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The start of August means the (unofficial) return of NFL football, as the teams currently trying to firm up their rosters at training camp will get a few chances to see how players fare in a real(ish) game thanks to the trio of preseason contests they’ll all participate in before the 2023 campaign kicks off.
You’d have to be a particularly diehard football fan to describe a showdown where Zach Wilson and Kellen Mond are respectively starting for the Jets and the Browns as “appointment viewing”—just like you’d need to be a pretty diehard gambler to go out of your way to throw money down on it.
I’m not exactly sure how you even begin to handicap an essentially meaningless game between two teams that will spend most of it dredging the bottom half of the depth chart in the hopes of discovering some hidden gems, but there are plenty of oddsmakers who manage to do exactly for anyone who can’t resist the urge to wait a few more weeks to get back on the NFL betting horse.
With that said, if you insist on betting on the NFL preseason, it’s pretty hard to ignore one team that seems to have it all figured out.
The Baltimore Ravens already held the all-time record for the longest preseason win streak in NFL history before the slate of exhibition games kicked off last year, and a team that hasn’t lost one of those contests since 2015 was able to extend it to 23 games when everything was said and done.
As things currently stand, the Ravens are slight favorites (-160) to increase that number to 24 when they face off against the Eagles on August 12th, and while every gambler knows it’s foolish to put too much stake in the past while betting on the future, it’s pretty hard to ignore that trend (it’s also worth noting Baltimore is 20-3 against the spread over that span).