Monday Night Football comes to the Meadowlands this week as the 2-1 Seattle Seahawks travel cross country to face the 1-2 New York Giants.
It’s Seattle QB Geno Smith’s homecoming to New Jersey after spending the first five seasons of his career with the Jets and Giants. Before getting into our best bet, let's check out the odds.
Live Odds for Seahawks at Giants
The Seahawks currently find themselves as a -1/-1.5-point favorite at the Giants after opening as a consensus underdog. There’s been quite a bit of movement as some lookahead lines on Sunday afternoon/evening saw the Seahawks as favorites before flipping to the Giants on Monday morning.
Since then, the action has been seemingly all Seahawks flipping the spread back again to the current Seattle -1.5. I think part of the reason there was some love for the Giants is because, situationally, this is a difficult game for Seattle.
Can the Giants Offense Get Going?
The Giants are playing on extra rest following what felt like a scheduled loss on the road against the Niners on Thursday Night Football. They now return to NY with ample time to prepare for this game. The Seahawks played Week 3 at home against Carolina and now fly to the east coast to face the Giants with a three-day rest disadvantage.
Traditionally, this should be a buy spot for the Giants if not for how awful they’ve looked in 2023. After a 40-0 embarrassment opening night against the Cowboys, they followed it up with a miraculous comeback against the Cardinals, before getting stomped by the 49ers in the bay.
It’s hard to really get a read on this Giants team because the games they’ve played have gotten so out of hand and the results they’ve produced are representative of the outlier points on a data plot. The Giants are second worst in the league in DVOA, ranking second worst on defense and fourth worst on offense.
That being said, they played through a horrible mismatch in Week 1 that was never really a game. They played two polar opposite halves of football against the Cardinals and then basically accepted a defeat in San Francisco, agreeing to stay on the west coast and play TNF on short rest.
This is quietly a must win game for the Giants before they play two straight road games against the Dolphins and Bills. Despite the multitude of factors that should give the Giants all the motivation and preparation needed to win the game; the on-field product has been so poor thus far I’m unable to back them in this spot. The Giants don’t deserve to be favorites against this Seattle offense, despite the conditions, so the line feels about right here.
Best Bet: Seattle Over 23.5 points (-120)
The Seahawks bounced back in a big way after their Week 1 stinker against the Rams. They’ve scored 30 points in regulation in both games since then against the Lions and Panthers. While those are not secondaries that rank particularly high, the Giants are in the bottom ten in yards allowed per pass attempt.
Whether or not you think Geno Smith is a good QB, the Seahawks have been good on the ground with Kenneth Walker leading the pack and have three high quality wide receivers that the Giants have no one to match up with. Jamal Adams is due back for the Seahawks defense and I’m curious to see his level after a bounce back 2022 season.
We’ll take a look at the Seahawks team total here given the tight spread. The game total opened at 45 which the market agreed was far too low and pushed it out to 47 or even 47.5 in some spots. While I agree with the movement, I think we can find more value picking up the Seahawks team total at over 23.5 (-120) at DraftKings.
I don’t think the Seahawks will have an issue scoring points on this awful Giants defense. Despite the spot, I don’t think the Giants have the offensive chops to win a shootout against Seattle. The Giants should be looking to keep the ball out of Seattle’s hands in this one but could struggle to do so without Saquon Barkley and facing Seattle's #3 ranked run defense in yards per attempt allowed.
While it shouldn’t take much to put points on the Seahawks secondary, the lack of talent at WR for the Giants puts me off a bet on the game total in this one. We’ll play Seattle o23.5 points -120 for a 1% play.
