Las Vegas Raiders at Houston Texans
In week one of the NFL preseason Unders dominated with a record of 12-4.
Yup, 75% of the games came in Under the posted total.
The question is – will the dominance continue this week?
My first handicapping thought is to compare last year’s Week 1 totals to Week Two totals, to see if Week One had an edge for Unders and if so, what happened in Week Two.
What did I find?
The complete opposite of this season.
Last year Overs dominated, 13-3.
Did that continue into week two?
No. The totals evened out in Week Two at 8-8.
But . . . both the Texans and Raiders games were part of the 8 Unders.
I was hoping that I saw a similar dominance by the Unders in Week One last year, followed by more of the same in Week Two.
But that’s what handicapping is – you look at the games from every angle.
Sometimes you come up with gold but most times you come up with nothing of value.
But I wasn’t done yet, after just a one year look back.
I decided to go back one year further.
The 2024/25 Week One preseason mirrored this season, with the Under dominating with the exact same record of 12-4.
Next step, naturally, go to Week Two and see what happened.
What did I find?
The Unders continued to dominate, even more so with a record of 14-2.
Included in those 14 Unders, just like last season, were games by the Texans and Raiders.
Maybe this is an exercise in futility, a case of looking for correlation where none exists.
So let’s look at another angle.
Instead of looking at league-wide stats let’s get team specific.
The Raiders have a new head coach so there’s no preseason history that we can look at there.
But we have some data we can look at for Houston’s head coach DeMeco Ryans.
Ryans was hired in January of 2023, giving us three years of preseason data to look at.
In the ’23/24 preseason Ryan’s Texans were:
2-1 SU
2-1 ATS
0-3 Ov/Un
In the ’24/25 preseason Ryan’s Texans were:
3-1 SU
2-2 ATS
1-3 Ov/Un
(They played in the Hall of Fame game so there were four preseason games instead of the standard three.)
In the ’25/26 preseason Ryan’s Texans were:
2-1 SU
2-1 ATS
0-3 Ov/Un
Total them up, what do we have?
7-3 SU, 70%
6-4 ATS, 60%
1-9 Ov/Un, a 90% Fade
Guess where my money is going tonight.
The game opened at 38 and was bet down to 37′ early in the week. Money has come back in on the Over and right now I see 38 and 38′ across the board.
I doubt it’ll get any higher but you never know with Joe Public – he loves to bet the Over so I might as well wait a little bit longer before jumping on this one.
I’m also taking the team with the 70% SU record over the past three preseasons, who for some reason is actually getting points from a team who was only the Fav in three games last season and lost two of the three SU.
And looking at the Raiders schedule this season I believe they’ll be the favorite in fewer games this year than the three they were favored in last season.
I’m currently residing in Vegas and there’s a definite buzz going into the season, fans have high expectations. They’re excited about picking up Mendoza as their QB but he’s not going to be playing, he’ll be on the bench watching Cousins.
I don’t expect the local fans misery level to match last year’s depression during the course of a season that ended at 3-14, but I don’t see as much improvement as the locals are hoping for.
My play:
LV/Hou Un (wait to buy)
Hou +1 (buy this one fast, the line’s starting to move)
Recap: 1-0
Record: 1-1
Review:
Lost my first pick of the season on that last second TD by Carolina. Followed that up with a Push on the total in the Az/LV game (you don’t see it on my record because I don’t chart pushes, I have enough stats to track as it is without adding unnecessary crap to it.)
Got back to even with a win using Buffalo last week.
