Monday Night Football is here and there is a big game on tap for tonight! The New England Patriots travel to Miami to take on the Dolphins in this AFC East game. The opening line for this game was set at a pick and has since been bet up to Miami -1. The over under for this game opened at 46.5 and has since been bet up to 48 at most books. I am going to break down what I like about the total in this game.
The Patriots come into this game off an 8 point victory over the Bills. The Patriots did score 38 points in that game but they also allowed 30 to a Bills team that is in the bottom of the league in every category just about. Well if you look at the box score you see that one of the Bills touchdowns came from a 95 yard kickoff return. So in all reality the Defense from New England only allowed 23 points last week the special teams gave up those other 7. I also see that Buffalo scored 9 points from field goals. This is telling me that the Patriots defense was able to make big stops against Buffalo to prevent them from anymore touchdowns and allow them to just settle for field goals. This will be the Patriots second road game on the season. The first one was in week 2 when they traveled to NY to take on the Jets in a game they lost 28-14. The struggles look like they are going to continue for the Patriots on the road. They scored only 14 and dating back to last year they only averaged 22 points per game on the road. They were only 2-6 on the road last year straight up and they only saw 2 of their 8 road games go over the posted total.
The Miami Dolphins come into this game off a tough lose to the Jets at home last week. The final score of that game was NY 31 Miami 23. After starting the season 2-0 and only allowing 10 points per game the first two weeks their defense took a step back and allowed 31 to the Jets. Miami really let up their defensive guard in that game and allowed the Jets to push them all over the field giving up big plays to the Jets. Miami’s offense put up 23 points last week against a tough Jets defense but the weeks before that they only scored 14 and 15 points on the Vikings and Bills. In the Vikings game they got a touchdown from their defense also. So the offense really broke open last week for the Dolphins. It was the passing offense though and not the run offense that they would like to have going.
Looking at this over under and seeing that it opened at 46.5 and has since been bet up to 48 I feel that the public believes that these two teams will score points because of all the big play makers on these two teams. Well I do not like the public’s decision on this game this week. The Patriots know they have to step up their defense so their offense does not have to carry them throughout the season. The Dolphins know they cannot give up another week of huge points at home considering they are only averaging 17 points per game this year. If they want to compete in this game their defense is going to have to stop Brady and his offensive weapons. Well how do you stop Brady? You have to keep him off the field. So I think we see the Dolphins really try and push their run game tonight to keep the Patriots high octane offense off the field. The last 10 times these teams have met and the total have only been set higher then 45, 4 times. Three of those four games have gone under the posted total. I really believe we a see a hard close fought game by both defenses and this game should end up somewhere in the range of 23-21 or 23-20. I am playing the under 48 for 1 unit.
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