Las Vegas Raiders at New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, Sunday 1:00 p.m. local. The Patriots are laying 3.5, and I'm paying for it.
The Raiders are 3-1 with a plus-31 point differential. The Patriots are 2-2 and have been outscored by 12 on the season. So the trendy side writes itself: take the team with the better record and the points.
Now look at what actually produced those records. Las Vegas beat Miami 27-13, won at the Chargers 26-14, won at New Orleans 35-27, then lost at home to Kansas City 27-30. New England lost at Seattle 10-13, beat Pittsburgh 20-3, got buried at Jacksonville 6-35, then won at Buffalo 29-26.
One of those résumés contains a road win over the Bills. The other contains three wins and nothing you'd circle. I'll take the first, and I'll take it at home.
That minus-12 sitting next to New England's name is doing almost all of its work in a single afternoon in Jacksonville. Strip out the 6-35 and you're looking at a team that lost by a field goal in Seattle and beat Buffalo on the road. The two losses were both away from Gillette. This one isn't.
Here's the part the record-chasers skip. Las Vegas's two road wins came at Los Angeles and at New Orleans, trips that keep a West Coast roster on something close to its own body clock. Sunday is a 1:00 p.m. kick in Foxborough, which is 10:00 a.m. back in Las Vegas. The Raiders have been a genuinely good road team this year. They haven't yet been a good team on Eastern time.
The price agrees with me more than the standings do. New England is -198 to win outright, Las Vegas +164, per ESPN, captured Monday Oct 5. A 3.5-point spread attached to a moneyline that short tells you the market sees a real gap between these teams and is only padding the number to buy back the hook. That line is also six days old by kickoff. If it has climbed past 3.5 by Sunday, the value in our position is already gone, and you should know that before you bet it.
The total is 44.5 and our call is over. The case is simple arithmetic you can do yourself: the Raiders have scored 115 points in four games and allowed 84. Whatever else is true about Las Vegas, they have been in a shootout most weeks. New England's 29 in Buffalo says the Patriots can hold up their end.
One more thing that keeps nagging. The Raiders' single loss is a home game against Kansas City that they lost by a field goal, 27-30. Good teams lose those. But it's also the only time this season Las Vegas has faced an opponent that had any idea what it was doing, and they came up short in their own building.
Our published call: Raiders 20, Patriots 24, over 44.5, best bet Patriots -3.5.
The thing most likely to break it isn't the Raiders' defense or the travel. It's the New England offense that put up 6 points in Jacksonville. If that unit shows up at Gillette, the cover dies, the over dies, and the 3-1 record everybody's chasing turns out to have been the right read all along.
I don't think it shows up twice in the same month. Lay the 3.5. The standings say Raiders. The résumé says Patriots, and the résumé is the thing that travels.
— The Contrarian
