If you laid the points with the Buccaneers to begin your week of betting in the NFL, you went to bed on Thursday with a sour taste in your mouth. Tampa Bay’s Week 6 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles gave us the latest bad beat in the league in a rather heartbreaking fashion. At Caesars Sportsbook, the line for this game closed at Buccaneers -7 and it ultimately failed to cover thanks to a series of events in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.
With around nine minutes to play in the game, the Buccaneers elected to go for the kill shot against the Eagles by going for it on fourth-and-3 while leading 28-14. Tom Brady’s pass that was intended for O.J. Howard fell incomplete, giving Philadelphia the ball back at its own 46-yard line. The Eagles proceeded to drive 54 yards where Jalen Hurts was able to rush for his second touchdown of the day, cutting the Bucs lead to 28-20.
At that point, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni elected to attempt a 2-point conversion, which proved to be successful as Hurts completed a pass to receiver Quez Watkins. Instead of an extra point making it a push, Philly +7 bettors suddenly had life.
The logic behind that decision is that a later touchdown (plus an extra point) would then put the Eagles in a position to win the game rather than simply tie and possibly go to overtime. Had they failed to convert, they could simply try to knot the game up later with a 2-point conversion.
It should be noted, that the Buccaneers had a comfortable lead for the bulk of this game, leading the Eagles 21-7 at halftime and were up by as many as 21 points midway through the third quarter.
To make matters even worse for those holding a Bucs -7 ticket is that Tampa Bay charged down the field following that Eagles touchdown drive. The Bucs marched all the way to the Philadelphia 6-yard line just as the two-minute warning hit. However, because the Eagles had already used all of their timeouts and Brady has just run a QB sneak for a first down, the offense simply took a knee and iced the win. While a wise move for Bruce Arians and Co., it resulted in quite the bad beat for a chunk of bettors.
Not only was this a bad night for Bucs -7 bettors, but it was a continuation of Brady’s undesirable streak in prime time as the quarterback is now 0-11 ATS in his last 11 prime-time games.
