Despite Carolina being my favorite team that I have been a fan of for decades I am extremely aware of the fact that they are absolutely terrible. The defense, the 1st round draft pick that is a dead-in-the-water QB, and coaching calls, the frantic passes, the management, just basically about their game is awful except for their kicking but even that is quite average.
I love the Panthers but you gotta know when you are whooped. Carolina is whooped and I started betting against them regardless of the spread 3 games ago. I have won ever single time without putting much thought into it.
When they traveled to Denver, Colorado to face the Broncos, I was a little concerned about what was then a 10 point underdog on the Panthers but I bet anyway. What a bet on the spread means is that since I was betting on Denver to win, not only did they have to win but they would have to win by MORE than 10 points. If they win by exactly 10 points with most bookies and online betting sites this means you lose. Some sites will give you a "push" which just means you don't win or lose anything but you have to bet that money on a single bet the following week.
Anyway, Carolina, predictably, got torched in this game.
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just one of the many TD's by Denver
I was actually kind of impressed with Carolina in the 1st quarter because if you were to watch that and ONLY that quarter and not know anything about either team involved, and outsider might come to the conclusion that the Panthers are actually the better team. This didn't last very long though and as expected, the Panthers started fading fast and gave up 3 TD in the 2nd quarter. It is extremely rare for 3 TD's to be scored by one team in a single quarter simply because there isn't enough time.
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Basically Carolina went brain dead or for them "normal" in the middle part of the entire game. One could argue successfully that Denver let off the gas once the 4th quarter began because at that point they were ahead 28-7 . It is extremely rare for any team to come back from this sort of deficit It is impossible for Carolina to do so, so why put your best players in danger of injury? The Panthers only scored the 2nd TD because of the fact that most teams don't run up the score unless they need to for some reason and Denver basically let them have the TD because it doesn't really matter anymore.
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They let Bryce Young start in this game and honestly, they may as well for the rest of the season just to let the dude get some practice. They have already invested a lot in him, too much I would say, and his 2 interceptions show that he really has no confidence in his game. I'm surprised he didn't throw more picks than that. There were several other very bad passes as well.
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By the time the game started you can see that most people were betting on Carolina to lose, even though these are pretty hefty penalties being placed against betting on who their opponents are. It was 10 point spread when I placed my bet (you are grandfathered in on the site I use) and by the time it hit 12.5 people were still convinced that the Panthers would lose by at least that much as well. My pessimism has been paying off 3 weeks in a row and honestly, I don't know what Carolina could do at this point. They seem to do OK in the first quarter when the other team is still trying to attempt to read how their coaching staff is going to run plays, but normally by the time the 2nd quarter or at the minimum the 2nd half, their opponents and opponent coaches have them figured out. This might be a sign that some or perhaps all of the coaching staff need to go as well. It's hard to say at this point because both the staff and the players are so bad that I really can't figure out where to point the finger.
I plan on betting against Carolina next week vs the New Orleans Saints and in my next post I will detail why you should as well.
I wonder if the team owners are betting against themselves and are they allowed to bet. In other sports if you are caught betting you can face a hefty ban because it brings into the question of match fixing.
Oh if that was discovered to be the case the owners would have their team taken off of them and be forever banned from the sport kind of like they did with Pete Rose in baseball.
Rigging an entire football team would be impossible without someone talking. These players are not the smartest people, they wouldn't be able to keep something like that a secret.
I suppose the only way they would be able to pull it off would be if only the owners, the head coach, and the QB were in on it. Even then though, it would be really tough to pull off undetected. Plus all the team owners are billionaires and likely aren't interested in gambling like that.