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PrintEach week throughout the NFL regular season, we’ll be providing our public perception rankings, a 1-through-32 look at the teams that might be overvalued or undervalued by Joe Public bettors.
The question, as always with these rankings, is: “If Team A were playing against Team B in a pick ‘em on a neutral field, which team would the majority of people bet on?”
In Week 7, the Texans maintain the top spot despite losing to Green Bay last weekend, while the Browns end a four-week stay in the cellar after notching an upset against Cincinnati for their first win of the season.
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On the Rise: New York Giants (8th to 4th). It’s time to get on board the bandwagon. For whatever reason, it took a commanding victory at San Francisco for bettors to finally realize that the defending Super Bowl champions are actually a pretty good team. When the Giants bring their “A game,” they’re probably the best team in the league. The problem, of course, is they’re wildly inconsistent in the regular season.
Free Falling: Baltimore Ravens (5th to 9th). How can a 5-1 team not be getting a ton of love? When the defense is ravaged with injuries and bettors are starting to question the ability of Joe Flacco and Ray Rice to truly carry this team. The Ravens are now 7-point underdogs at Houston this week after opening at +4.5 in last week’s look-ahead lines.
With another win … The Washington Redskins could vault themselves into the Top 12. Mostly because another victory means winning at the Giants this week, which would surely turn some eyeballs in the NFL. They have the quarterback that’s necessary to be a hugely public team, and now the defense seems to be showing some positive signs after dealing with injuries the first few weeks.
With another loss … The Pittsburgh Steelers could go into the “free-falling” category. Road losses to the Broncos, Raiders and Titans don’t exactly have bettors confident in this perennial power, evidenced by the Bengals being one of the most popular LVH consensus picks as 2.5-point home underdogs on Sunday Night Football.
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For people who like these rankings in plain-old text form, here ya go.
1. Texans (Last week: 1)
2. Patriots (2)
3. Packers (6)
4. Giants (8)
5. Falcons (3)
6. 49ers (4)
7. Bears (7)
8. Broncos (11)
9. Ravens (5)
10. Cowboys (12)
11. Steelers (9)
12. Eagles (10)
13. Seahawks (15)
14. Saints (14)
15. Redskins (17)
16. Chargers (13)
17. Jets (21)
18. Dolphins (23)
19. Lions (19)
20. Bengals (16)
21. Vikings (18)
22. Bills (26)
23. Rams (25)
24. Colts (20)
25. Cardinals (22)
26. Buccaneers (27)
27. Panthers (25)
28. Raiders (28)
29. Browns (32)
30. Titans (31)
31. Chiefs (29)
32. Jaguars (31)
