NFL: The Best Betting Advice for Monday Night Football between the Lions and Raiders

Detroit is ready for primetime.

The Lions get the marquee match-up on the NFL schedule Monday night hosting the Las Vegas Raiders in a game that will kickoff at 8:15 at Ford Field. ESPN will have the full broadcast, and expect lots of attention paid to a 5-2 Lions team that leads its division.

You can find plenty of markets open on the contest on the best Michigan Sportsbooks. Caesars lists the Lions as 7.5-point favorites, slightly down from earlier in the week but that’s because of the uncertain status of Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. BetMGM Sportsbook has the over/under total at 46.5.

The Lions have a long, storied history on Monday Night Football. Let’s look at some key betting metrics entering the game.

We keep saying it, but the under is the best bet in the NFL this season, and the same applies for Monday Night Football.

There have been nine Monday Night Football games heading into Week 8 (the NFL did doubleheaders in Week 2 and Week 3) and the under has hit eight of the nine times. The only game to hit the over was the Week 2 win by the Steelers over the Browns.

Home teams are 5-4 on the moneyline on Monday Night Football this season. Favorites have covered the spread five of nine times, with one game being a push.

This season the Lions are 5-2 against the spread and four of their games have hit the over. The Raiders are 3-3-1 against the spread and two games have hit the over.

As one of the oldest franchises in the NFL, the Lions have been a perennial performer on the NFL’s showcase game. Monday Night Football started in 1970 on the ABC network, and was a primetime sensation.

The broadcast has since shifted to ESPN, and the concept has become diluted a bit with games now on Sunday night and Thursday night.

But in ‘true’ Monday Night Football games, the Lions are 16-22-1 overall. They played in the third game ever on MNF at Tiger Stadium beating the Bears. They played in the first ever MNF tie in 1971 against the Packers. The first regular season game at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1975 was on Monday Night Football (the Cowboys stomped the Lions 36-10).

Detroit has hosted MNF at three separate stadiums now: Tiger Stadium, the Silverdome and Ford Field.

We already broke down our best bet for the Lions this week – it’s the under, of course.

Detroit is coming off a big loss to the Baltimore Ravens on the road, but they still have one of the best rushing defenses in the NFL and quarterbacks in Jared Goff. Las Vegas has been inconsistent. On paper, the Lions are the better team, and big favorite, so they should win. But the NFL never follows a script, not even on Monday nights in primetime.