Teaser of the Week – Can the Bengals and Steelers Win For Us?

We’re going to use a four-team, 6.5-point NFL teaser at TopBet.eu, which offers a price of +200 (2/1) for this particular exotic wager to come through a winner. So let’s take a look at the teams we’ll use in the late NFL games on Sunday, as well as the Monday night contest:

The Cincinnati Bengals play host to the New York Jets on Sunday, and the first thing you think about is how good Geno Smith has been, for a rookie anyway. Okay, that’s NOT the first thing you think about? Admittedly, Smith has had an up-and-down year. The “ups” haven’t been too bad, as he has brought this team to four wins by a total of 13 points, which means that he is performing reasonably well in close games. Then again, he’s thrown eleven interceptions, lost three fumbles and been sacked 25 times.

The Jets were able to rediscover the “ground and pound” that Rex Ryan prefers last week against the New England Patriots, as they ran for 177 yards, including 104 from Chris Ivory. But they took advantage of a little “softness” in the guts of the New England defense, which was missing some defensive linemen, not to mention linebacker Jarod Mayo. We don’t know if they are going to find those kinds of openings this week against Cincinnati. And it has been difficult for New York to put strong efforts back-to-back. The Bengals are on a three-game winning streak and not looking to bad right now. Giovani Bernard is becoming more a part of the offense, and we’re relatively certain they won’t let the Jets keep the ball for 49 minutes as they did last week.

At Top Bet the Bengals are a 6.5-point favorite; now we tease it down and make it a pick’em. All they’ll have to do is win the game for us straight-up.

The Steelers got off the schneid a couple of weeks ago against the Jets, and now they’re getting greedy. They have posted a win over the defending champion Ravens and with some winnable games coming up, they can conceivably get back into the NFL’s wild card race. We don’t know if it’s a coincidence that this has come about after the team’s bye week. But the running game has come alive; they had 141 yards against Baltimore, and rookie Le’Veon Bell led the way with 93. We’re not all that sure they can accomplish that against Oakland, but Ben Roethlisberger should have a little success against this secondary, which has three interceptions in six games and gives up 72% completions.

As for Oakland’s quarterback, well, we can just imagine Pittsburgh’s defensive coordinator, Dick LeBeau, coming up with a few things to confuse the hell out of Terrelle Pryor, who is more or less a rookie at the position. Sure, the Steelers have not been able to score that much in the red zone, but they may not have to. With Pittsburgh a three-point favorite, we will tease this one unavoidably over the “zero line” and get the Men of Steel at +3.5.

The Minnesota Vikings will have a third different starting quarterback in three weeks (Christian Ponder) when they take the field against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night. Josh Freeman’s start was regrettable, and yes, he was unprepared, but with all due respect to the Vikes’ coaching staff, they just wanted to get a barometer as to where he was at. They are taking a lot of heat for putting him in there before he was ready, but maybe the media is overdoing it a bit. What happens for NFL bettors is that this can create some value, as the public soaks in all these reviews about how horrible the Minnesota offense is.

Well, no offense can be THAT horrible when it has Adrian Peterson in the backfield. And even though Peterson was held to 28 yards on 13 carries against the Giants last Monday night, he has played incredibly well when facing the Packers. In fact, Peterson’s yard-per-carry average against Green Bay is 5.6, and last year he gained 508 yards in the three meetings these teams had. By the way, the last time these clubs met there was yet another quarterback at the controls for Minnesota. He will be in a Viking uniform on Sunday night, but Joe Webb will be seen mostly on special teams. The Vikings are grabbing 9.5 points in the pro football betting odds at Top Bet, and under the rules of our NFL teaser, that number will go to +15. If they can’t deliver in this part of our exotic wager, we recommend that Leslie Frazier be fired.

We recommend it anyway. He really shouldn’t have put Freeman in like that.

Winding things up, we’ve got the Seattle Seahawks, who after losing to Indianapolis have gotten back on track with wins over Tennessee and Arizona, playing host to the St. Louis Rams, who were deflated a little last week when Sam Bradford (14 TD’s, four INT’s) was lost for the season with a knee injury. Kellen Clemens, a long-time backup, takes over this week, and that does not inspire anyone but the Seattle defenders, who know that things are about to get easier.

The Seahawks will unquestionably stack the line in order to eliminate the St. Louis running game, which has shown a bit of life with Vanderbilt grad Zac Stacy. They’ll dare Clemens to defeat them with his arm. And he won’t. Jeff Fisher’s team played Seattle tough twice last season, so they won’t be completely overlooked. The Seahawks are always motivated to blow teams out at home. So we can feel somewhat secure in teasing this number down. Top Bet has the Seahawks as an 11.5-point favorite; we will bring it down to -5 and expect to have a winner.

To sum up, let’s show you the four components of this week’s NFL teaser, which is a rather unorthodox one:

Cincinnati pick’em
Pittsburgh +3.5
Minnesota +15
Seattle -5

We’ll see you in the winner’s circle.

You can bet teasers, parlays and other interesting exotic wagers in football and basketball at www.TopBet.eu!