Vikings help sports books to winning Wild Card weekend

The Mandalay Bay sports book was jam packed on Sunday

LAS VEGAS -- For the first time ever during an NFL Playoff weekend all four road teams won, three of which happened to be favorites with the other only being a small underdog who originally opened as the favorite.

The net result for the Las Vegas sports books was a winning Wild Card weekend, but almost every book had the feeling of chips being left on the table when Vikings kicker Blair Walsh missed a 27-yard go-ahead field goal with 26 seconds remaining, which helped the Seahawks advance to next weekend’s divisional playoff round with a 10-9 win.

“Seattle was a good win for us in regards to parlays,” said South Point sports book director Bert Osborne, “but the teasers hurt us as did the Seattle money-line.”

The Seahawks had been as high as six-point favorites, but closed -4.5 at most sports books. Had the Vikings won 12-10, it would have destroyed a huge chunk of remaining teasers that had Seattle +1.5 to pick ‘em.

Osborne said the Seahawks, who were the biggest favorites of the weekend, was the most heavily bet teaser and parlay game of weekend. Seattle had been a popular choice at -230 on all money-line parlays and the missed field goal allowed several to cash with the Saturday’s two favorites -- Kansas City and Pittsburgh -- winning.

“Today (Sunday) was okay, said CG TechnologyVP of risk management Jason Simbal. “The Vikings covering for us was good, but it would have been better if they won. We went red/red (any side/total decision) into the last game because of parlays, but were guaranteed a winning day once the Vikings got there.”

Most books opened the Packers -1 or pick ‘em but by kickoff, enough Redskins straight bet action had pushed the Redskins to -1.5 which made them the only home favorites of the weekend. After the Redskins jumped out to early 11-0 lead, most Washington bettors had an uneasy feeling about their wager just because the Redskins had already squandered so many scoring opportunities. The Packers end up outscoring Washington 35-8 after spotting them the lead, which ended Green Bay’s two-game losing streak and Washington’s four-game winning streak.

“The last game of these playoff weekends is always rough because so much risk is built up from the first three games,” said Osborne, “and we had equal action on the Packers and Redskins, so we still managed to do okay with it.”

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