We hit the halfway mark of the NFL season this week and Week 9 of the campaign gets underway with two AFC sides meeting in the Thursday Night Football when the Indianapolis Colts play host to the New York Jets.
Both teams head into the contest with losing records so this is a match neither can afford to lose. It isn’t quite season ending if they lose but with both sides probably needing a wildcard to be involved deep into January winning would make life a lot easier.
Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts looked like they were ready to get their season rolling when they had won three out of four matches prior to last week but in the biggest match of their year so far they made a couple of costly errors in overtime to lose to the Tennessee Titans and drop a significant distance behind them in the race for the AFC South title. Since then though they have seen Derrick Henry get ruled out for the remainder of the regular season which gives the Colts hope if they can rebound from last week’s defeat.
The strengths of the Colts this season has been their run defence and that was evident last week when Derrick Henry had one of his lesser effective matches against them. The flip side of that is that their passing defence has been woeful and if that doesn’t improve you sense they won’t achieve their objectives this season. The other issue which will need to be addressed at some point is the quarterback. Carson Wentz keeps falling over himself and there will come a team when the decision is made that he’s holding this team back.
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New York Jets
This is another season that isn’t going anywhere for the New York Jets. They drafted high up and took Zach Wilson with their first round draft pick in the hope that he would be the answer to Sam Darnold. It might be too soon to write him off but the early prognosis is that he isn’t the answer and we saw much of that last week when his replacement Mike White came in and threw for over 400 yards in a shock win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Wilson is out of this match so White will have the chance to prove that he can string consecutive performances together, and if he can do that it might well be that the starting berth is all his. The Jets don’t really cover themselves in glory defensively, especially against the run so you would think they will need to come up with a plan to be better there, but if White can throw the ball like he did last week then there could be some joy for the Jets in that route.
Betting
I can’t say I trust either of these sides with my money on them and especially on a short week. There are deficiencies in both teams which are going to hold them back and you sense the outcome of this match will be determined by the team whose weakness lets them down the most. If I was forced to side with someone on the spread then I would go with the Jets because I just wouldn’t trust Carson Wentz to play an error free match but I’m in no rush to do that.
Instead the bet I like here is for over 45 points. The New York Jets look to have the quarterback and receiving talent to exploit this ordinary Indianapolis Colts pass defence while you have to think the likes of Jonathan Taylor could run riot over this poor Jets run defence so there should be plenty of chances for the offenses to play to their strengths here. I would be amazed if Frank Reich doesn’t take the game out of Wentz’s hands after his overtime meltdown last week and in Taylor they have the ideal man to carry the offense. I’m expecting a higher scoring contest than the bookies and I’ll take over 45 here.
Tips
Back Over 45 points for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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