Falcons vs. Eagles Monday Night Football Pick: Love Hurts and the Over
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Jason Lake
- September 20, 2024
NFL Pick: Over 47 (–108) at Heritage Sports (visit our Heritage Sports Review)
Sweet baby corn, the Atlanta Falcons are awful. They found a way to lose Sunday’s NFL season opener 18-10 to the Pittsburgh Steelers (+4 away) despite keeping Pittsburgh out of the end zone. Kirk Cousins was held to 155 yards passing with a pair of picks in his Falcons debut. Everyone’s so down in the mouth about it, you’d think they lost the Super Bowl all over again.
Meanwhile, pundits are second-guessing Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles despite last Friday’s 34-29 win over the Green Bay Packers (+1) in Sao Paolo, where Hurts also got picked off twice. Is he not on the same page with new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore?
You know how this works: It’s time to take advantage of those Week 1 over-reactions. The total for our Monday Night Football matchup between Atlanta and Philadelphia opened at 48 points, then slipped to 47 on the NFL odds board at most online sportsbooks – and once again, we’re going with Heritage Sports and that –108 vigorish for our Week 2 picks.
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Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles
Monday, September 16, 2024 – 08:15 PM ET at Lincoln Financial Field
What About the Point Spread?
It’s too late for that. Maybe we would have recommended throwing a zloty or two at the Eagles when they opened as 4.5-point home faves, but now that they’ve moved all the way to –6.5, there’s not much betting value left for us on either side.
That total, though. If you’re familiar at all with so-called magic numbers for NFL betting, you know that 47 is one of the most magical totals of them all. Michael Shackleford at Wizard of Odds estimates the value of buying down from 48 to 47 at about 16 cents, nearly as valuable as buying a half-point to move off a 3-point spread.
Moving the NFL lines this far is enough for us to jump on that Over now, at least for a small sum, despite what we presume is sharp early money on the Under. There are indeed problems with both these offenses, but the Over was 9-7 overall in Week 1, including that Packers-Eagles game in Brazil (Over 49.5). And maybe things aren’t as bad for Cousins or Hurts as they might seem.
Is Kirk Cousins a Fraud?
Here we go again.
The Falcons did pay through the nose to acquire Cousins: $180 million over four years, with $100 million of that guaranteed, for a quarterback who’s coming off a torn Achilles. That same injury was partly why we faded Aaron Rogers and the New York Jets in Week 1.
Sure enough, Rogers was held to 167 yards passing in New York’s 31-19 loss to the San Francisco 49ers (–3.5 at home), also on Monday Night Football. But Cousins outperformed Rogers in Week 1; according to nfelo, Cousins posted a minus-1.9 CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expectation) versus the Steelers, putting him at No. 19 among the 32 starting quarterbacks. Rogers ranked No. 23 at minus-5.8%.
As a rule of thumb, it takes NFL offenses more time to figure stuff out than defenses, so we should naturally see some improvement from Cousins and the Falcons – especially when he and offensive coordinator Zac Robinson are both new in town. They’re already miles ahead of where Desmond Ridder and Arthur Smith were last year.
NFL fans in Philadelphia can expect Hurts and Moore (who takes over for Brian Johnson, now with Washington) to mesh a bit better this Monday as well. And before you ask if Hurts is a fraud, his plus-1.2 CPOE ranked No. 11 overall in Week 1.
There’s nothing in the weather forecast to worry us, so bet accordingly, and may the prolate spheroid be with you.
NFL Pick: Over 47 (–108) at Heritage Sports
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
