NFL Wild Card odds: Steelers vs. Bills preview and best bets
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It’s a day later than expected, but the Steelers-Bills game is set to kick off this afternoon. The Bills are playing their best football of the year, while the Steelers seem to have found an unlikely late-season savior at quarterback.
Here are our Steelers vs. Bills picks, preview, and predictions as Super Wild Card Weekend continues:
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Steelers vs. Bills Picks: Alternate Spread - Steelers +10.5 (-132 or better)
Mason Rudolph, seemingly forgotten while the team did everything possible to make serviceable starters out of Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett, took full opportunity of Pickett’s ankle injury to wrestle the starting job away by throwing for 716 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions during the last three games of the campaign.
Rudolph isn’t afraid to be aggressive downfield, which has already led to several sorely-needed splash plays from George Pickens and Diontae Johnson. In turn, that’s helped open running lanes for Najee Harris, who averaged 104 rushing yards per contest in Rudolph’s three starts.
The Bills’ defense suffered some leaks throughout the year and finished the season allowing 110.6 rushing yards per game. Pittsburgh also played well against the spread as a road team, forging a 5-3 record in that split.
We're extending the spread out over the key 10-point mark and still getting an acceptable price as we look for the Steelers to have enough balance to keep things reasonably close.
Steelers vs. Bills best bet: James Cook Over 62.5 rushing yards (-114 or better)
While moving the Bills-Steelers game to Monday will avoid the worst of a winter storm, the conditions will still be challenging. Temperatures will be frigid, with wind gusts expected to reach 20 to 25 mph.
We can expect both teams to run the rock early and often in this one. The Bills drastically improved their run game this year (130.1 YPG, 7th), thanks in large part to the emergence of James Cook. Cook racked up 1,122 yards on the ground this season, averaging 4.7 per tote.
He has surpassed 62.5 yards in two of his last four games, and we like him to do it again in this one as the environment should be conducive to the run game.
Steelers vs. Bills props: Josh Allen Anytime touchdown scorer (-115 or better)
Josh Allen has been a touchdown-scoring machine this season, finding paydirt 15 times on the ground, including 12 of his last 15 contests. Prior to last game (when he was shut out), Allen had scored eight rushing TDs in his previous five games.
He hasn’t gone consecutive games without a rushing touchdown since Sept. 17, and with the blustery Buffalo conditions, we like him to break the plane once again in this one.
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Juan Carlos Blanco is a Catena Media contributor and has been writing about sports betting and fantasy sports since 2015 for a wide variety of industry websites, and his work has also been syndicated in outlets such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports and NBA.com. Follow his work via Twitter @jcblanco22.
