Free Picks on Sunday NFL Football: Tampa Bay vs. Seattle

Added on Dec 20, 2009 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Two teams playing out the string meet at Qwest Field in Seattle, Washington. Tampa Bay has been one of the NFL’s worst all year, while Seattle has been highly inconsistent in stumbling to a 5-8 record. For the Bucs, its also one of the longest road trips in the NFL at over 3000 miles. The Seahawks are a -6′ home favorite in this game with the total set at 39.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Seattle Seahawks
Sunday, December 20th 1:05 PM Pacific

Seattle is a classic NFL ‘bully’ team, beating up on overmatched opponents and at home while struggling on the road. Seattle is 5-1 ATS as a favorite this year and 16-6 ATS when laying points over the past three years. They’re 3-1 ATS this year playing teams with losing records, and 11-5 ATS against sub .500 opponents in the last three years. They’ve also got one of the biggest home/away disparities in the NFL: this year they’re 4-2 SU at home and 1-6 on the road.

Tampa Bay is most definitely a bad team, but even more problematic for first year coach Raheem Morris has been their utter lack of competitive fire at times. 1-12 SU and 4-9 ATS not only reflects an underachieving team, but one that lacks the toughness to ‘hang around’ and cover increasingly larger pointspreads. Tampa has also dropped six straight games against the spread to NFC West opponents and three straight ATS to the Seahawks.

Seattle also has a huge edge at the quarterback position, with the competent and efficient Matt Hasselbeck under center. His Tampa counterpart, rookie Josh Freeman, has shown some promise this year but has struggled of late with eight interceptions and no touchdowns in the last two games. As we said at the outset, Seattle is a classic ‘bully’ team that has shown a tendency to drop large margins on overmatched opponents at home. If anything, Tampa Bay is ‘overmatched’ and Seattle should easily cover the -6′ points spread.

Bet Seattle -6′ over Tampa Bay