The second week of the NFL 2024 season gets underway in the early hours of Friday morning in the UK as the Thursday Night Football takes us to the AFC East for the clash between the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills.
These two fought it out for the AFC East title last season and although the New York Jets are expected to be more of a factor this term, these two sides have the chance to go two wins clear of the Jets with a win here.
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins weren’t talked about as much as you might have thought going into the season when you consider that they had the leading passer and receiver in their ranks last term. The division is expected to be much more competitive this season and you do have to wonder whether Tua Tagovailoa can stay fit for another full campaign. If he can then Miami certainly have it in them to win this division and host a playoff game.
Miami eventually did the job they were expected to do in the opening week of the campaign. They were favourites to see off the Jacksonville Jaguars and despite falling 14-0 down they were able to turn it around for a 20-17 win. The slow start might have been attributed to the incident with Tyreeq Hill in the lead up to the game but whatever it was, they showed good poise to get back into the game and will hope there is natural improvement in them on both sides of the ball.
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Buffalo Bills
Usually there would be a lot of talk about the Buffalo Bills as a potential Super Bowl winner but those noises were dampened ahead of this season with a couple of key receivers having left the ranks. They do still have Josh Allen pulling the trigger for them though and if he can get a couple of receivers to step up to the mark then they should still be competitive. Whether they can be as good as they have been for the last few seasons remains to be seen though.
Much like their opponents in this match, the Bills had to come from 14 points behind on their own patch in the opening game. They managed to do that, turning a 17-3 deficit to the Arizona Cardinals around and end up winning the game 34-28. Even with the changed offensive personnel, they will be pleased with the output on that side of the ball but the acid test will be whether their defence can step up and control matches a little better than they did against Arizona.
Betting
I’m never one to go hard at the match betting on the Thursday night matches because the short turnaround is always a huge issue and especially this early in the season when teams are still finding out what they are in a competitive environment and naturally looking to make adjustments from what was good in week one and what was bad as well. I’m not going to bet on the match here but I will take a player bet which historically has a very good chance of landing.
If I had to bet I would go with the Bills who seem to have a very good record against the Dolphins and the main reason for that is the passing of Josh Allen. He has 33 passing touchdowns in 12 matches against Miami and only seven interceptions so he picks this Miami defence off at will. He might not have the Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis’ of this world anymore but there are enough receivers for him to run up the yards here. He threw a catch to nine receivers on Sunday and his last five passing yard totals against the Dolphins are 359, 320, 352, 304 and 400. He has a passing line in this one of 234.5 and that looks far too low to me.
Tips
Back J.Allen – over 234.5 passing yards for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betfair
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