NFL Betting Free Picks: St. Louis Rams at New England Patriots

Added on Aug 24, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Week three of the NFL preseason kicks off on Thursday night as the St. Louis Rams head out on the road to face the New England Patriots. Pats are 2-0 SU in the preseason and looking forward to a promising campaign. St. Louis is trying to rebuild one of the league’s most hapless teams and is actually off a SU win at Cleveland this past weekend.

St. Louis Rams at New England Patriots
August 26—4:30 PM Pacific

Tough spot for the Rams, who’ll play this game without quarterback A.J. Feeley. Feeley injured his hand in the victory over Cleveland, and that’s bad news for the Rams who don’t have much in the way of depth at the position. This will mean more reps for their QB of the future Sam Bradford, but he’s been pretty bad so far—he was 6 for 14 with 1.7 yards per attempt last weekend. Behind Feeley and Bradford there’s Keith Null and Thaddius Lewis.

New England’s QB rotation is much stronger—of course Tom Brady will start but after he leaves they’ve got a competent #2 in Brian Hoyer. With the Rams’ offense a mess it puts a lot of pressure on the defense to keep the team in the game and there’s no guarantee they can do this. They’ve allowed 22.5 PPG in two preseason games and made Sage Rosenfels of the Vikings look like Dan Marino in the process. The Pats’ defense, meanwhile, has looked decent so far against better competition and will be getting several players back from injury this week—the team had 8 defensive players inactive against Atlanta last weekend and five returned to practice on Monday. Three of these returnees– Tully Banta-Cain, cornerback Leigh Bodden and inside linebacker Gary Guyton—were starters last year.

Games like this are scary for handicappers, however, since we don’t like to see matchups that are so one-sided. In fact, I’ve known several very successful bettors who specialize in contrarian situations where they play *on* teams in matchups where it looks like you simply can’t make a case for that position. Despite this concern, it’s impossible to make a compelling case for St. Louis here. The Patriots have the better coached team, the better starters on both sides of the ball and more quality depth at the skill positions. Bill Belichick hasn’t given any indication of just how much the starters will play, but the third week of preseason is when they typically see the most action.

New England has taken care of business as a preseason favorite (22-15 ATS since 1990) and they’re facing a team that they can dominate here. There’s no guarantee that the Rams can score points with their offense, nor stop New England from scoring with their defense. This should be a 2 TD plus blowout and we can’t make a case for any position other than New England minus the points.

Bet New England -9 over St. Louis