The longest note.
Those Taj Mahal casinos in Las Vegas? Don’t blame the Boys of Belichick for them. The Patriots are doing their best to take down the house.
“They’re killing us,” said Jay Kornegay, executive director of the Las Vegas Hilton Race & Sports Book. “It’s almost like a mini-Super Bowl every week. People can’t get to the windows fast enough.”
No wonder. Several NFL teams have won their first 10 games, but not in the same fashion as the Patriots. It’s almost December and they have yet to take their first prisoner, winning by an average of almost 26 points a game.
It’s getting so the Vegas sports books can’t make the lines high enough. To wit: Kornegay opened today’s New England-Philly game at minus-17, whereupon the wise guys wagered truckloads on the Pats, helping drive the line to 24.
To put that number in perspective, only once in history has an NFL team been plus-24. The 1976 Steelers were 24-point favorites over the hapless Buccaneers, and Pittsburgh won the game 42-0.
Now that the Pats have eclipsed the 20-point mark, look for their point spreads to settle in at 20-plus for most of their remaining games. And to think, before this season, there were only five 20-plus-point spreads ever for NFL games.
“We’ve never adjusted teams dramatically week in and week out, but, with the Pats, we’re tired of getting our brains beat in,” said Kornegay, a Denver native and CSU graduate. “We’ve always had a common practice of not making knee-jerk reactions to teams, but we’ve made more adjustments on these guys than any other team since I’ve been here.
“You look at these huge spreads and the wise guys’ initial reaction is, ‘Well, I’ve got to take that.’ And then they go, ‘Well, maybe not. The Pats are probably covering that by halftime.’ ”
The Pats are 9-1 against the spread, with their lone loss coming at Indianapolis. So what does the future hold? A 30-point spread, among other anomalies.
The Dec. 16 Patriots-Jets game will be the teams’ first encounter since Spygate, when Jets coach Eric Mangini, a former Bill Belichick assistant, turned in the Pats for illegally taping the Jets’ hand signals. If the Patriots are beating teams by 30 and 40 points with no revenge factor, how badly are they going to rough up the Jets?
Kornegay is leaning toward opening the game at New England minus-30.
Randy Moss has scored 16 touchdowns, more than the Rams (13), 49ers (10), Falcons (14), Ravens (15), Bills (15) and Chiefs (14).
How improved are the Browns? Consider this: Charlie Frye, traded after one game, was sacked five times and attempted 10 passes in Cleveland’s opener. His successor, Derek Anderson, has had 330 attempts and been sacked 10 times.
Not that Brett Favre is having your basic monster year, but he has thrown 22 touchdown passes, four more than last season. And December hasn’t yet arrived.
Who knew Steelers coach Mike Tomlin would find a positive spin after his team’s embarrassing loss to the dog-bottom Jets? Said Tomlin, “We win together and we stink it up together.” And Monday night, they’re going to hammer Miami together.
Jerry Sullivan, Buffalo News, after the Pats’ 56-10 annihilation of the Bills, who had won four straight: “The Bills lost by 46 at home and I can’t even rip them. What the heck’s going on here?”
Jim Armstrong: 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com
