NY Giants Open as Week 10 Underdogs vs Chicago Bears

Whether by close margins or ugly blowouts like the one we saw last Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers at MetLife Stadium, the New York Giants are continuously finding new and often frustrating ways to lose football games.

As the losses continue to pile up once again on the Joe Schoen-Brian Daboll regime in their fourth season in control, it would be no surprise to see the franchise getting zero love in the eyes of the oddsmakers, who haven't made them a preliminary favorite in any game this year.

For the second straight week, there has been a strange yet mild sense of belief that the Giants could still compete in some of their games down the stretch.

It started last week against the 49ers when the oddsmakers gave the home team a respectable 2.5-point disadvantage, which San Francisco completely blew out of the water in a 34-24 win that was uglier than the final score suggested.

Despite New York managing to mess up that opportunity to stun the football and betting worlds, they are back again in Week 10, carrying another seemingly manageable underdog status.

As they travel to the Windy City to face the resurgent Chicago Bears, FanDuel's opening lines have the Giants as 3.5-point underdogs, with neither team expected to stand tall.

Seeing such a small opening number in this game might be shocking to many, because the Giants could not simply be consistently competitive this season, while the Bears are in the midst of a 5-3 start to their campaign, widely impacted by the arrival of new head coach Ben Johnson.

After the former Detroit Lions offensive coordinator switched his cap to that of a divisional rival, the Bears have seen a long-awaited revival of their offense, which had not carried top-10 status in nearly a decade, including last fall, when they were among the bottom four producers with then-rookie quarterback Caleb Williams.

With Johnson's presence and Williams growing more into a professional role in his second campaign in the NFL, the Bears have been lighting up the scoreboard against many of their opponents.

They've scored at least 24 points in six of their first nine contests, which has helped them rank sixth in total points and fourth in total yards, their best standings since the 2018 campaign.

As good as their aerial attack has become, the Bears are just as good at running the football, which is something the Giants have started to struggle with despite their highly invested defensive front.

Chicago ranks eighth or better in the four major rushing metrics and is averaging a whopping 144.3 yards on the ground, helping them be very dominant in owning the time of possession in some games.

Just this past weekend, the Bears' offense arguably had its best outing of the season in a 47-42 thriller against the Cincinnati Bengals, tallying a season-high 576 total yards.

That feat included their heaping pile of 283 yards on the ground, which looks scary when one realizes that the Giants are only two weeks removed from allowing 276 yards on the ground to the Philadelphia Eagles in that 38-20 defeat.

Upon reading all these crazy numbers, one would assume that the beleaguered Giants defense is in for another long afternoon on the road, where they haven't won a game all season.

The oddsmakers still don't agree, as the Bears don't boast an impressive unit on that side of the ball, which could be the one element keeping this matchup slightly interesting.

The Bears' defense currently floats in the same stratosphere as the Giants, with 29th and 26th placements in the league in both points and yards allowed entering Week 10, and is just as easily movable so long as opposing offenses protect the football.

They are a unit that has not been helped by the special teams department putting them in good field position, or by a slew of injuries to their own front seven that have forced them to make some moves at the trade deadline. Still, they are getting torched in the air at an average of 7.4 yards per play and 5.1 yards via the opposing backfield.

The Giants' offense hasn’t been close to fully intact in weeks. Still, with Chicago allowing over 350 yards of total production in five games this fall, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for them to be efficient in this game if they can muster up solid drives for a whole 60 minutes.

Even with their woeful losses, we’ve seen Jaxson Dart exert his leadership and relentless competitiveness to keep his teammates engaged and putting up numbers on the stat sheet. He certainly isn’t booking anything in and will want to take advantage of a weaker defense to try to get back in the win column.

And that’s what the oddsmakers believe this game could be down to—which team’s defensive effort can be the right complement to the offensive success. More than any other road trip this season, the Giants just have to come ready, and they have a great shot at leaving with a third win.

The over/under points total for the contest is set at 47.5 points, with the designated number covering five times for both the Bears and Giants, including the latter’s last three games dating back to Week 7.

Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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