Windy City Gridiron
The Chicago Bears look to get back in the winning column after dropping one last week to the Baltimore Ravens. Their opponent is the Cincinnati Bengals, who have a porous defense and give us some interesting opportunities to bet on Chicago Bears players on props. Last year, we published after Lamar Jackson was a “full participant” in practice, so we gave Lamar over passing yards, which, of course, ended up being a non-play. Last week we went 1-1, which brings our season record to 13-7.
What do we like this week? Here are three props to play.
This is a wild number to take an over, but we are running it in. D’Andre Swift is out, Trey Hendrickson almost certainly won’t play, and the Bengals’ defense is a league-worst defense, allowing over 150 yards per game on the ground. Roschon Johnson is also out, and I can’t see Ben Johnson turn to Travis Homer for 10 touches. I expect Brittain Brown to get elevated from the practice squad to be the team’s RB2 on offense, but I think Monangai gets the bulk of the carries, and it’s hard to imagine that the Bears don’t go well north of 100 yards as a team, and Monangai has a chance to go over 100 yards on his own if you want to bet alts.
We have to expect the Bears’ passing attack to have success against this Bengals defense. If they don’t, that’s a conversation for a different article (and a conversation a LOT of people will be having next week). But I don’t expect that to happen. I think we see a successful passing attack. If that’s the case, I can’t say I trust the tight ends to get involved, as they just haven’t been all season. Luther Burden is out with a concussion, so unless Rome Odunze gets 75% of the targets (certainly possible), I think Zaccheaus is the guy that goes over here and gets upwards of 50 yards receiving.
Despite having a bumpy game last week, Caleb still went way over his yardage prop. That was largely thanks to some garbage time yardage in the fourth quarter, but a win is a win. This week, we are simply betting against the Bengals’ defense. If the Bears get upwards of 400 yards of offense against Cincinnati, how does Caleb Williams not have 250 or more passing yards? It’s almost a simple math equation. The Bears would have to be around 200 yards rushing to get a Caleb passing under, and while that’s possible against the Bengals’ defense, it’s hard to imagine Monangai, Brown, and Travis Homer manage to do it, even if the big guys up front do their jobs. Let’s ride with Caleb once again.
