NFL Regular Season Betting Props: St. Louis Rams OV/UN Win Total

Added on Sep 06, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

We’ll be posting betting previews of the NFL regular season game 1 and college football all week here at SportsBetting World, but we’ve taken this relatively quiet weekend (well, Sunday and Monday were relatively quiet) to take a last look at some of the NFL betting propositions available. In this post, we’ll take a look at the St. Louis Rams Over/Under Win Total bet.

St. Louis Rams—Over/Under Win Total

Our staff NFL writer Jason Kearney has done a good job covering the several positive developments with the St. Louis Rams over the past week. In addition to their bad performance in recent years bringing in a lot of talent via the NFL draft, they’ve now got some legitimate leaders on both sides of the ball. Sam Bradford has been given the starting quarterback job, which is a smart move by the Rams’ staff. He’ll make some rookie mistakes, to be sure, but he’s incredibly talented and just by watching his preseason work you can tell he’s very quickly assimilating what he needs to know to be a NFL quarterback. It may take him a year or two before ‘the game slows down for him’ but he’s making an amazingly fast transition—even more amazing when you consider that he didn’t play football in his senior year at OU due to injury. Most importantly, all you need to do is watch the difference in the team’s energy when he’s in the game—his teammates *want* to play hard for him, and that’s a hell of a compliment to give a rookie.

As good as Bradford is—and I’m of the opinion that he’s going to be a superstar—an even more significant development could be on the Rams’ defense where coach Steve Spagnuolo has named second year linebacker James Laurinaitis as defensive captain. Laurinaitis may not get the headlines that Bradford has, but he’s a player you can build a franchise defense around. He’s not a flashy pass rushing linebacker that piles up big sack totals, just a hard working, tough SOB that does whatever it takes to stop the opposition. He’s also got great leadership skills, and don’t be surprised to see this Rams’ defense gel very quickly under his leadership. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to run on St. Louis a few years down the road.

The Rams benefit from a ‘perfect storm’ of scheduling—they get a last place schedule full of weak non-divisional teams *and* they play in the weakest division in football. Granted, they were a big part of why the division was so weak, but with the exception of the San Francisco 49ers they look to be the only team getting better. Still, the combination of a weak schedule and an improving team means that the Rams will win football games this year.

St. Louis will play at least four weak teams at home (Washington, Seattle, Carolina, Kansas City) and four more on the road (Oakland, Detroit, Tampa Bay, Seattle). In addition they’ve got a pair of games against an Arizona team that is a huge question mark at this point and a home game against Atlanta that could be winnable depending on how the Falcons come out of the gate. They’ve got a pair of games against a tough San Francisco team, and tough road games at New Orleans and Denver but they’re all in the second half of the season—by that point the team should have ‘gelled’ and be more competitive.

Even if they lose all four of the aforementioned ‘tough’ games they should be able to win 5 or 6—if not more—of their games against weak teams. That’ll give them a good start to the OVER win total. You can find this bet at 4.5 games OV -115 or 5.5 OV +125, and we’ll take the higher total and the value price.

Bet St. Louis Rams Over 5.5 Wins +125