Desert Storm

After a heart breaking overtime loss to the rival New York Jets, the Miami Dolphins now must regroup and travel out west to face the undefeated Arizona Cardinals in the desert. When the schedule first game out, this game did not appear to be an extremely difficult matchup, however after beating 3 very good teams the Cardinals appear to be the real deal.

The main reason for the Cardinals success has been their shut down defense, which has only allowed 13.3 points per game. They have had a bend but not break attitude and the Dolphins offense which is ranked 20th in scoring with 21.7 points per game is going to have a long afternoon. Luckily the Dolphins defense is not to shabby themselves, which will lead to a low scoring affair. The current total for the game is 39, which at first glance looks low, however with these two stingy defenses, sports gambling fans should stick with wagering on the under.

Reggie Bush appears to be a game time decision, but even if he plays he is going to be used sparingly, so Lamar Miller and Daniel Thomas will need to significantly step up their game if the phins want to have any chance of winning this game. Expect the Dolphins to run the ball early and often, however it would be nice to see a few trick plays like a flea flicker or something to take advantage of a Cardinals defense that will be crowding the box. As with any game between two very good defenses, the team that wins the turnover battle will most likely win this game.

The line opened up the week at Miami +6 1/2 and is now down to +5 1/2. At the moment this means sports gambling fans have been taking the phins getting the points. However, I would be interested to see what the line closes at before game time, because there was a very interesting line movement in regards to the Jets game last week, that proved to be right on the money. The line against the Jets began at -3 for the Jets and was all the way down to -1 early Sunday. This meant that there was heavy action on the Dolphins, however by game time on Sunday the line was all the way back up to -3. This is what the sports gambling world calls a steam play. A group of sharp bettors began wagering on the Dolphins, and as a result every book in the world moved the line down to -1. Then this same group of sharp bettors, once the line was -1 for the Jets, went ahead and wagered 10x the amount they did on the Dolphins, because they wanted the Jets the entire time, however they wanted it at a more advantageous line of -1, so they needed to disguise their true intentions by picking Miami first. The rest is history the Jets won by -3, which screwed everyone that had the original and final lines, and these sharp bettors made out like bandits. The reason I bring this up is because it will be interesting to see if the line goes back up to -6 1/2 for the Cardinals by game time, because if that is the case, sports gambling fans should not be surprised if the Cards win this game by 6.