It seems as though this is the story of my gambling life: As soon as I discover some sort of hidden "sure thing" and tell people about it, the whole system falls apart and well, I hope that those of you out there didn't take my advice and if you did just stick to the plan because I believe that this victory was a fluke and that Carolina is still the worst team in the NFL despite managing to get a last minute victory over the New Orleans Saints. A broken team is winning twice a year or something like that.
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The game started out like I expected it would with Carolina giving up yardage on the first two drives of the game and only figuring out how to cover the backfield once there wasn't much backfield remaining. For those that don't follow American football this just means the area behind where both teams are lined up. When you have a lot of yardage left behind you there is a ton of space that must be covered by your pass protection or as it is really called your "secondary". Carolina normally fails badly in this regard until there isn't much space left and honestly this is pretty typical of all teams. Receivers are seriously protected via the rules that exist in this sport so one of the toughest jobs in the entire sport is playing pass defense at depth.
The Saints started out with back-to-back field goals after not having the offense to punch through for a TD in the first quarter. However, at this point Carolina's offense didn't seem to have any answers so it seemed as though this was going to be a rather boring slog of a game that had only field goals in it. One again I was wrong though as the struggling Bryce Young managed to find some slots and get Carolina down the field for a TD in the 2nd.
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Bryce has a lot to prove right now because most fans, including me, think that he was a waste of a draft pick and is too small to excel in the pros. The jury will have to remain out on this one though because while yes, he is small, he also has the horrible misfortune of not really having anyone talented to pass to. Perhaps this will change in later years. We'll see.
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The betting odds were -350 for a straight Saints win and on the spread the Saints needed to win by more than a TD to pay out. You can see that most people presumed what I did in that everyone thought that Carolina was going to continue their path of mediocrity in this game. Well for the few that bet on Carolina that was a good payout for them at +250 and they beat the spread by 8.5 points. I'm happy for Carolina winning a game but I still have zero faith in them that this will continue. I say this because early in the season when they had a shock victory over the Raiders there were some pundits that were saying things along the line of "Carolina finally has this squad figured out!" only to have them lose the next 5 games quite badly.
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Now if we look into next week we see that Carolina have to face another truly awful team in the New York Giants. It is not a surprise to me at all the the Giants are favored to win, but the spread is quite small at a mere -4.5. Why do they chose such an odd number? Well two things here: One, that spread will change depending on how many bets they get and I suspect that since 80% of betters are gambling on Carolina to either win or lose by less than 4.5 that the odds will change in the next few day. So if you do online gambling make sure that you are "grandfathered" in on your bets meaning that if the odds change the bet that you made does NOT change along with it. Most sites and in-person sportsbooks are grandfathered and if they are not they are full of shit and you shouldn't have anything to do with them.
I will still be betting against Carolina because I don't think that I should alter my strategy that has been paying off 7 out of 9 weeks. If there is any team in the NFL that is capable of being completely blown out by anyone else out there it is the Panthers. Keep in mind that his past game vs New Orleans is the 2nd time that Carolina has played them this season and in their first encounter New Orleans won by 37 points.
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there are 32 teams in the NFL
Any team in any sport has the opportunity to pull of some sort of miracle from week to week and I believe that is what happened vs. New Orleans. The Giants matchup is a different kettle of fish though because the Giants are terrible as well and might be susceptible to losing on purpose for draft pick positioning. Carolina is always suspected of this once they are already eliminated from the playoffs.
It seems silly to say this but "who wants it less?" Carolina is playing at home and perhaps that is why the bookmakers are suggesting that they will play harder or better than they normally would. I am going to stick with my original assessment of the Panthers being the worst team in the NFL in a decade and pick that they are going to lose this game by more than 4.5.
I've been correct 7 out of 9 times this year as far as this is concerned and I am going to stick it out for the rest of the season. I think it is a safe bet but of course betting against the odds pays out a lot better!