A road favorite in a division game is the kind of number that makes you stop and read it twice, and Seattle is laying four in Glendale, AZ on Sunday, September 20 at 4:25 PM ET with the total at 41. The guys split on this one, and it was the loudest disagreement: Ryan Kramer is laying the points on the road, Sean Green is taking Arizona at home, and neither of them pretended the other side was crazy. The whole exchange is on the NFL Picks Week 2 episode.
Seahawks vs Cardinals Odds
Seattle is a 4 point road favorite, which puts Arizona at plus 4 at home. The total is 41.
Our Picks
- Ryan Kramer (@KramerCentric): SEA -4
- Sean Green (@SeanTGreen): ARZ +4
Sean started with Seattle’s Week 1, a banner-raising home game the Seahawks won in spite of a bad penalty differential and a push on the three. Normally he loves fading a team that won a game it had no business winning, and by his read Arizona is exactly that team coming out of the Chargers game. Then he got to the other side of the ticket. Drew Lock as a road favorite got the word Danger written in red letters next to his notes. Lock is fine coming in cold, Sean said, a similar handicap to Carson Wentz, but there is a reason he is not a starter, and the game to game consistency is not there. Sean also pointed out that Seattle has won the last nine meetings, so the Seahawks at least look like they own this matchup.
The price did most of the arguing. The look-ahead line on this game was Arizona plus 10, and Ryan pulled up the number on air to confirm it, so the market has already moved six points toward the Cardinals. Sean put the Sam Darnold to Lock downgrade at roughly six points himself, and at that math he was willing to pay a bad price for a Cardinals team that had shown a real effort on the road the week before.
Ryan worked it from the other direction. Seattle took the worst hit a team can take, losing its quarterback on the first play of the game, and Lock steadied it from there. Ryan brought up a start from Lock’s Giants stretch a couple of seasons back where he went 17 of 23 for 309 yards and four touchdowns, then argued that what broke Lock against New England was a stifled run game, and that Arizona is not New England against the run. He thinks the Cardinals defensive line looked the way it did last week because of the interior it was playing against, not because that unit is special, he expects the Cardinals quarterback to hand the ball back at some point, and he likes Seattle’s defensive front against an Arizona offensive line that has not been stressed yet.
So Ryan laid it, and he stated the opposing case himself before Sean could: your best handicap here is that you cannot lay points with Drew Lock on the road, and he is laying points with Drew Lock on the road. He noted the tickets were stacked on Seattle while the money sat on Arizona, which is not the split you want when you are on the favorite. Sean heard all of it and did not move. Drew Lock, road favorite, no thank you, give me the Arizona Cardinals.
Hear the full breakdown on the NFL Picks Week 2 episode, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Watch every game on YouTube, and download the SGPN app at sg.pn/links. See all our NFL Picks.
