Bears open as home underdogs against 49ers

The NFL schedule dropped last night and of course, there is the immediate need to break everything down, counts Ws and Ls and make predictions.

It’s all part of the round-the-calendar NFL news cycle and we’d all be lying if we said we despised it.

We all eat it up, even if the regular season is still super far away.

The other side of the schedule release is that the sportsbooks all released their opening lines on the week one NFL slate, as well as the preseason.

But I don’t recommend betting on NFL preseason games, so I’ll highlight the Chicago Bears week one game against the San Francisco 49ers at Soldier Field.

The Bears have opened as 6.5-point underdogs according to DraftKings.

For the uninitiated, that means that the 49ers would be “expected” to win by seven points by the oddsmakers.

The over/under on the game total is 42.5 points.

Chicago’s current Super Bowl odds on DraftKings are +15000 (meaning a $100 bet would pay $15,000).

For some recent context: The Bears have opened as underdogs in three of the last four seasons, the only one where they were favored was week one of the 2019 season at home against the Packers. They haven’t been a week one home underdog since week one of 2017 when they were +6.5 home underdogs to the visiting Atlanta Falcons.

They lost that game by six points.

The Bears haven’t fared well in the first game of the season in recent years. They are 1-7 in week one games since 2014, winning only against the Lions in week one of 2020.

It’s early and although I don’t think the Bears are going to be very good this year, I am still feeling the spring optimism and taking the points and the Bears.