Of the four wild card games over the weekend, there was only one blowout. The Baltimore Ravens (-3.5) went into Kansas City and hammered the Chiefs by a score of 30-7. The other three games were all decided by five points or less.

At Bodog Sportsbook, a large majority of our players were all over the Ravens, and for good reason. Baltimore finished the regular season with a 12-4 record and took on a Chiefs team that, to its credit, won 10 games in the regular season, but to its detriment only beat one playoff team along the way, the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks. With that in mind, I wasn’t at all surprised the way the betting went. In fact, we often find ourselves rooting for home underdogs. It just didn’t go our way this time around.

The Ravens were one of three teams to win on the road last weekend. The Jets (+3) defeated the Colts, 17-16, in Indianapolis and the Packers (+3) went into Philadelphia and knocked off the Eagles., 21-16. The Jets-Colts decision was a good one for the book while the Packers-Eagles game went the players’ way. The book came out on top in both games so far as betting on the total went, with the under hitting in each contest.

Oddly enough, the one road team that was supposed to walk all over its host ended up losing its wild card game. The New Orleans Saints (-11) were huge favorites in Seattle on Saturday but fell 41-36 to the Seahawks in one of the biggest postseason upsets in history. While the early action was on the Saints, the betting ended up fairly balanced by kickoff. I think the fact the Saints had injury issues at running back convinced a lot of our players to back the huge home underdog.   

I assume those same injury concerns for the Saints also led our prop players to bet big on Drew Brees to pass for more than 299.5 yards. Brees ended up with 404 yards through the air as New Orleans was forced to throw and throw often after falling behind by two touchdowns in the third quarter.

Looking ahead, I’ll be very curious to see how our players treat Seattle in its divisional match-up with the Bears (-10) in Chicago. In Week 6, the Seahawks beat the Bears, 23-20, at Soldier Field. That said, Seattle was just 2-6 on the road in the regular season, struggling without the noisy help of the Qwest Field faithful. 

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