When you bet on sports, you definitely take home-field advantage into account. In college football betting the home-field advantage can mean 100,000 screaming fans that want your team to win. It can be quite a boost for the home team. With NFL betting home field advantage is also important, but the Buffalo Bills have sold one of their home games each season to the city of Toronto. In the preseason it may not mean much, but when the Bills face-off against the Bears in the regular season in Toronto it could make all of the difference in the world.In their first preseason outing, the Buffalo Bills looked as horrible as the football betting world expected them to look. The Bills have no quarterback, a horrible offensive line, a weak defensive line and a corps of terrible defensive backs. If this were a regular season game then the odds against the Bills would be in the very high double digits.
The Bills did not solve any issues in their first preseason game. Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick got most of the starting action and looked awful against the Redskins. Rookie running back CJ Spiller found out what it was like to run behind an offensive line that cannot block, and he was neutralized by the Redskins defense. All in all, the Chan Gailey-run Buffalo Bills looked as bad as any version of the team from the past 11 years.
The Indianapolis Colts need a little fine-tuning before they can make their Super Bowl run this year. The team looked great in their first preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers; that is until Peyton Manning came out of the game. It became obvious how much of a driving force Manning is in the Colts’ run this season when he came out of the game and the offense and defense fell apart. The Colts had some of their defensive starters in the game throughout the entire first half, and in the second quarter the 49ers scored 20 points.
While it is just preseason, the inability of the second and third strings to perform on offense or defense for the Colts has to be a concern for the coaching staff and Peyton Manning. The 49ers are a better football team this year than last year, but the beating they put to the Colts should be disturbing to Colts fans.
The Colts will get just the medicine they need to repair their broken football team; the Buffalo Bills. Whatever confidence the second and third string teams need they will find against the Bills. The wide receiver patterns that may not have been as precise as Manning would have liked to see can be repaired against the Bills secondary.
As for the Bills, this preseason is quite a test for this team. First the Bills had to line up against the Washington Redskins, and now the Indianapolis Colts. The Bills are just not up to this task. The Colts second string offense will dismantle the Bills first string defense, and the Bills fans will need to endure yet another game that shows how far the team is from having a real starting quarterback.
BSNblog Pick: Indianapolis Colts 35-14
