Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Netflix

San Francisco +3½ -110 over L.A. Rams

8:30 PM EST. The NFL news cycle never stops. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, somebody somewhere is talking football. Turn on ESPN, VSiN, sports radio, podcasts or any pregame show and eventually the same opinions get repeated so many times that they stop sounding like opinions and start sounding like facts. And what have we heard all summer? The Rams are the best team in football. The Rams are loaded. The Rams are the Super Bowl favorite. The Rams have the best roster in the league. Rams, Rams, Rams. They've rammed the Rams down our throats for three months. Maybe every word of it is true. Maybe Los Angeles is the best team in football. We don't know, and neither does anyone else.

What we do know is that bookmakers aren't in the business of giving away money. That's where our handicap begins and ends. If the Rams are this powerhouse that everybody says they are, why are they being asked to beat San Francisco by only four lousy points? Think about that. Every analyst can tell you about Matthew Stafford, Sean McVay, offensive efficiency, defensive schemes and 47 other things that sound wonderful on television. We couldn't care less. Oddsmakers know all of it too. They know who's injured. They know who's healthy. They know every statistic being discussed on every pregame show. None of that information is some secret edge you've uncovered while sitting on your couch. The number already knows.

Football is probably the worst major sport on earth to pretend you can predict with precision. A tipped pass becomes an interception. A referee throws a flag. A kicker hits the upright. Somebody fumbles at the one-yard line. A receiver drops a touchdown. A punt gets blocked. A quarterback throws a ball directly into a defender's chest and the defender drops it. Twenty-two players are moving on every snap and one mistake can completely alter a game. There are simply too many variables. Yet every week analysts confidently tell us exactly what's going to happen as if they're reading tomorrow's newspaper. If somebody had actually figured out how to predict NFL games consistently, he'd own an island somewhere. He wouldn't be explaining third-down efficiency to you at 8:15 on Thursday night.

So forget trying to determine which team is "better." We're looking for value, and value frequently lives on the side that nobody wants. The Rams have been sold to the betting public all summer and now recreational money gets its first opportunity to purchase the product. Meanwhile, San Francisco is yesterday's news. Even the unusual circumstances surrounding this game add another wrinkle. The 49ers arrived in Australia more than a week beforehand, while the Rams elected to arrive roughly a day before kickoff. Maybe Sean McVay has discovered the secret to international travel and his players will hop off the plane feeling like they just returned from a weekend at the spa. Maybe not. We're certainly not going to pretend we can quantify jet lag to the half-point. What matters is that there are enough unknowns here to make laying points with everybody's favorite Super Bowl team considerably less attractive than the talking heads would have you believe.

Our job isn't to predict the final score. Our job is to recognize when perception has become so strong that the other side offers the better price. Listen carefully tonight and count how many reasons you're given to bet Los Angeles. You'll hear about the roster. You'll hear about Stafford. You'll hear about McVay. You'll hear about the Super Bowl. You'll probably hear everything except the one question that matters: Why are the mighty Rams laying only 3½? The house already knows the public wants Los Angeles. They're taking the bets anyway. We don't want to stand in line with everyone else holding a Rams ticket and congratulating ourselves because every analyst on television agrees with us. We'll cross the counter, stand beside the bookmaker and take the points. If the Rams really are the best team in football, make them prove it at a price that gives us value.

Take advantage of BET365's early NFL payout offer

Bet365 Early Payout – How It Works

Straight Bets:

If the team you back to win goes up by the designated number of points at any time during the game, BET365 will pay out your bet in full immediately, even if the opposing team later comes back and wins the game.

Parlays & Same Game Parlays:
If a team you’ve selected goes up by the designated number of points that selection will be marked as WON in My Bets. Any remaining legs of the parlay will continue to run as normal.

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