How the loss of Pat Elflein/Cameron Dantzler affects the Vikings/Colts odds
Joe Johnson
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The Minnesota Vikings are going into week 2 with one of the most pivotal week 2 games in recent memory, as any sort of win will help quell things with both the fanbase and team, but a loss will create nothing but sheer panic amongst the Vikings faithful. The sad reality is that the expectations for these Vikings have shifted monumentally in just one week, as both the national and (some in the) local media went from calling the Vikings contenders for a championship to the team being underdogs against the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts may have a good offensive line, but they lost their starting running back for the season last week and they also lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1, a team that is shedding players like I shed tears writing about the Vikings.
Just what sort of underdogs are they? Let’s take a look!
Whether you’re betting in Iowa, or Betting in Spain, the Vikings’ odds and over/under are as follows:
Money line: Vikings +135 (bet $100, win $135) | Colts -162 (bet $162, win $100)
Against the spread/ATS: Vikings +3 (-110) | Colts -3 (-110)
Over/Under: 48.5 (O: -110, U: -110)
Now, in a typical season the home team gets a three-point bump based on the crowd noise and familiarity that they have. In a typical season. As we saw week 1, there is some sort of noise that could be construed as crowd noise or rather, the type of crowd noise that you’d hear in a Sega Genesis era Madden game.
Whether or not that is helpful is to be determined, but considering the fact that it doesn’t change based on circumstance and is always at 70 decibels… It just seems out of place and strange. Perhaps players like it as they’d rather not play in a completely silent arena (or perhaps head coaches like Mike Zimmer want that noise so we can’t hear them screaming/swearing after flags are thrown), but it just seems like a perpetual reminder of the hell-scape that we live in at this point.
With the news that the Vikings will be down Cameron Dantzler and Pat Elflein Sunday, I’m surprised the odds haven’t shifted since earlier in the week. How depressing is that, though? People are bemoaning the loss of PAT ELFLEIN?
There isn’t a larger pariah on this Vikings roster in the past 12 months than Elflein, who started his career with the Vikings as a center that played relatively well in his first season. Since? He struggled in his second season and then was objectively terrible on the left side of the line after being moved to his more “comfortable” position of guard. Perhaps the move to his college position of right guard will pay off, it certainly appeared to be an improvement over 2019 in week 1. But, the above statement is still a sign of the times and the times, again, are hellish and depressing in almost every sense of the word.
We still can’t leave the house without a mask, people are rioting in the streets to the point that our federal government wanted to use some sort of futuristic heat ray to force them to disband, and the Vikings are on the precipice of topping both of those things if they lose on Sunday.
Let’s hope that they buck the trend of 2020 and surprise those in the betting world, and this author.