NFL Football Betting: Houston Texans at San Diego Chargers
The Houston Texans have high goals entering the 2013 season coming off a 12-4 record in 2012. They didn’t get far in the playoffs due to injuries to starting quarterback Matt Schaub and other key personnel but that might serve as added motivation this year. They’ve got a great opportunity to start the season with a win as they head to Southern California to take on the rebuilding San Diego Chargers. Mike McCoy is the new coach for the Chargers and his top priority will be to help get quarterback Phillip Rivers back to elite level. That might be a tougher task than it sounds-some suggest that Rivers’ may be past his prime. Even if that’s not the case he’s stuck behind a porous line and has a negligable running game to help him out. Making matter worse, the defense isn’t expected to be very good which puts pressure on Rivers to put points on the board.
Houston is in much better shape with a top level quarterback in Matt Schaub and a supporting cast of talented playmakers around him including running back Arian Foster and wide receiver Andre Johnson. The defense is also solid led by J.J. Watt–arguably the best defender in the league. Houston is opening on the road for the first time since 2008 and it’s never easy to lay points on the road in the NFL but ‘on paper’ there’s such a huge disparity in terms of talent. In the longterm the concern about Houston has been their tendency to wear out as the season progresses but clearly that won’t be a problem in the first game of the year.
In theory, we’d like the idea of taking a Monday Night home dog but on a practical level there’s just too much talent on the Houston team. More importantly, it’s a bad tactical matchup for the home team–their rebuilding secondary will likely get torched by Schaub and and his talented receiving corps. J.J. Watt will cause countless headaches for the Chargers’ porous offensive line and Rivers could get off to a bad start. All in all, the Texans are the better team and they should methodically grind out a win/cover.
BET HOUSTON TEXANS -3′ OVER SAN DIEGO CHARGERS