A week of fairly one-sided matches in the NFL concludes with the Monday Night Football, which this week takes us to Lumen Field as the Seattle Sounders host the New Orleans Saints which is a clash of two sides who might already be fighting for wildcard places this term.
Both teams are in divisions with runaway leaders and with the Seahawks heading in with a 2-4 record and the Saints 3-2 for their season the division titles for both might be away and gone already. That makes this a huge game.
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are enduring potentially their worst season since Russell Wilson was drafted into their franchise. One of the reasons for that, and indeed the main reason, is the fact that Wilson has missed the last couple of games through injury and while the team hasn’t crashed as a result, they don’t strike anything like as much fear into the opposition as they do when Wilson is taking control of the offense.
That isn’t a slant on Geno Smith, Wilson’s replacement, it is more a pointer in how the Seahawks #3 is one of the best players in the league. The other issue which has dogged the Seahawks this season has been their defence. It is coughing up almost 450 yards per game and that is clearly something that can’t continue if Seattle want to extend their run of winning seasons. After going 2-0 to start the season, Seattle have now lost four of their last five matches with the win in that run being against the 49ers who lost their starting quarterback early in that contest.
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New Orleans Saints
This was always going to be a tougher season for the New Orleans Saints after the retirement of Drew Brees, and although they would have been edging towards the future even towards the end of his time in Louisiana, he was such a constant for so long that the transition after him was always going to be a long process. Jameis Winston has come in but he has had to modify his gunslinger mentality. There are signs that he is warming to the task, which is a positive for the Saints.
New Orleans laid what they hoped would be a marker down for the season in the opening week when they slaughtered the Green Bay Packers but they are only 2-2 for their season since then, suffering what look like poor losses to the Carolina Panthers and the New York Giants. They should go in here pretty refreshed though having had their bye week last week. In the main the Saints are offering a fair bit on defence but their two wins since the opening game have been against the New England Patriots and Washington Football Team so they could be looking for a statement win.
Betting
I’m not really sure what to make of either of these two sides so I’m going to hedge my bets when it comes to betting on the match outcome here. I had three winners on Sunday so I’m not looking to go too mad on a match which could easily go either way anyway, but I will take one bet which I think looks pretty good and that is the receiving yards of Tyler Lockett, who might be the go to man for Geno Smith in this contest.
I say that because Marshon Lattimore is becoming one of the better shutdown corners in the league and he is likely to spend all night tracking the moves of DK Metcalf which may mean Smith needs to look elsewhere in the passing game. Seattle aren’t running the ball fantastically well so I do think they’ll spend much of the evening passing, even more so if they fall behind. Lockett opened the season with two 100+ receiving yards games but since then has only caught 15 passes in four matches and not produced more than 53 yards in a single game. They need to get him more involved in the offense again and with Metcalf potentially being shutdown, or certainly covered by one of the best corners in the league, this feels like a good chance for Lockett to take centre stage again. His receiving line is at 45.5 so we’re probably only going to need him to catch a maximum of four passes for this line to be covered and given the targets he should be receiving I like the over here.
Tips
Back T.Lockett – Over 45.5 receiving yards for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Betfair
Back him here:
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