2023 NFL Preseason Week 3 Spreads, Moneylines and Totals
The final weekend of the NFL Preseason is the most difficult to handicap. In almost all cases, the teams will empty the bench with marginal players fighting for the final roster spots on their respective clubs. That makes things incredibly difficult for gamblers to pin down. Thus, Live betting is a popular method on the last weekend of the preseason. That is because of all of the lineup changes and substitutions.
One betting angle for the final preseason weekend is to focus on new head coaches. In most cases, a new head coach has more incentive to win preseason games than not. Unless a top assistant replaces a Hall of Famer retiring from a Super Bowl champion, such as Georgie Siefert taking over for Bill Walsh in 1989 with the San Francisco 49ers, most new coaches step into a failed franchise.
NFL Betting Odds
NFL Preseason Week 3 Betting Lines
New head coach, DeMeco Ryans of the Houston Texans, was the top candidate on many teams’ boards and knocked his offensive coordinator hire out of the park, bringing along Bobby Slowik from San Francisco. Like Steichen, he will have the presence and the association with coaches who run a great scheme. The 49ers’ pipeline is strong and has already birthed the likes of Mike McDaniel in Miami.
Ryans’s ties to the organization are also a huge bonus. Right now, the Texans, after being run by a former character coach for a time, are completely and totally without an identity. After a teardown, they are thin on star power and have one of the worst rosters, top to bottom, in the NFL. Ryans will fill that gap and be an immediate draw for free agents, especially on the defensive side of the ball. His presence alone could help Houston weather the remainder of this post–Deshaun Watson rebuild.
Jonathan Gannon of the Arizona Cardinals was the Eagles' defensive coordinator. Despite its second-half struggles against Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl, Gannon made the Eagles' defense one the best in the league in his two seasons as the coordinator, and in 2022 the group had 70 regular-season sacks -- 15 more than the Chiefs, who were second in the league.
As a first-time head coach, Gannon will have his work cut out for him in Arizona. He is working with a first-time general manager in Monti Ossenfort, and the roster is likely about to undergo a massive overhaul, with more than two dozen players expected to become free agents. The defense was 31st in points allowed. Gannon has to figure out how to work with quarterback Kyler Murray, who is unlikely to be ready for the start of the season while recovering from a torn ACL. And the Cardinals have enjoyed little success or stability of late. Gannon is the Cardinals' fourth head coach in seven years, and the franchise last won a playoff game in 2015.
New NFL franchise owners often find that their mastery of the industry they made their fortune does not necessarily translate to a smooth transition to the NFL. However, Denver ultimately landed the biggest fish of all, Sean Payton. Still, presumably, Payton believes he can fix Russell Wilson. His track record as a creative offensive mind and his reputation as a culture builder gives him the best chance of the available candidates to quickly turn the franchise around and salvage the acquisition of Wilson last offseason.
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