Wait, The Broncos Are Favored By How Many Points Against The Jaguars?

There are few people who study and obsess over football more than the Las Vegas regulars who make their living gambling on the sport. They’ve watched players and fads come and go, watched teams get better and worse and the game itself slowly evolve over time. They’ve taken bad beats and pulled off last second miracles, but unless they’ve been gambling since 1966, they’ve never seen an NFL game with a point spread like this.

According to ESPN, the Broncos will welcome the winless Jacksonville Jaguars to Denver next Sunday as twenty-eight point favorites. According to ESPN, the last time team to get four touchdowns in an NFL game was the lowly expansion Atlanta Falcons when they played the Baltimore Colts in ’66. The heavy favorites won 19 to 7, which was good for them but not for anyone who bet they would cover.

Most hardcore sports gamblers have a system. They bet the under every time it reaches 51 or 52, or they bet the underdog anytime they’re getting more than two touchdowns. This season, however, the Broncos’ absurdly high powered, Peyton Manning-fueled offense and the Jaguars’ incompetent everything have convinced many hardcore gamblers to abandon their rules. The Broncos have covered the total points over in every single game and won by an average margin of 18 points, while the Jaguars have lost every single week both straight up and against the spread. They couldn’t even bother to lose by less than ten points to the St. Louis Rams this past weekend.

Most casual betters like to wager on the favorite, but it remains to be seen whether many people will be able to stomach giving up 28 points, even if it is to the lowly Jaguars. Since the odds were first announced, the number hasn’t moved a lot either way, which would lead one to believe money is coming in on both sides of the equation. Either way, expect the game to take plenty of action and for the ratings to be pretty good, at least for a game that almost certainly will be a blowout.