Two 20 Point Favorites in One Week Has Only Happened Once in NFL History

Submitted by Don Shapiro on

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Don Shapiro

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Two 20 Point Favorites in One Week Has Only Happened Once in NFL History

It's an ugly season thus far for some teams as is well illustrated by the two 20+-point favorites showing up on the board in Week 3.  Indeed, this has only occurred once in NFL history.


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Both the New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys come in as 20-plus favorites against their respective opponents at SportsBetting.ag.

It's easy to guess who the Cowboys are playing since New England faced the lowly Miami Dolphins last week and won't be doing so two weeks in a row.

The Cowboys are currently 21.5-point favorites against Miami while New England is a 22.5-point favorite against the Jets.  Fortunately for New York there is some glimmer of hope once Sam Darnold returns from a bout of mononucleosis.  The Jets backup quarterback, Trevor Siemien, also suffered an injury Monday night.

"It's somewhat of a perfect storm," said Adam Burns, head linesman at the sportsbook. "We know what the Dolphins are doing so that was expected, but this is a different Jets spread if Darnold or even Siemian were on the field. Compounding the issue is that we have the two most publicly-bet teams in the NFL in these matchups."

Burns said that the Jets-Patriots spread would be between 13-17 points if either of New York's injured quarterbacks were able to play.

The other time this happened was in Week 5 of the 1987 season. The Cowboys were 21.5-point favorites against Philadelphia and the 49ers were 23-point favorites against Atlanta. Neither team covered the spread.

For sports bettors, it might be worthwhile picking the dogs in both games.

In NFL history, there have been 11 games in which there was a spread of 20 points or more. The favorites are just 2-9 in those games.

While it is still early, the Jets were only seeing 8% of the spread action as a +22.5 dog.

There was a little more love shown for Miami with 14% of the early spread backing at +21.5.

- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com

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