Pick 1: Bears for $80 (1.6% of $5000 bank roll)

Gotta love the home team on opening night of the NFL season. We are looking for the Bears to come out eager to shake off the frustration from last year’s double doink season ender. We should have a fairly good idea of what we are getting with these Bears. A solid defense backed by a steadily improving offense under Mitchell Trubisky. The Packers have a bit more uncertainty with their squad after bringing in a new head coach in Matt LaFleur. Will he be enough to reignite the fire in a suddenly aging Aaron Rodgers? We think not at least for night 1 of the season. Betting against Rodgers is typically a dangerous proposition but the Bears have the best all around team in this fight, and we look to see them win this one by a touchdown.

The line has moved to Bears -3 leading up to the game but the juice is still high at -115. Once it gets to -110 or less (if it does), we’ll move our bet recommendation to the -3 line. We still like the Bears at -3.5 however and stand firm with that pick.

Pick 2: Cardinals for $600 (12% of $5000 bank roll)

So we were wondering what the first game would be that receives our “Razor Sharp Bet” moniker. Turns out we get the chance to lay down some big bucks in Week 1 as this line is pretty far off from what we would expect to see. Let’s talk first about what we like about this game:

• Home underdog. The fans are going to be riled up for this one with all the excitement and energy surrounding their new head coach and QB.

• Offensive expectations for the Cardinals are high - we are looking to see some big points in this game

• The Cardinals defense is better than you think it is. They were actually a middle of the pack defense last year (17th in DVOA).

• The Lions were not very good last year (6-10) and basically did nothing significant this offseason to improve.

All right now for the bad news. What could possibly go wrong with putting so much on the line with the Cardinals?

• 3-13 last year…we repeat…3-13

• Remember that mediocre defense we mentioned above…well they will be without star cornerback Patrick Peterson for the first 6 games of the year. Yikes.

• Kliff Kingsbury wasn’t exactly the tearing it up at Texas Tech as the head coach. While his offenses were top notch, his overall record was on the wrong side of .500

• Kyler Murray on the other hand did enjoy massive success at Oklahoma. However without concrete NFL tested stats to rely upon, it is difficult to fully trust the outcomes of our model without him having a few games under his belt.

Well we are not here to talk ourselves out of this but it’s important to look at things from both sides. Our commitment is to trust the back-tested model with our bank roll and the model really likes the Cardinals here. The expected improvements on offense should more than offset the loss of Patrick Peterson for the Cardinals defense. And once again, the Detroit Lions are not very good, and you would be hard pressed to say that they improved much this offseason. We love the energy and excitement of the new coach / new QB combo on opening day at home. Given some of the uncertainty surrounding the lack of NFL stats for that combo though makes us 2nd guess putting up the full suggested amount for the Razor Sharp Bet (and that is only the Half Kelly recommendation - geez can you imagine putting the Fully Kelly amount on this one game - that would be nearly a QUARTER of our bank roll!! ($1200). We would’t blame anyone for going less than the suggested 12% bet here due to the QB/Head Coach statistical uncertainty, but it’s important to capitalize on the largest line variances by betting more than the standard Sharp Bet of 1.6%. As mentioned above, we are all in so a 12% bet it is for us. Don’t let us down Kyler & Kliff!!!

Pick 3: Buccaneers for $80 (1.6% of $5000 bank roll)

A bet on the Buccaneers here is essentially a bet on Bruce Arians to turn the train…or pirate ship perhaps… around this season. His previous success in Arizona and as interim coach in Indianapolis shows he can lead a team into the playoffs. As mentioned in the Cardinals write up above, we love the home crowd on opening day advantage especially when a new regime has taken over. There is so much hope and excitement in the air (only to surely be deflated later in the season when reality sets in. That first week is magical though). What about the triumphant return of Jimmy G you say? While we can confidently state that preseason results have absolutely ZERO influence on anything we do here (outside of player injuries of course), it has been fun seeing the Handsome One struggle so mightily in his first few appearances knowing we have this bet already locked in. Let’s hope his struggles continue down in Tampa so that we can add this one to the win column when the Week 1 dust settles.

The line for this one also moved against us for the bets we recommended (we liked the Buccs at -1). If you can pick up the Buccs as a pick ‘em now, all the better.

Pick 4: Steelers for $80 (1.6% of $5000 bank roll)

We’ll start out by saying that this is probably our least favorite bet of the Week 1 slate. It’s not fun betting against the Pats. It’s certainly fun to root against them each and every week though (a sentiment we’re sure most of the country shares outside of the greater Boston area). If there is ever a time to bet against the Pats though, it’s early in the season when it seemingly has become a yearly tradition for everyone to start writing them off after a 2-2 start only to of course see them go to Super Bowl after Super Bowl (damn it’s so boring).

The Steelers are the only road team we are putting our money on this week. No, we are not worried about the departure of Antonio Brown as the Pittsburgh wide receiver factory will continue to crank out over-performing wideouts seemingly out of nowhere. Juju Smith-Shuster will be more than ready for the increased workload. We’ll be watching this one with Jujubes in hand hoping the Steelers can keep it close and put a final win of the week on the board for us.

Finally a line that is moving in favor of the bets we had already laid down. We had our money locked in at +6 but the Steelers are still a Sharp Bet at +5.5 for us so the recommendation stands.