Some Dumb Houston Texans Odds

A couple of months ago I was in New Orleans to have a little bit of fun, a little bit of food (okay a lotta bit), and a little bit of booze (ibid). But I was also there right in the middle of March Madness, which meant that I could finally do what I’ve been longing to do since 2018: bet on sports legally outside of Vegas.

Now this is probably no big deal to a lot of you, I’m sure. Many of you, I’m sure, consult less-than-legal gambling sites or go across state lines to bet on games, or you’re lucky enough to live in a state where sports betting is legal.

It’s technically legal here in Washington state, but they have a kind of nonsense way of doing it here. See, you can only use the sports betting mobile apps if you’re on the grounds of a casino which uses that app. So you can use the app, but since you’re already somewhere with a sports book, it’s kind of pointless.

Anyway, back to my original story. While I was in New Orleans, I was able to bet on March Madness games using a mobile sports app (DraftKings was my weapon of choice, if you’re curious).

I bet heavily on St. Peter’s and my alma mater Houston Cougars and won pretty serious coin through free bets they offered. And ever since then I’ve been—well, obsessed isn’t the right word, but my interest in sports betting has taken a sharp rise since March.

That includes spending idle moments looking at sports books to see what kind of odds are available for my favorite football team. You might think that because we’re in the doldrums of football season that there wouldn’t be much in the way of football odds out there and brother (or sister) you would be mistaken. The sports books are littered with amusing prop bets that don’t have a chance of coming true for the Texans.

So I figured I’d list a few of them right now. For the record, these are coming, again, from the DraftKings book because why mess with a good thing, right?

We’ll only look at a couple because these odds will obviously change over time and I expect the odds on Texans players will change along with them.

QB Most Yards Thrown for a Season

Davis Mills - +6000

Honestly, this one kind of surprised me a little bit. I would have thought he’d have much worse odds; instead he’s sandwiched between the two starting quarterbacks for the New York teams, Zack Wilson (+6000) and Daniel Jones (+8000), which is good enough for right smack in the middle of the list. This would be heartening except for the fact that all the quarterbacks below him are either backups or starters for really bad teams.

::looks at last sentence::
::looks at Texans::

Moving on...

Division Winners

AFC South:

Indianapolis Colts: -125
That Team Out East: +175
Jacksonville Jaguars: +700
Houston Texans: +3000

Hoooo boy that’s a drop, isn’t it? I mean, I get it, the Texans have about as much of a chance of winning the division this year as Cal McNair does of explaining one business concept he learned from the degree his father bought for him at Rice. But still to go from 700 to 3000? That is an impressive nosedive and I might be willing to throw down 10 bucks on the Texans just on the stupid off-chance they somehow beat the odds and win the division. You might say this isn’t wise. But if it were wise, it wouldn’t be called gambling.

Offensive Rookie of the Year

Dameon Pierce: +2000
John Metchie III: +5000

I was really surprised to see Pierce rated so high for this prop bet. He’s situated behind Malik Willis (That Team out East +2000) and Isaiah Spiller (LA Chargers +2500). It makes sense in that Pierce will be a focal point for the Texans offense this year and maybe he might do more than just run into a log jam straight up the middle which we’ve been so used to over the last few years. But for really stupid odds, you can’t go wrong with Metchie, who is the only other Texan on the board for OROY. Wasting 10 bucks on the incredibly unlikely chance of winning 50 grand? Sign me the hell up.

Well that’s it for this edition of dumb Texans odds, maybe we’ll visit the DraftKings sports book again just to see what other amusing bets are out there.