The nation’s sportsbooks have the Buffalo Bills as -250 road favorites against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday in one of the more anticipated matchups of this young NFL season.
As it turns out, that’s the best bet of the year. Not because the Bills are necessarily a better team, not because they’re the Super Bowl favorites, and not because this author is some Nostradamus-like prognosticator.
Nope. It’s because Josh Allen doesn’t have the letter “O” in his last name. (For the record, even if Allen is forced to sit out this game for some unforeseen reason, Bills bettors will still be in the black, as backup quarterback Case Keenum is also devoid of the letter “O.”)
At this point, dear reader, a fair question may be, “What the heck are you talking about?”
The answer, of course, is Reddit.
User chi_sweetness25 posted a most interesting factoid Wednesday: Over the course of the last 20 games, the Dolphins are 11-9. Every single game they won, the opposing starting quarterback had the letter “O” in his last name. Every single game they lost? A complete lack of Os.
This is the sort of analysis I love, since the beginning of 2021 The Dolphins have won every game against a team with a quarterback whose last name contains an O pic.twitter.com/J1RPeKk7U3
— Brendan Mathews (@BendiBendiBendi) September 22, 2022
Clearly, there is some serious juju (jojo?) happening in Miami Gardens.
A deeper look in the comments
Predictably, the comments under the post are … interesting.
“If they get Wilson, Burrow and Mahomes [in the] playoffs they could make it to the Super Bowl,” noted Emateos.
“Of all the weird ass stats that’s permeated sports in the last several decades, THIS is certainly one of them,” noted SiphenPrax.
“This is all the betting research I need for the rest of the season,” offered ATG915.
And DesertRattler summed up the thread thusly with this insightful nugget: “What are we supposed to do with this f***ing information?”
What, indeed.
Assuming the analytics hold, and barring injuries to opposing projected starters, the Dolphins are headed for a playoff-worthy 10-7 record, with wins over the Bengals, Jets, and Vikings (Joe Burrow, Joe Flacco/Zach Wilson, Kirk Cousins) on tap after this week. Of course, they’ll then get upset by the Pittsburgh Steelers, no matter if Mitch Trubisky or Kenny Pickett gets the starting nod.
And so on and so forth.
How much is this info worth?
This remarkable streak is reminiscent of last year’s famed Reddit thread concerning the Las Vegas Raiders and a coin, in which Pongislame flipped a coin to predict Raiders games, and started the season 11-0 before losing.
But clearly, this O-streak — 20 games and counting — would be more profitable.
In fact … if you took the moneyline on each game since the start of the streak, and kept rolling over the profits … well, a $10 bet from the first game would leave you with a current nest egg of … $1,047,862. (Roughly, based on historical odds peeled from a UK site and assuming the math is correct. Please note the math was done twice and the same number came up, so our confidence level is high here.)
So yes. For $10, you could’ve been a millionaire today. If O-nly.
