CAROLINA PANTHERS @ INDIANAPOLIS COLTS 
Vegas Line: Colts + 3
Rob’s Line: Colts + 5.5
How tasty does that look? Vegas only asking Carolina to cover by little more than a field goal. All the Panthers need to do (like anything’s easy in the NFL!) is play for 60 minutes like they did for the first 30 in Detroit last week and we’ll be cleaning up on this one. Has a 2-8 team ever possessed the league’s seventh ranked running game and eighth ranked pass offense? The Panthers are the proud owners of exactly that so why can’t they walk in to Indy and trample all over a Colts defense that ranks 29th in the league?
As I’ve written numerous times previously, the reason Carolina’s run game is ranked so highly is due to the not inconsiderable skills of quarterback Cam Newton, who’s rushed for 411 yards at 5.3 yards a pop with 9 touchdowns already this season. He’s only 60 yards behind DeAngelo Williams, the team’s leading rusher and while he’s clearly enjoying his rookie season, the Panthers haven’t enjoyed the past few weeks, entering this one on a three game skid that culminated in last week’s shocker in Detroit where they were outscored by the Lions 35-8 in the second half.
Indianapolis is, of course, on its own skid, a mighty ten game losing streak and a loss here would take them even closer to being in prime position to draft Andrew Luck first overall next April. Having so little at quarterback with Peyton Manning out for the season, why didn’t the Colts make a waiver claim for Kyle Orton during the week? His release from Denver has seen him land in Kansas City, but if the Indianapolis front office really didn’t want to go 0-16 this season, they surely would’ve at least put a claim in. My own opinion is that they want to make sure of getting Luck and they’ve quietly gone even further down that path these past few days.
The only real way I can see Indy threatening to protect the three points on offer in Vegas is by running on a Panthers defense that ranks 30th against the rush, but relying on Delone Carter, Donald Brown and a banged up Joseph Addai to protect those points, should you find value in them, is a risky strategy. I feel much happier asking Carolina to win by four behind Newton, receiver Steve Smith and a team knowing that it’s making progress heading into next season…albeit a steady progress of late.
The Colts may be in position for Luck, but what if he doesn’t want to play for them? John Elway did exactly that to the original Baltimore Colts in 1983 so you can bet that not everybody associated with the franchise will be sitting pretty until Luck actually dons the uniform.
OK, away from 1983 and back to the present...the Panthers to cover.
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