Week 4 NFL Picks: Fading Short Road Favourites

It’s been three 2-1 weeks in a row for our NFL picks to start the 2016 season.

If we were playing Proline and parlaying all our picks, that’d be 3 losing tickets and we’d be down $300 risking $100 a bet. Fortunately, we’re playing 1 game at a time by using online sportsbooks, and 6-3 puts us at +$255 for the year.

We’d take another 2-1 week if we can get it, but let’s shoot for the sweep with our Week 4 NFL picks.

(FYI: You can get these weekly free NFL picks emailed directly to your inbox. Just subscribe to our email list at the base of this article.)

1. Buccaneers +3.5 (-115)


Trap line of the week? Maybe. Tampa’s been bad for years and the Broncos are the defending Super Bowl champs off to a 3-0 start, so many will line up to lay just 3 points with Denver on the road.

When you see lines like this that seem too good to be true, they typically are. So you look closer, and you can see why the oddsmakers have been reluctant to give too many points to the home underdog Bucs.

This is a pretty tough spot for Denver. It’s the Broncos’ second straight road game, and they’re coming off a statement win in Cincinnati last week when they were 3-point underdogs. A home game with Atlanta is on deck next week, which may not have seemed like a game to look ahead to at the beginning of the year but you could see how the Denver defence may be looking forward to a test from the high-scoring Falcons more than a non-conference road game against Tampa.

While the Broncos won the Super Bowl last year, this is Tampa’s Super Bowl. The Bucs had a disappointing loss to the Rams last week and absolutely should be totally focused on this game. The NFC South looks pretty open right now with Carolina off to a 1-2 start, but a loss this week would make Tampa 1-3 and put them right behind the 8-ball.

Simply put, this game looks a lot more important to the Bucs than to the Broncos. We’ll take the more desperate team catching more than a field goal on its home field. This line was +3 at most sportsbooks Friday afternoon, but we took advantage of Bodog’s tendency to inflate lines on favourites to grab Tampa +3.5.

2. Jets/Bears 2-Team, 6-Point Teaser (-110)

Seahawks at Jets is another smelly line, isn’t it? Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Jets offence looked absolutely pathetic last week in KC, and now they’re not even catching a full field goal at home to a 2-1 Seattle team that blew out the 49ers last week.

Russell Wilson’s uncertain status is part of this, but this is also a difficult game for the Seahawks – a west coast team travelling all the way to the east coast to play an early kickoff against a non-conference opponent. The Jets are similar to the Bucs this week: coming off a bad loss and hungry to bounce back.

Meanwhile, the Bears face Detroit in a NFC North rivalry game. These contests are almost always hard-fought and its difficult to imagine the Lions blowing out Chicago at Soldier Field. Detroit may win the game, but they never make it look easy.

Both the Jets and Bears are underdogs of around a field goal, so teasing them up 6 points gets us over both the NFL key numbers of 3 and 7. We recommend you make your 2-team, 6-point teasers at Pinnacle or Bodog, since they offer the best odds on those types of teasers.

3. Colts/Jaguars Over 49.5

Two of the worst scoring defences in the NFL collide here, with Jacksonville allowing 28 points per game and the Colts surrendering 31.7. That adds up to 59 for those of you scoring at home, so 49.5 doesn’t look like such a high total anymore.

The Jags offence hasn’t played up to expectations at all this year, but that could change this week against a banged-up Colts secondary. This is a great chance for Blake Bortles to air it out to  his talented receivers like Allen Robinson, Allen Hurns and Julius Thomas.

This game is in London, where there have been quite a few high-scoring games played lately. In fact, 6 of the last 9 games played in Wembley featured more than 49.5 points – including the Jaguars last season, who won a 34-31 shootout against the Bills. We think the winning team in this one scores 30+, and a 30-20 type of game will get the job done here.