NFL Preseason Betting Free Picks: Indianapolis Colts vs. Buffalo Bills

Added on Aug 17, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Week two of the NFL preseason begins this Thursday with two games, and we’ll take a look at the early start contest between the Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts. Both teams are off of a loss in their preseason opener, with the Bills being routed by the Washington Redskins and the Colts by the San Francisco 49ers. Note that this game is at a neutral site—the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada which usually plays host to the CFL Argonauts. Toronto is, of course, just over 100 miles (or 164 kilometers) from Buffalo so it should be a partisan Bills crowd.

Buffalo Bills vs. Indianapolis Colts
August 15, 4:30 PM Pacific

Now let’s see if you were paying attention this weekend—we said in the writeup that accompanied our winning play on San Francisco over Indy that there’s not be a team in the league that cares less about the preseason than the Colts. That was definitely in evidence against the Niners, who easily covered the spread as a -3’ point read favorite. The Colts are 4-10 straight up and ATS in the last three exhibition campaigns

So this is a play on the Bills, right? I’m not so sure. For one thing, it’s reached a point where the general public has caught on to just how little emphasis the Colts place on the preseason. How else can you explain Indy being more than a FG home underdog against San Francisco last weekend? They’re priced similarly here which is an accurate reflection of the public perception that the Colts don’t care about preseason wins and losses. What it’s likely not an accurate reflection of is just how bad of a team Buffalo is at the moment.

Obviously, the Colts won’t play their starters much here but that didn’t help the Bills last week against the Washington Redskins’ reserves. Donovan McNabb and the Skins’ first team offense played two series and scored one touchdown so in no way was it a case of Washington matching their starters against Buffalo’s backup players. In a ‘backup vs. backup’ matchup Washington won 42-17 with the first team offense contributing only 7 points to that lopsided score. In all fairness, it was a tough spot for the Bills—playing new coaches in their first home game is usually a strong position. Still, Buffalo wasn’t even competitive.

Now they face Indy’s backups who are arguably more talented and certainly better prepared at this stage of the preseason. We’re not going to suggest anything crazy like that Indy will ‘circle’ this game for a big effort, but the ‘international’ setting could produce a marginally better effort. And a marginally better effort from the Colts’ well coached and experienced reserves could be all it takes to get the win here. Last week’s result notwithstanding, the Bills have been a decent preseason underdog (27-23 ATS since 1990). As a favorite, on the other hand, they’ve been downright awful posting an 11-22 record in that same timeframe. We’ll go against the public and take the more experienced and better coached Colts getting more than a field goal.

Bet Indianapolis +3’ over Buffalo