Betting Angles for 49ers-Saints
Point Spread: 49ers +10
Total (Over/Under): 49
Line Movement
The Saints opened as 6.5 point favorites and that number has slowly increased to 10 with the Saints' impressive win and each day bringing more news that players like Deebo Samuel and Jaquiski Tartt will not play for San Francisco.
The public is all over the Saints in this one, and it's easy to understand why. The 49ers are at their lowest point of the season, after a 34-17 loss to the Packers that was even more lopsided than the score indicates. The Saints are on fire winning five straight and fresh off one of the more impressive games of the NFL season, a 38-3 beat down of the Buccaneers who many had tabbed as a Super Bowl contender.
The total has dropped from 53.5 to 49.
Trends
The Saints have scored 244 points this season and allowed 200 but, if you remove their two wins against Tampa Bay, they have actually allowed more points than they have scored this season. While the Saints are 6-2, they needed overtime for two of their wins (Bears and Chargers) and their other victories were by a combined nine points against mediocre teams (Detroit and Carolina). In other words, the public perception of the Saints is that they're much better than they actually are.
Conversely the 49ers are probably not as bad as people think. The 49ers will have back Kendrick Bourne, Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams from last week's defeat and people who don't follow the 49ers closely are undervaluing the importance of those three players as the drop off in talent between them and their backups is notable.
San Francisco is 9-3 ATS as visitors since 2019, including 3-1 in 2020. The "over" has cashed in seven times in eight games for the Saints this season.
Underdog Value
This is a textbook "Buy low" scenario for San Francisco and an even more textbook "Sell high" scenario for New Orleans.
The 49ers getting 10 points seems generous considering Kyle Shanahan has had extra time to game plan and Drew Brees goes deep about as often as a Rob Gronkowski press conference. Robert Saleh should be able to design an effective game plan to keep the 49ers close since he doesn't need to be concerned with Brees taking the top off the defense.
If the 49ers do find themselves down big, they have great potential to for a "back door cover" as Shanahan and Mullens have been effective at putting up points in garbage time this season.
Week 10 Best Bet:
49ers +10
Slight lean toward Over 49
Last Week's Best Bet
Under 50 - Last week's bet was a loser thanks to Kyle Shanahan's engineered garbage-time touchdown at the end of the game following timeouts many coaches wouldn't have called with the game out of reach. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
