The Indianapolis Colts host the Arizona Cardinals in a game where both teams are looking to bounce back from ugly losses in Week 1. Without Andrew Luck, the Colts appear destined to go winless until he returns. Can they find some “luck” on the field and get the upset win this week? Kickoff inside Lucas Oil Stadium is at 1 P.M. ET.
The Arizona Cardinals (0-1) are looking to fix the mistakes they had on offense last week, namely the poor play from quarterback Carson Palmer who threw 3 picks. Additionally, the Cardinals hope to be successful on offense without their workhorse – running back David Johnson.
The Indianapolis Colts (0-1) were arguably the worst team in the league last week as they were destroyed by the Rams 46-9. They’re going with a 3rd string quarterback for this game, with the hopes that he can ignite a spark on the offense.
The Cardinals opened as a 7 point favorite and the line remains unchanged. The Over/Under had a slight change from opening at 44 points to the current line of 44.5 total points.
If David Johnson was playing, this game would easily be blowout win for the Cardinals and the spread would be higher. Unfortunately, the talented running back is on IR until December. This leaves the Cardinals looking to their backup running backs to carry the load. Additionally, they went out and re-signed the aging Chris Johnson for depth at running back. I find this move to be a bit concerning.
The Cardinals dropped Johnson in favor of Williams and Ellington, but bring him back when DJ goes down. If they were so confident in Williams and Ellington to cut Johnson, then why bring him back? In short, the answer is that the Cardinals weren’t thrilled with how their backup backs looked after DJ went down against the Lions last week.
For the Colts, they looked awful last week on both sides of the ball. They made Rams quarterback Jared Goff look like an all-pro as he carved up the secondary for 306 yards passing yards and a touchdown. But, as bad as the Colts defense was, their offense was even worse. They could only muster up 225 total yards and 9 points. They also had three turnovers.
I expect the Colts to improve from last week, but not enough to win this game or cover the spread. The Cardinals defense will have a bounce back game against the “luck-less” Colts. They were gashed for 292 yards passing by Matt Stafford last week and you can bet that Jacoby Brissett won’t come close to this.
With DJ gone, look for Carson Palmer to eclipse the 300 yard passing mark and wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald to have a big game. The Colts secondary is banged up and without key members, which makes it the ideal time for the Cardinals to get their mojo back. In fact, it makes it the ideal time for Carson Palmer to get his mojo back. The Arizona quarterback had a terrible game against the Lions last week, where he threw 3 interceptions and had a 56.3 completion percentage. Palmer finished the game with a 53.1 passer rating. In other words, he was awful.
The Colts are 1-4 ATS in their last 5 overall games and have the same 1-4 ATS record in their last 5 home games. Indy is 1-6 ATS in their last 7 games during the month of September. Arizona is 4-2 ATS when playing against the Colts and 6-3 ATS when a road favorite of 3.5 to 7 points.
I don’t trust these two teams to combine for more than 44 points as I don’t see the Colts scoring more than 10 points. With Arizona needing time to get their backup running backs acclimated to the weekly workload that DJ had, I see Arizona being mostly one-dimensional. Fortunately, it’s the one dimension that the Colts are terrible at. I expect the Cardinals to win 27-6 behind solid defense and a big game for Palmer.