Sunday Spreads Vol. 13: Backup Battles

We're getting into a weird portion of the NFL season. With injuries piling up for plenty of teams, as well as the ongoing pandemic, it's been tough for teams to put up fully healthy rosters. In the NFC East alone, we'll be seeing three out of the four teams playing with a backup QB. Here are a few of my favorite picks this week regarding some of these backups, along with how their games will fare against the spread.

1 PM-Cincinnati Bengals at Miami Dolphins: Brandon Allen neither overwhelmed or underwhelmed in his performance against the New York Giants last week, throwing for 136 yards and 1 touchdown in his fourth career start. It's tough to make a good impression when your first start is Week 12. It's even tougher when the shoes you're filling were last worn by Joe Burrow. It's even MORE tough when your offensive line is one of the worst in the league. Basically, Allen's role for the rest of the season is largely to make sure that if he's throwing the ball, it's not ending up in the opponents hands, which he only did once against New York, so yay? Don't look for Allen to do much today, and take the under.

The spread on this one may be tricky. Given Tua's thumb injury, we may be looking at two backup Quarterbacks in this game. Unfortunately, it's going to be a game time decision, so there's no prop listed for any Miami QB's. We've seen some action in favor of Cincy this week on the spread, moving at least a point in the Bengals favor from 11.5 to 10.5. Both teams are very good against the spread this season, with Cincy at 7-4 and Miami at 8-3. 6 of those 7 performances for the Bengals were with Burrow, and Miami is just the better overall team. It's a really tough pick, but I'm going to have to go with the Dolphins on this one.

My Pick: Brandon Allen UNDER 208.5 yards (-110)

ATS: Miami -10.5 (-110)

4 PM on Sunday: New York Giants at Seattle Seahawks

This is a revenge game for the Seattle Seahawks against Colt McCoy for that 6-3 loss way back in 2011, when McCoy was starting for the Browns, and you can't tell me otherwise. Despite not throwing a single touchdown in that game, McCoy threw 12 passes for 178 yards. I expect him to have a similar passing performance when he goes up against the latest Seahawks lineup, who makes that 2011 team look like an FCS school. The Seahawks defense has been steadily improving against the pass, despite having a long way to go. This game could be the turning point for the current media consensus on them, as I see them having no problem picking apart McCoy.

A superior defense will allow Russell Wilson to finally alleviate some of the pressure he's faced when carrying this team through a large chunk of the season, as well as allow Seattle to cover.

My Pick: Coly McCoy UNDER 219.5 yards (-115)

ATS: Seattle -11 (-105)