Seahawks’ lofty spread over Rams adds up — almost

By Jim Moore

The Seahawks are 6-1 overall and 5-2 against the spread, terrific numbers in contrast to 3-4, my record in predicting the outcome of their games this year.

I’ve already blown more games against the spread than all of last year when I went 15-3. The latest casualty was taking the Cardinals and six points in a game the Seahawks won 34-22 and covered the spread.

I’ve lost taking the Panthers, Jaguars, Colts and Cardinals with the points. I have no idea what to do this week – the Seahawks are favored by 11.5 over the Rams, making them one of the biggest road favorites in the history of “Monday Night Football”.

With regular starter Sam Bradford out for the season with an injury, Kellen Clemens will quarterback the Rams against the Seahawks on “Monday Night Football”. (AP)

Usually I love a “Monday Night Football” home underdog, and you’d think the Rams would be acceptable enough since they’re 3-4 overall and 2-1 at the Edward Jones Dome. There’s also precedence – they beat the Seahawks 19-13 in St. Louis last year.

And in a look at common opponents, the Rams rolled past the Texans in Houston 38-13 while the Seahawks were fortunate to win 23-20 in overtime.

But the Rams are clearly inferior to the Hawks at full strength, and now they’re trying to win the game with backup quarterback Kellen Clemens making his first start since 2011.

How confident can the Rams be in his chances when they made a call to Brett Favre to see if the 44-year-old future Hall of Famer could come out of retirement?

As you’ve no doubt heard, there are tickets available for $6 to watch Monday night’s game in St. Louis, mainly because of Game 5 of the World Series taking place at the same time across town.

I was to the point of hoping that the Cardinals win Game 4 so they’d have a chance to clinch the Series with a win Monday night, further decreasing a home-field advantage for the Rams.

When you look at all of the tangible factors, it’s hard to make a case for the Rams. The Legion of Boom gobbles up starting quarterbacks and spits them out – imagine what they’ll do to a backup like Clemens, who likes to take risks.

In almost every statistical category, the Rams rank in the bottom third of the league, low-lighted by their total offense and rush defense, each ranked 30th.

The Rams allow 126.4 yards a game, which means Marshawn Lynch should race past the century mark while giving Russell Wilson all kinds of play-action opportunities, too.

You can see why the Seahawks are big favorites – in their six victories, they have won by an average of 15 points.

In spite of everything I’ve written so far, I’m going to take the Rams for two reasons:

1) This might be reading way too much into it, but at least initially when a team loses a star player, the other players know they have to suck it up and be at their best to have a chance for success. I’m thinking that will either be a factor in this game or I was out of my flippin’ mind for thinking it would be.

2) I can’t think of a good reason why anyone would walk into a Las Vegas sports book and say: “Gimme the Rams and the points for $500.” Which leads me to believe that most of the bets are being taken on the Seahawks, giving the Rams more points than they should be getting, if that makes sense. And if it doesn’t, sorry, it’s barely making sense to me.

Point being, they tell you this all the time in Vegas, the “public” is usually wrong, and the public, in this case, is all over the Seahawks.

Which is why I’m taking the Rams.

Prediction: Seahawks 20, Rams 10.

Season record against the spread: 3-4.

The Go 2 Guy also writes for his website, jimmoorethego2guy.com, and kitsapsun.com. You can reach Jim at jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @cougsgo.