NFL Football Betting: New England Patriots at Carolina Panthers
After a 2014 Monday Night Football schedule full of mismatches and ho-hum games we’ve got a very good one here. The New England Patriots are 7-2 and looking for their first Super Bowl title since 2005. They’ll head to Charlotte, North Carolina to take on the up and coming Carolina Panthers who are 6-3 and riding a five game winning streak. In addition to being a compelling matchup on the field there are compelling storylines on both sides of the field making this perhaps the most potentially entertaining Monday Night Football game of the season.
The New England Patriots are a tough team to figure. The mainstream sports media spent the first few weeks of the 2014 season bombarding viewers with prattle about ‘what is wrong with the Patriots’. Given the dire urgancy of the talking heads prognostications of impending doom for New England you’d think they were destined for a losing record. That hasn’t been the case. New England does have some issues to deal with–Brady is without his top 5 pass receivers from a year ago–but the Patriots are still a team to be reckoned with. The Pats are just 2-2 SU on the road this year but are a perfect 3-0 as a dog since the start of the 2011 season.
Carolina is a team on the rise. And we’ll admit that we were dead wrong about this team heading into the season. Mike Shula, in particular, was the butt of our ire but he’s made Cam Newton a much better quarterback who can win games with his arm as well as his athleticism. The Panthers’ defense is becoming flat out nasty and rank #1 in the NFL in yards per game, points allowed and a number of other defensive categories.
Not sure that the public realizes how good this Panthers team is. They took advantage of several bad teams during their winning run but may have moved to another qualitative level with their win at San Francisco last week. The hometown fans should be pumped up to be on Monday Night Football and we’d rather invest in the ‘growth stock’ rather than the commodity in decline.
BET CAROLINA PANTHERS -3 OVER NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
BET CAROLINA/NEW ENGLAND UNDER 47
