NFL Week 6: How To Bet On Bucs Vs. Eagles And How Jon Gruden Ruined Everyone’s ‘First Head Coach To Be Fired’ Bets

Former Raiders head coach Gruden absolutely murdered everyone’s first-head-coach-fired futures bets.

Adam Greene

Oct 13, 2021

Now-former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden
Getty Images

You know, I had some ideas on what to hone in on at the beginning of the midweek column before the clock struck midnight on Monday.

We had the weirdest kicking week in NFL history. I’m not kidding. From Thursday to Monday night, we saw 13 missed extra points in a single week (which undoubtedly impacted many wagers made at MaximBet). That had never happened before.

And counting the Baltimore Ravens’ comeback win in OT against the Indianapolis Colts on Monday, we’ve had 19 games won in the final minute or overtime this season, the most through the first five weeks of a season ever.

The Arizona Cardinals are 5-0, the league’s only undefeated team, and their star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, after their 17-10 win over the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, now has 770 career receptions, the most of any player by the age of 30 in NFL history.

And speaking of wideouts, Cincinnati Bengals rookie Ja’Marr Chase is one of only two players in NFL history to record 400-plus receiving yards and five touchdowns in his first five games. The other is Hall of Famer Randy Moss.

I could have zeroed in on any of those storylines and been fine, delivered some gags and got on with picking the Thursday Night Football game, but as the poet Robert Burns wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

And Jon Gruden agley-ed his gang aft all over my writing plans.

Jon Gruden Resigns as Las Vegas Raiders Head Coach

Gruden resigned as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders Monday night after emails from 2011-2018 surfaced of him being racist, homophobic, misogynist, pro concussions, against a player’s right to peaceful protest, and pretty much everything else you could think of outside of kicking a dog, knocking an ice cream cone out of a kid’s hand or flipping off your mom to her face.

Hey, I haven’t seen the actual emails. He might have done all that too.

But here’s what else he did; absolutely murdered everyone’s first-head-coach-fired futures bets.

In the preseason, Gruden had +1200 odds to get fired, not even in the Top 6 on the board. Denver Broncos head coach Vic Fangio was the odds-on favorite, followed by Mike McCarthy, Kliff Kingsbury, Matt Nagy and Zac Taylor. Ironically, every one of those guys seem pretty safe now.

So, all those bets are just dead, but the people Gruden really screwed were those that bet Urban Meyer as the first head coach fired at +5000 because that son of a bitch was about to pay off huge.

Yeah. Let’s not forget about that asshole. The clock’s still ticking in Jacksonville and Meyer is probably the next one to go, but to sacrifice that kind of payout over Gruden showing that he’s the NFL’s version of your crazy QAnon uncle that got banned from Facebook was a twist and turn none of us saw coming.

There are bad beats, and then there’s losing a +5000 bet because Jon Gruden accidentally hit “reply all” on his favorite Bryan Glazer slash fiction.

Frank Caliendo wept.

Thursday Night Football Betting Odds

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-7) at Philadelphia Eagles

The Buccaneers are 2-3 against the spread this season and they were home in both games they covered. Philadelphia’s only two wins are on the road, though they have put up some decent points over their last three outings, averaging 24 per contest in that span.

Tampa’s defensive backfield is so weak that they signed Richard Sherman off the street and barely let him get into his jock before tossing him on the field against the Miami Dolphins last Sunday.

I don’t think the Eagles will win, but I also don’t think the Bucs will cover. But if you go against me here, I can’t blame you. Tom Brady likes to fuck with me specifically. I think it’s personal…at least for me it is.

Buccaneers 24, Eagles 20

Adam Greene is @TheFirstMan on Twitter.

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