NFL Week 10 Odds: Best Spot Bets Include Colts' Fragile Focus In Sin City

NFL Week 10 throws a little bit of everything at teams, including an early morning game in Germany. Football bettors need to be conscious of not just which clubs are clashing on that schedule but how the sked itself could impact the outcome.

Situational handicapping — AKA spot bets — is a great layer of analysis to add to your process of picking the best NFL bets each week, going beyond the metrics and matchups, and finding some underlying edges and booby traps hiding in the schedule.

Here are my NFL spot bets to watch for in Week 10.

Letdown Spot: Detroit Lions at Chicago Bears (-3, 48.5)

Detroit picked up a rare win over Green Bay in Week 9, marking just the 10th time the Lions have gotten the best of the Packers in the previous 29 meetings since Aaron Rodgers took over under center in 2008. 

That ugly 15-9 victory also snapped a five-game slide for Dan Campbell’s crew but sets Detroit up for a letdown spot in Week 10. The Lions, who were outgained by 135 yards and gave up 5.6 yards per play to the Packers, head to the Windy City this weekend, getting a field goal from the host Bears. 

A victory — no matter who it comes against — has been rare for Detroit the past two seasons, and the Lions haven’t been able to build off those positives at all, going 0-3 straight up (2-1 against the spread) when coming off a win in Campbell’s time in Motown.

That penchant for letdowns isn’t reserved for the current coaching staff either. Going back to 2018, Detroit is a dismal 3-13 SU (9-7 ATS) when coming off a win. 

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Schedule Spot: Indianapolis Colts at Las Vegas Raiders (-6.5, 42.5)

If the Colts’ “clogged toilet” of a season wasn’t enough to make Indianapolis an auto-fade from here on out, the schedule does no favors for this floundering franchise and new interim head coach Jeff Saturday. 

Indy will be playing the second of back-to-back road games when it comes to Sin City on Sunday, which also serves as the team’s third away tilt in the past four weeks. The road has been unkind to the Colts, who own an average margin of -10.6 points as visitors (third worst). 

Bookmakers opened Indianapolis as a 5-point underdog in Las Vegas but that has since jumped to as high as +6.5.

In addition to that grind of travel, the Week 10 schedule ships Indy to just about the worst place you could send a group disinterested in the remainder of the season. Good luck keeping the Colts focused on the Raiders and not everything Vegas has to offer besides football. And really, at this point, could you blame them?

Schedule spot: Los Angeles Chargers at San Francisco 49ers (-7, 46.5)

My weekly NFL spot bets usually include a look-ahead spot, but there isn’t an obvious one that jumps out in Week 10. Instead, I shed light on an upcoming stretch of schedule that should make those holding any futures on the 49ers very happy.

San Francisco not only got to rest its multiple injuries off the bye in Week 9, but Kyle Shanahan had two weeks to tinker with his offense. Remember, this unit was supposed to be running under Trey Lance in 2022 but his season-ending injury forced Shanahan to blow the dust off the Jimmy Garoppolo playbook. You also have a brand-new bag of tricks with Christian McCaffrey on the roster.

This Sunday night date with the Chargers kicks off a span in which the Niners play away from home only once in the next five games and that lone contest outside Santa Clara comes on a neutral site versus Arizona in Mexico City in Week 11. 

San Francisco has three straight home games after that, with this advantageous schedule stretching to December 11. In fact, the 49ers have only two true roads games remaining all year — at Seattle in Week 15 and at Las Vegas in Week 17 — and only three of their upcoming nine opponents currently have winning records.

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