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

New Orleans +6½ -110 over Detroit

1:00 PM EST. We'll start with the number because +6½ has always been one of our favorite underdog numbers in football. Seven is a key number, and everybody knows it. The recreational bettor looks at Detroit -6½ and immediately thinks, Great, they can win by a touchdown and I still cash. That's precisely what makes the number interesting. Oddsmakers could hang Detroit -7 and we seriously doubt it would discourage many Lions bettors. Yet they're making the public lay 6½, giving them the incredibly attractive proposition of needing only a touchdown. When the favorite is this popular and the bookmaker stops just short of seven, we pay attention.

And Detroit is extremely easy to like. The Lions have spent the last several years becoming one of the NFL's glamour teams. Dan Campbell became a celebrity, Detroit became a national story, the prime-time appearances piled up and the Lions went from decades of irrelevance to a team everybody seemingly enjoys rooting for and betting on. New Orleans has traveled in exactly the opposite direction. The Saints have been bad for a long time and, perhaps even worse from a market perspective, they've become irrelevant. Nobody is excited about betting New Orleans. Nobody is talking about them as a contender. Put Detroit and New Orleans beside each other on a betting board and we don't need a survey to figure out where the money wants to go.

But we're not being asked which team is better. Detroit probably is. We're being asked whether the difference between these teams is greater than 6½ points, and that's where perception becomes price. New Orleans showed some legitimate signs of life with Tyler Shough last season, Chris Olave remains a serious weapon and there's enough here to believe the Saints might be better than the stale reputation attached to them. We don't need them to win. We don't need them to become relevant again. We need them to stay within a touchdown against a Detroit team whose stock has been trading at a premium for several years.

That's why the number matters so much. The spread is the great equalizer, and six and a half is a number we've always respected when taking an underdog. Detroit -6½ looks comfortable. New Orleans +6½ looks awful. That's exactly how the betting window is supposed to feel. The Lions are the popular team, the recognizable team and the team bettors can easily envision winning by seven or more. We'll take the other side. Oddsmakers had every opportunity to make this Detroit -7 and didn't. We'll trust the number, buy the depressed stock and take our favorite underdog price in football

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