playing time in last weeks loss to the Vikings. "I think we kind of played a lot less than what we thought we were going to play on Friday," Manning said referring to last week's preseason opener for the Colts, a 13-3 loss to the Vikings. "They told us 12 plays and we got six. I think one thing that's important -- I think our coaches realized this after some of the older guys kind of made the point -- this is a new starting unit."

So here we have a Peyton Manning led Colts offensive starting unit chomping at the bit to get some playing time and no doubt frustrated over the team only putting 3 points on the board last week. They get an Eagles team that gave up 27 to the Pats last week and is promising to keep the memory of their late defensive coordinator Jim Johnson alive by blitzing regularly. I smell a couple of early TD passes as Manning burns the blitz early.

A couple of plays that might be worth making here are the Colts + 1/2 -140 as well as the over 7 in the first quarter. Manning is going to want to get on the board quickly after not doing so last week.

For the same reasons, we'd lean towards the Colts +3 as well as over 36 in this game.

To sum up, we'll take the Bengals +7 and over 36 in the first game. Then we'll take the Colts +3 and over 36 in the 2nd game. We'll also take a shot with the Colts +1/2 and over 7 in the first quarter. Also in our favor on both sides bets is that we are bucking the public in both instances as they heavily favor the Pats and Eagles.

Good luck if you bet and remember, it's only preseason. There's lots of football to be played this year. We rarely play more than 1/4 unit on any preseason game as there are simply too many unknown variables.

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