NFL 2020/21

The season began officially on Thursday with the defending Champions the Kansas City Chiefs victorious over the Houston Texans. The main bulk of the games are tonight, with my Raiders playing their first game out of Las Vegas, following their move from Oakland. The initial opposition are the Carolina Panthers, who have a new head coach and a new offensive coordinator, but who still have their star player in Christian McCaffrey. Plenty of new faces for the Raiders as well and given their tough early schedule, they could really do with a win tonight.

KC are favourites to repeat last season's triumph with San Francisco, Baltimore and New Orleans expected to be 3 of their main challengers. Prior to the draft backed the Raiders at 110 on the exchanges and they are now a top price of 85. Also backed QB Derek Carr, to be the season MVP at 80's and he certainly has the best group of wide receivers in a while at his disposal.

Limited crowds are allowed in a small number of stadiums, but Las Vegas have already announced they will play the season in an empty stadium.

Gone with a few fancy scorecasts in the raider game and also gone on the bigger winning margins for Las Vegas. Ex Raider Seth Roberts is 50's to be the first Touchdown scorer and he is certainly capable of finding the endzone. For the " silver and black " Alec Ingold is also 50's to score first and is 12's to score at any time. Probably worse 12/1 shots out there than the latter.

Back to the season long bets, also went with 2 more Raiders to be MVP, in the shape of Josh Jacobs at 140 and Darren Waller at 190

I lost all my TD scorer bets on Sunday, but have a couple of our rights for the season

Bears to win NFC North £50 @ 5.0
Bears to win the NFC £20 @ 23.0 (was restricted on this as wanted £50 again, might try to top up elsewhere)
Bears to go 16-0 £5 free bet @ 601

Then for the superbowl

Tampa Bay £50 @ 19
Bears £50 @ 71

Week Five and the 2 win Raiders take on the reigning champs and currently unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs. KC are 10 point FAV's on the handicap, but this touched 13 in midweek, so the line is moving in favour of Vegas. As they are not expected to win the first touchdown prices are a bit more than they should be for Raider players, so gone with 4 different Raiders to score first and as with an above post gone with Alec Ingold to score anytime at a very big price -

NELSON AGHOLOR at 20's
ZAY JONES at 25's
DEREK CARR at 100's
ALEC INGOLD - 100/1 for first TD scorer and 33's to score at anytime.

24 - 24 at half time. Forgot to mention that it is the live game on SKY 407

Did one of your bets Punt, with Nelson Agholor to score two or more touchdowns. He currently has one and looks likely to get more opportunities.

40 - 32 Raiders. Did not get my bets up, but don't really care.

Super Bowl LV is about to kick off and its the defending champs the Kansas City Chiefs going against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. My Raiders played both in consecutive games and as stated above they beat the Chiefs in KC, before losing the return in Vegas. Their match with the Bucs was more one sided with TB winning 45-20.

For the first time ever we have a superbowl with a true " home " side with the game being played in Tampa's Raymond James stadium. Personally cannot split the teams, but if I had to make a pick it would be the Chiefs. I feel that Kansas will take what the Bucs defence gives them and so whilst there may not be the big plays the chiefs are famous for, I can see them controlling the clock.

TB have Tom Brady at quarterback and he of course has 6 superbowl rings form his time in New England. Do see him putting up good numbers, but not sure it gets them over the line.

FIRST TOUCHDOWN SCORER

Damian Williams ( Chiefs ) at 12's
Patrick Mahommes ( Chiefs ) at 16's
Antonio Brown ( Bucs ) at 16's
Rob Gronkowski ( Bucs ) at 18's

In my haste I forgot to mention Sarah Thomas who is the first female to officiate in a Superbowl. She is acting as the Down Judge, so will have responsibility for the line of scrimmage. She will be very visible as you can see her at the top of the screen on every offensive play looking down the line.

Rob Gronkowski with the first TD at 18's. Managed to get the first scorer in last year's Superbowl and doubled down with the same bets for the 2nd scorer, who again obliged, so going with the same guys again for tonight's 2nd TD scorer.

" Gronk " with the 2nd Touchdown as well. Same bets again for the 3rd TD.

Antonio Brown with the 3rd TD right on half time. Tampa in front 21 - 6 and hopefully can get the 4th TD scorer as well. KC self destructing with 8 penalties ( all costly and for 95 yards in total ) and on that last drive they actually called 2 time outs on defense ( hoping to get the ball back with time to score themselves ) which gave Tampa enough time to score.

The Chiefs will have the first possession in the 2nd half and can score points quickly, but the Bucs have managed to take the big plays away from them and KC's Quarterback Patrick Mahomes is going to have to make deeper and riskier throws into double / triple coverage ( multiple defenders around the targeted receiver ) as not sure time consuming drives will be enough as do see Tampa scoring more points.

Did spot that there were some interesting bets flying around that had massive potential payouts. William Hill ( US ) took two different bets -- one the Chiefs to score just four points and one on the Buccaneers to score just four points - at odds for each of 999900. It's unusual enough to see a safety ( 2 points if an attacking player is tackled in their own end zone ) scored in the Super Bowl, but having a team record two safeties and no other points? Pretty much impossible. But you can't say that payout isn't enticing. A different punter also placed $100 on the Buccaneers to score two total points for a potential payout of $500,000.

There was also a $1 Million plus bet recorded on KC this morning, so safe to say this guy is sweating.

Finished Tampa Bay 31 - 9 Kansas City