Pat Patriot
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- Mar 19, 2019
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The lines are out for this weekend’s four wild card games, and the Saints are the biggest favorites.
New Orleans is an eight-point home favorite over Minnesota, as listed by multiple sports books. That’s no surprise, as the Saints were 13-3 this season, the best record of any team playing in the wild card round, and outscored their opponents by a cumulative 117 points over the course of the season.
The closest line is in the other NFC wild card game, where the Eagles opened as one-point home favorites over the Seahawks, but some books have the Seahawks as one-point favorites. That game is basically a tossup according to the betting odds.
The Patriots, who are not accustomed to having to play in wild card weekend, are 5.5-point favorites over the visiting Titans. Despite Tennessee closing strong after going to quarterback Ryan Tannehill, the odds still show the Patriots as the better team.
The Texans are three-point favorites at home against the Bills, suggesting that the oddsmakers see them as approximately equal teams, with Houston getting the standard home-field advantage.
In last year’s wild card round, all four home teams were favored, but none of them covered the spread and three of the four home teams lost outright.