NFL betting tips: Humiliation is a good thing!

There are good spots to utilize this angle during the regular season when everything goes wrong for a team on the road and then they come home the next week. Part of the reason for the improved play is that a club can feel humiliated in that ugly loss and have a chip on their shoulder the next week. Many professional athletes, though not all, have pride and it’s not a good thing when the team and city you represent gets blasted. Many coaches and players want to erase that embarrassing performance and they can’t wait to get the practice field to redeem themselves. 

The Seattle Seahawks went through this in September.  In Week 2 Seattle got blown out at Pittsburgh, 24-0, then came home the next week and topped Arizona, 13-10. There was plenty of emotion as it was the first home game for new QB Tavaris Jackson. The Seahawks managed to pull a disappearing act on star WR Larry Fitzgerald, who tortured them in the past, holdling him to 64 yards on 5 carries. Note that Seattle has won eight of the last nine home openers.  

The Cincinnati Bengals experienced this twice in one season. At the end of November, the Bengals were flattened by Jacksonville, Tennessee and Cleveland. Two of those games were on the road and in the latter two contests, Cincy lost 20-7 to the Titans and 18-0 at Cleveland. The next week, the Bengals came home to play the underachieving Buccaneers. Tampa Bay was no offensive dynamo, but with Cincinnati scoring only 7 points in two weeks, the NFL odds maker was forced to make the Bengals a 6-point home dog, figuring Tampa Bay would win the game something like 10-3. As it turned out, the Bengals nearly won the game, losing 16-13 in overtime but easily got the cover as a home dog. 

Three weeks later the Bengals were shut out again, 16-0, at Baltimore. Cincy fit the “humiliation bounce-back model” after that loss as an 8-point home dog to Pittsburgh. Cincinnati played with passion and pride in front of the home fans in a 26-23 upset of the Steelers.

When a team plays poorly and gets whipped on the road, you have a better chance of getting a soft number from the oddsmaker the next week, as well. The general public is inclined to shy away from the team off a bad game, as that performance is still fresh in their mind. Another factor, of course, is that the game is home. Most fans don’t “boo” their team in the opening moments of a game, even when they’re coming off an embarrassing loss. So with redemption a possibility, it’s often more likely that athletes will play extra-hard in front of the easily-forgiving home fans, especially when those home fans are paying $75-150 per ticket!

This happened three times in Week 2 of this season. If you recall in Week 1 the Giants, Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers were all routed on the road in the openers, then came back home and won and covered in Week 2. The Giants lost 28-14 at Washington, only to spank the Rams 28-16 in Week 2. The Falcons laid an egg in Chicago in the opener, losing 30-12 as favorites, but bounced back as a home dog in Week 2, beating the Eagles 35-31. Home field, and redemption, were huge motivating factors.

"We got beat into submission," Pittsburgh linebacker James Farrior said after the Week 1 beating at Baltimore. But they got some angry payback in shutting out Seattle, 24-0, covering as 14-point chalk.

We saw this in one recent season when the Tennessee Titans were a 3-point road favorite at Minnesota and were humiliated in a 42-24 loss. The Titans came home the next week and as a 3-point home underdog, beat playoff-bound Green Bay 26-20. 

When Mike Holmgren was coach at Seattle he had two opportunities to fire up the troops before a home game. The Seahawks were routed 38-14 at Oakland and 27-14 at Washington as a favorite. Each time, Seattle came home and won big, upsetting Jacksonville 24-15 and Oakland 34-27. The last game was a double-revenge situation, as the Raiders had smashed Seattle earlier in the year. 

So keep track of teams that lose by more than 13 points on the road. If they’re coming home the next week, they may be fired up and worth a play.