Month: October 2024

No NFL team has been more profitable at the sportsbook than the Detroit Lions over the past three seasons.

Under fiery head coach Dan Campbell, Detroit has gone from loveable underdog to Super Bowl contender, boasting a 37-17 ATS record since 2021 (68.5%). And while the Lions keep covering, their place in the betting market is mutating.

Detroit was a point-spread favorite only five times in Campbell’s first two seasons but 2023 saw a shift in expectations, as Detroit gave points in 16 of its 20 total games (including playoffs).

The bar is set even higher in 2024, with the Lions near the top of the futures odds. Can they move forward after last year’s excruciating NFC Championship collapse, or has Motown missed its window?

Here’s…

After five straight divisional matchups featured in Thursday Night Football odds, Week 7 offers a bit of a downshift with the Denver Broncos visiting the New Orleans Saints.

In addition to an inter-conference matchup, both teams will be trotting out rookie QBs — and the opening total was an action-inspiring 38.5.

Check back for the latest Week 7 odds for this matchup, plus TNF player props and the full TNF schedule.

Thursday Night Football odds

Broncos vs Saints opening odds

• Point spread: Denver +2.5 | New Orleans -2.5 
• Moneyline: Denver +114 | New Orleans -134
• Total: Over 38.5 | Under 38.5

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The six-month mark came and went with hardly any notice, but it did come and go. It’s now been more than half a year since Rudy Gobert, days after jokingly touching all the microphones at a press conference, tested positive for COVID-19 and effectively shut down the sports world. If you’d said then that six months later, we’d be watching the tail end of reorganized NBA and NHL playoffs, the stretch run of a truncated baseball season, and the NFL kicking off in mostly empty stadiums, it would have been believable. Put sports on pause, get the virus under control, and pick things back up with some extra precautions in place to guard against a second wave of outbreaks. Except, we never got the virus under control. The last day with fewer than 20,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the Unit…

Steve Holland (assistant manager)
The 51-year-old became Gareth Southgate’s full-time assistant in 2017 having initially worked with him at Under-21 level and after a coaching career that saw him manage Crewe before progressing through the ranks at Chelsea, starting off the reserves and going on to work at first-team level under André-Villas Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafael Benítez, José Mourinho, Guus Hiddink and Antonio Conte. Holland leads England’s tactical drills and is widely recognised as one of the smartest coaches in the country. Cesc Fàbregas, who was with Holland at Stamford Bridge, said: “Steve’s meticulous brain is England’s secret weapon.”

Graeme Jones (assistant coach)
The former Doncaster Rovers striker joi…

As Barcelona’s players came back out of the dressing room, along the corridor and turned left, heading down the stairs past the chapel presided over by the virgin of Montserrat, there was clapping and the usual shouts. A “come on” here, a “let’s go” there, a “do it, team”. And then, just before the last of them ducked into the light, 77,987 people waiting on the other side for the second half to start, a voice said something none of them would say publicly: “Today is the league, eh!”

It was half-time on Sunday and in the season – 19 games gone, 18 and-a-half to go – and they still hadn’t found a way past the Sevilla keeper, Yassine “Bono” Bounou, and they knew what this meant. By the time they returned, 45 minut…

John Textor is considering ­giving Everton fans the chance to buy shares in the club if he succeeds in his £600m bid to take control from Farhad Moshiri. The American businessman is preparing to float on the New York Stock Exchange his ­holding company Eagle Football Group which owns Lyon, Botafogo in Brazil and the ­Belgian club RWD Molenbeek and has a 45% stake in Crystal Palace. Sources close to Textor said Everton could be taken public at a later date.

Textor is understood to be confi­dent that an agreement with Moshiri over buying Everton can be reached within four weeks after he was granted exclusive negotiating rights last month. The 58-year-old has yet to sell his Palace stake, however, so approval from the Premier League could …

We’ve reached Memorial Day, the first real milestone of the MLB season. The first seven weeks or so don’t decide who makes the playoffs, but it gives us a pretty good barometer. But which (at least somewhat surprising) starts are here to stay? Texas Rangers (31-18, 1st in AL West) source: AP The Rangers spent heavily in free agency this offseason and it looks like it’s working out for them. They currently lead the AL West and have one of the best offenses in baseball. They’re top three in average, OBP, slugging, and OPS. Everyone in their rotation has either met or exceeded expectations, including Jacob DeGrom who met the expectation that he would be injured before long. I’m guessing their stay at the top of the division will be short-lived because I’ve come to accept the th…

We’re through the first round of group stage games in the 2019 Copa América, and there’s really only one thing we know for sure: this tournament is total ass. The first six matches have been plagued by blowouts, VAR nonsense, and all the usual CONMEBOL-flavored bullshit. This isn’t a bug, but rather a feature; Copa América always has some of the worst talent disparities of any major tournament (not counting the Gold Cup here, which is its own nightmare), and there’s a reason South American matches are, ahem, renowned for their choppiness: players don’t hold back on the crunching tackles, and referees are more than willing to let them do it. Perhaps the best example of this stilted tournament so far was its second match. Venezuela and Peru are both in the mid-tier of South Ame…