Let me put my number down before anybody plays a snap, because a forecast you post after the fact isn't a forecast. It's an alibi.
Cincinnati at New England. The line has the Patriots by a point. Call it a coin flip, because that is what a one-point spread is — the market telling you it cannot separate them, and neither can I. The model has both teams at thirty-eight. When the projection is 38-38, you stop looking at the side. There is no edge on a game the numbers refuse to lean.
So I look at the total, and the total is 76. That is a big number, and I think it is the right one to be big.
Here is the read. New England scores on anybody — nobody in the league has put up more points this season. But the Patriots hand it right back; their scoring defense grades out at the bottom of the league, dead last, and that is not a slump, it is an address. Now stand that leaky defense across from an 8-2 Cincinnati team that just found out it can lose and would like to remind everyone it can score. You do not get a rock fight out of that. You get a track meet.
So here is my record, on the wall, dated and signed: Bengals-Patriots, the over 76. Not the side — the side is a coin, and I don't bet coins in public. The total. Seventy-six.
Grade me on it next week. I'll be here either way.
