NFL Preseason Betting Free Picks: Cincinnati Bengals at Indianapolis Colts

Added on Aug 30, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

The last week of the NFL preseason is especially tricky from a betting standpoint, as most teams won’t play their starters and will be firmly focused on their regular season debut. We’ll take a look at Thursday’s game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Indianapolis Colts as this looks to be one of the better plays of preseason week #4:

Cincinnati Bengals at Indianapolis Colts
September 2, 4:00 PM Pacific

This would be a nice spot to make a contrarian case for the Colts at home getting almost a touchdown, but it simply can’t be done. We tried it once this season, and it didn’t work. This vintage Indianapolis Colts simply don’t care about the outcome of their preseason games. If you have any doubt about that generalization, consider that the Colts are 4-12 straight up and ATS in the last three exhibition campaigns

Until recently, Indianapolis had a solid track record as a preseason underdog—they entered the season with a 26-18 mark in that spot since 1990. Their 0-3 record SU and ATS getting points this preseason doesn’t so much reflect a reversal of this trend as it does a change in linesmaking philosophy when pricing the Colts’ preseason games. With the team’s philosophy in the preseason and the public’s clear awareness of it, you simply can’t make a case for Indianapolis to be favored regardless of the situation or the opponent.

In theory, Cincinnati isn’t the best team to make a play against the Colts work here. The Bengals are 13-20 ATS as a preseason favorite since 1990 though they have covered both spots this year. J.T. O’Sullivan and Jordan Palmer aren’t really the quarterbacks we want to have our money riding on, but they’ll see most of the action in this game. Not that Indy will present a superior quarterbacking rotation—in fact, don’t be surprised to see third stringer Tom Brandstater play much of this game for the Colts.

While the frontline matchups for both sides are pretty ugly, we look for a superior effort from Cincinnati’s reserves. The Bengals have good depth in the trenches and at linebacker, so they’ll be able to generate an aggressive pass rush throughout the game which should keep Curtis Painter or Brandstater off balance. Until Indy shows any sign of life in a preseason game, we’ll keep going against them.

Bet Cincinnati -6’ over Indianapolis