Projected Line: Buffalo by 6 points
I believe the Bills will be able to get a good and important win for them tonight. In case you haven't noticed, the Bills since their bye week played two extremely difficult games in Houston and in New England. The good news for Buffalo is that they were competitive in both. They lost by 9-21 at Houston, on a low scoring game, and then at New England, on a completely different matchup, they were competitive once again, with Ryan Fitzpatrick almost being able to lead his team to a shocking upset win that just didn't happen because he was intercepted in the Patriots end zone in the last minute of the game. The truth is that Buffalo is playing a bit better on defense (it was impossible to do worse than they did until the bye week) and Ryan Fitzpatrick is also playing with more confidence right now, while the running game keeps being one of the best in football. They will be facing a Dolphins' defense that really seems to be regressing right now. After an excellent start of the season, the Dolphins' defense started to struggle over the past few weeks by allowing big passes to their opponents, with some shocking coverage errors at Indianapolis for example, while their run defense has allowed an average of 135.3 rushing yards to their opponents over the last four games, when they had just allowed an average of 61.4 rushing yards in the first five weeks of the season! Even with Fred Jackson being out of tonight's game with a concussion, the Bills still have C.J. Spiller, who has exactly the same skills that Chris Johnson used to completely pound the Dolphins last week. Therefore, I expect a quite decent offensive game from the Bills tonight against a defense that seems to be regressing very quickly over the past few weeks.
On the other hand, Ryan Tannehill is coming from a terrible game against the Titans, where he threw three interceptions that completely killed the team's chances of winning that game. With the team's running game being noneffective (#27 with 3.8 rushing yards per carry), Tannehill is forced to throw the football a lot and with his main target Brian Hartline struggling with a knee injury, things haven't been easy for the Dolphins offense lately. Buffalo may have a poor defense, however they have been playing with more effort since the bye week and I expect them to keep this good effort tonight on an important game for them, something that should limit Tannehill's number of good plays and also avoid any big running plays from Daniel Thomas and Reggie Bush.
I believe these two teams are going into opposite directions right now. Buffalo is starting to play better and looking a bit more like the team most people were expecting them to be this season (they were a contender for the postseason before the start of the season), while Miami started the season exceptionally (and surprisingly) well, but with a irregular rookie quarterback, a defense regressing after some great performances early on the season and a noneffective running game, I believe the Bills will outplay the Dolphins on this contest and get a good win for them tonight. I'm taking Buffalo in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 306 Buffalo Bills (-2,5) @ -115 / 1.87 on 5Dimes
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