NFL Preseason Betting Free Picks: Washington Redskins at New York Jets

Added on Aug 26, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Week Three of the NFL preseason continues on Friday night with four games, and in this post we’ll look at the New York Jets as they take on the Washington Redskins. Skins are 1-1 SU/ATS in the 2010 preseason with a pair of very disparate results. They routed Buffalo 42-17 in their opening game, but were on the wrong side of a lopsided score in their second outing as Baltimore manhandled them 23-3. The Jets were beaten by the New York Giants in Week 1 but recovered to top Carolina 9-3 in their second game.

Washington Redskins at New York Jets
August 27 4:00 PM Pacific

While the trends point to the Skins in this game (Washington is on a 6-1 ATS run in Week 3 of the preseason) we’re not really interested in either side. Washington’s offense didn’t look like much against Baltimore last week, and even if Donovan McNabb plays in this game (every indication is he won’t) we’re not expecting a significantly better showing. McNabb is at his worst against a 3-4 defense, and the Jets should give him a lot of these looks in the ‘dress rehearsal’ game for the regular season. The more likely scenario is that Rex Grossman will get the start, and although he’s looked good so far in the exhibition campaign we don’t have enough confidence in him to back the Redskins with McNabb out of action.

Even though we don’t expect much out of the Redskins’ offense in this game, we’re not anxious to back the Jets either. Rex Ryan has turned the usual preseason management strategy on its head—he played the starters for most of the first half in the opening game against the Giants but they saw much less action against Carolina. There are indications they won’t play much against Washington either—Ryan has already stated that the starting secondary will play very little. While in theory this should be good news for the Redskins and McNabb, the by-product will likely be a more aggressive pass rush which is a stronger phase of the Jets’ game anyway.

The Jets’ first string offense may see a bit more action, but don’t expect them to play much more than a quarter. Even so, they looked awful against Carolina. Sanchez went 5-of-10 for 12 yards in the loss. The Jets offensive line also allowed five sacks in the contest, and if they can’t protect their quarterback again this week Sanchez may get the hook early. The Jets have a serviceable group of quarterbacks behind Sanchez—Kellen Clemens in particular—but none that will light up the scoreboard.

With a pair of decent defenses facing struggling offenses—and with McNabb likely out—this should be a low scoring game and we’ll play it accordingly.

Bet Washington/New York Jets Under 34’