When you woke up this morning, the calendar flipped to December and you know what that means, right? It’s officially the time of year where every other commercial is either the Lexus “December to Remember sales event,” or maybe Toyotathon, Coca-Cola with the polar bears or Mean Joe Greene, or those long Chick Fil A commercials that have absolutely nothing to do with chicken, fast food, or really anything pertaining to their business.
Regardless, everyone needs an advent calendar. Your choice might be one containing alcohol, treats for the dog or cat, candy for the kids, or maybe just some other gift that someone buys for each day. With that in mind, our Bet Basics family wanted to do something similar and provide an advent calendar of our own, from us to you. So each day for the next 25, we will give out the day’s best bet, parlay, or maybe even some betting tips or strategies we find as well. After all, we are here to help and you are hopefully here to have some fun and win some bets along the way. However, you’ll have to unwrap it each day, because who really knows what’s behind the number?
So as we start to wind down 2022 and spend our days looking at endless amounts of people posting their “Spotify Wrapped” as if we truly cared, let’s close out the year with some more fun, comedy, and winning bets. It’s not often that an advent calendar pays you, but that’s the beauty of it all here. So take that winning cash and enjoy yourself this holiday season. Without further ado, let’s take a look and see what’s behind the number ‘1’.
Day 1 – Best Bet for Thursday Night Football
So the sports gods didn’t want us to go too crazy on day one, leaving us with only two games between the NBA and NFL. Sounds like we have a few real Scrooge’s around here. Regardless, we’ve had a good NFL season to this point and we want to kick off the advent calendar with a bang, so here is tonight’s best bet for Thursday Night Football in New England.
In our sweat free bet on FanDuel, we opted to select Stefon Diggs’ receiving yards for the parlay, but that’s because we had to leave room for welcoming Isaiah McKenzie to the advent calendar and thus, day one’s best bet. You can find McKenzie’s receiving yards listed at 30.5 on FanDuel priced at -110, which is the best value you’ll find right now. Most of the other sportsbooks have the Bills’ slot receiver with a line of 31.5, so FanDuel is giving us a one yard cushion in a game of inches. Sounds festive, right? Not sure what that means? Well, we’ll explain it below.
So here’s the logic. McKenzie just put together his best game of the season on Thanksgiving and gets a matchup against a team that he thrived against last year. For reference, McKenzie recorded six catches on 10 targets, for 96 receiving yards and a touchdown. In his last two games against the Patriots, he had 11 catches on 12 targets for 125 receiving yards and a touchdown in one game, before adding three catches for 45 yards in the playoffs.
As we all know, 45 and 125 are bigger numbers than 30.5, which means it’s hard not to like our chances. McKenzie also played 73% of the snaps last week, the most playing time he’s received all year. He’s also gone over this number in two of the last three games. That’s a lot of numbers, even for a math class, but trust us, they are all good numbers for our chances of winning this bet.
Considering how lethal the Patriots’ pass russ can be, it only makes sense that Josh Allen will have to get the ball out quick and that could be to the speedy guy in the slot.
We are only going to place a straight bet, meaning we won’t have to rely on any other players to do their jobs in this game to cash our ticket. So let’s hope that McKenzie earns that paycheck tonight, delivering us a nice modest payout and kicking off a December to remember of our own. Most importantly, don’t forget to come back tomorrow to see what Day 2 has in store.
Best Bet: Isaiah McKenzie (BUF) OVER 30.5 receiving yards (-110) on FanDuel
This wager means that we need McKenzie to record at least 31 receiving yards to win as anything less than that would be a losing bet. The -110 price means that in order to win $100, you’d need to bet $110.