Even with some complaints about the games from the peanut gallery, it’s been a fun weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed the Texans getting a win as the “team coming in with the worst form” and the Ravens & Bills taking care of business to set up an elite matchup for next Sunday night.

I am still hanging on to the second half of a teaser from yesterday, but outside of 2nd halves and last night’s total, it’s been a pretty decent betting weekend. At halftime tonight, we’ll spend a bit more time looking at the early openers for Divisional matchups, but my initial thoughts are that both totals may be a touch too high, and the initial money on the Commanders feels correct.

REAL quick thoughts on the first five games:

Los Angeles 12 - Houston 32 - The Houston defense was the story. Even outside of the big turnovers and scoring plays, they dominated big portions of this game.

Pittsburgh 14 - Baltimore 28 - The Ravens came out and punched them in the mouth and coasted to a fairly easy win in the end. The running game and RPOs were unstoppable in the first half.

Denver 7 - Buffalo 31 - Denver simply didn’t have enough going on offense to keep pace here. When Josh Allen plays as well as he did, even top defenses are going to struggle. Good season for the Broncos, tough draw for the first round.

Green Bay 10 - Philly 22 - Not the best day for the Eagles at all, but a constant stream of turnovers and injuries from the Packers put this one to bed. I was an Eagles -5 backer and can still say that the refs messed up several calls, in my favor. The defensive line looked great, but the rest of the team was iffy.

Washington 23 - Tampa 20 - Clearly the most exciting game of the weekend so far. Jayden Daniels did NOT appear to be rattled by his first playoff game. Tampa’s front seven played well, but it wasn’t quite enough to make up for some miscues on offense.

Vikings at Rams (in Arizona) +2.5 / 47.5

Market

It's a funny one, considering the change in venue. We saw it open at -2/-2.5 and take Rams’ money all the way down to a pk’em at some shops. The game moving from Sofi Stadium to Glendale instead saw that adjusted back up to the current -2.5 with the loss of home field for the Rams. I think it was an overreaction to the Vikings-Lions game and probably another overreaction to the move to Arizona. I have the Rams home-field advantage number right around one point.

The total has been bet up from 47 to 47.5 and seen some resistance when it goes to 48.

Injuries

For the Vikings: LB Patrick Jones II is inactive with his knee injury. Two are listed as questionable: RB Cam Akers (illness) and DL Taki Taimani (ankle).

The Rams have no one with a game designation heading into tonight’s matchup. OT Rob Havenstein was limited in a couple of practices with a shoulder injury this week but is good to go for tonight.

Matchup

As it seems to be with almost every game this postseason, we’ve got a rematch.

Looking back at the first game between these two teams, the biggest thing that stuck out was just how unprepared the Vikes’ defense was for the passing attack from the Rams. Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores did go on record saying they didn’t really think Puka Nacua was actually going to play, but regardless, it was a poor effort and resulted in their second straight loss.

A big difference between that and this is the prep time. While that was a Thursday night game following an important divisional matchup, this one has a little extra time for both teams to game plan and scheme. If this truly is the coach of the year favorite and a defensive coordinator who deserves the job interview requests he’s getting, Minnesota had better look good tonight after six straight quarters of meh.

After watching the Detroit pass rush absolutely rattle and unravel Sam Darnold, I instantly wondered if it would be even worse in the wildcard round with some good edge rushing talent in LA. I think that may be the entire handicap.

Minnesota can and often does get explosive plays that lead to points. It’s what’s made the offense successful. If Darnold is seeing ghosts and missing reads, they simply won’t come, and the Rams may win going away. The answer for KOC seems like it would be to scheme easy stuff for Darnold to get him into a rhythm and then begin to push the ball downfield as needed.

On the other side, Minnesota’s defense, as mentioned earlier, did indeed struggle with these WRs the last time they met. I think the defense has come a long way even since mid-season, but this is a tough ask with McVay, Stafford, Puka, Cooper & a healthy offensive line to defend. I think Flores makes the adjustment to dial back the aggression (at least unless/until the game tilts to a positive game state for him), and we see Stafford forced to cross the road 100 times. Instead of finding single coverage on the outside due to a blitzing safety, he’ll have to feed the slot, TE, & backs more often.

Betting

Cooper Kupp over 5.5 catches -106
TJ Hockenson over 4.5 catches +110

MOCK DRAFT

Just getting my feet wet because the only way to make a good mock draft in April is to make 40 terrible ones on the way there. Teams’ needs will change as we get to the end of the year and free agency comes, but for now, I’m pretty happy with this as a first run.