LAS VEGAS -- Sunday's early NFL games fell into two categories: blowouts or games that came down to the wire and were decided by 1 or 2 points.
We've seen a lot of games this year with big comebacks -- except, it seems, in games when the team I'm backing is trailing (but that's a column for another day).
Indianapolis thoroughly dominated Cincinnati 27-0 as a 3.5-point home favorite; Green Bay routed Carolina 38-17 as a 6.5-point home favorite; Baltimore blew out Atlanta 29-7 as a 6.5-point home favorite; Miami jumped out to 14-0 lead over Chicago and coasted to a 27-14 win as a 3-point road underdog; and even Jacksonville pulled away 24-6 over Cleveland as a 4.5-point home 'dog.
The big upset of the day was St. Louis -- with the help of special-teams trickery -- holding off defending champ Seattle 28-26 after closing as a consensus 7-point home underdog and plus-260 on the money line. Although the Seahawks' comeback came up short, Detroit, Buffalo and Washington all rallied for victories, but all three failed to cover as home favorites.
The late afternoon and night games followed the trend as Dallas and Arizona covered in relatively easy victories while Kansas City outlasted San Diego 23-20 as a 3-point road dog in the only barn burner the rest of the day. Denver routed San Francisco 42-17 as a 6.5-point favorite in the nightcap.
Let's see how all this affected the lines for next weekend, including how the blowouts tend to cause the oddsmakers to adjust their lines more but close games usually keep things closer to the status quo.
Off-the-board report
The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook posts its NFL openers at 4:30 p.m. PT each Sunday. This is the section where we will note which games are off the board because of injuries (note: The SuperBook usually posts the games involving the teams involved in Sunday and Monday night games, although most books hold off on those), but this week they posted lines for all 15 games.
Early Week 8 line moves
Here are the openers from the Westgate SuperBook. We'll look at how we got to those numbers, including a look at the advance lines for Week 8 that were put up Tuesday, Oct. 14, where the offshore openers might have differed and how the lines moved in early betting Sunday afternoon. Although the biggest part of winning at football is picking winners, it's just as important to be able to read the market and know when to place your wager to get the best number, so we'll try to point out which numbers are most likely to move during the week.
Thursday: Chargers at Broncos (-7): The Westgate advance line last week was Denver minus-6.5 and was reopened at minus-7 after San Diego lost 23-20 to Kansas City. With the Broncos blowing out the 49ers 42-17 on national TV Sunday night, that pretty much guarantees we won't see that 6.5 again. In fact, as more books were putting the line up Monday morning, 7.5 was looking more likely.