Bills vs. Rams: Betting Analysis and Spread Pick

Buffalo Bills (10-2 SU, 8-4 ATS) vs. Los Angeles Rams (6-6 SU, 5-7 ATS)
NFL Football Week 14
Date/Time: Sunday, December 8, 2024 at 4:25PM EST
Where: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, California
TV: Fox

The Buffalo Bills come into SoFi Stadium on Sunday for an NFC matchup with the Los Angeles Rams in week 14 action from Inglewood. The Bills are coming off a 35-10 smashing of the 49ers last week, winning their 7th in a row as they consolidate their contender status once again, putting themselves in a position to duke it out with the Chiefs for the top seed. The Rams are 6-6, coming off a 21-14 win on the road against the Saints on Sunday. After a 1-4 start to the season, they’ve become dangerous as they make a push in the NFC West, still in the mix with no one in that division running away with it. Can they score the big upset at home or will the Bills once again romp?

Rams: A Dangerous Opponent

The Rams can be more dangerous than people think. With their coaching and ability to make a lot of what they have, they can be a deceiving team to assess week-to-week. Their offense is the envy of a lot of teams, bolstered by a veteran QB who still has some life in him in Matthew Stafford, two stud receivers in Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua, along with a really good back in Kyren Williams. We see a no-name defense often times exceeding what a person would normally project. Since week two, only the Eagles have put up more than 24 points against this group.

When the Rams are relatively intact like this personnel-wise, they’re not a breeze. Sure, they’re inconsistent. There’s a reason they’re not perceived as contenders. There are off-weeks where despite the different stars they have littered on their offense, they hit a wall against some of the better defenses they face. This Buffalo defense very well could be one of them. We see the Rams often struggle when an aspect of their offense is stripped from them and if the Rams can’t get Williams uncorked in this spot, it’s going to put a lot of stress on the rest of the unit to pick up the slack. Still, there are a lot of teams in the league at or around the .500 mark, like the Rams, who have far less going for them.

Giving Buffalo Their Full Respect

It’s important not to confuse star power with effectiveness when assessing the Bills. Sure, they have the high-profile Josh Allen, who is considered by some to be the best quarterback in the biz. But outside of him, there are no players who really receive star treatment. James Cook is coming on, but he’s not a game-by-game dynamo; he’s more of a player with big games here and there. Their collection of pass-catchers is also more of a collective than a star-laden unit. They just ensure that between Khalil Shakir, Keon Coleman (questionable), Amari Cooper, and others, they can get it done.

Allen can certainly light it up aerially, and that’s something that is always on the table with this Buffalo offense. But we see a lot of juice on the ground, with Cook and Allen doing their thing, with the supporting cast getting involved, as well. We see guys like Ray Davis getting more involved and it’s becoming an offense where it’s hard to keep track of all the different ways they can get you. We’ve seen this in the last few years where top teams in the conference, like the Chiefs and the Bills, get away from this more condensed production tree. Their offenses become more murky and less dependent on individual players. The urge is to think it’s worse, but it sometimes almost seems better to have this cabaret approach. It’s working well for the Bills right now—that’s for sure.

Buffalo’s defense isn’t merely good. They can chip in with some major contributions to the game. In three of their last six matchups, they’ve held the opponent to exactly 10 points three times. They are not invulnerable, however. While this doesn’t seem like the best spot on paper for the Rams’ run game and Kyren Williams, there have been enough big runs registered against this Buffalo defense in the last month to lend some hope to that approach. And it’s not like we haven’t seen some teams take it to the Bills aerially, something Stafford could be able to do with his weapons.

Food for Thought

I’m not sure I’d get too caught up with the urgency quotient in this game. The urge could be to see a 6-6 Rams team and ascribe to them all the urgency. But since going to the system where only the one-seed gets a bye in each conference, even a 10-2 team like Buffalo, where previously you’d see them as a team with some room to spare, will be pushing the issue. Still, one wouldn’t want to discount the Rams’ predicament entirely. It took a lot for them to push through their early-season issues to even get to this point where they’re in the mix. It might not be so easy.

Take the Points

This seems counterintuitive to choose this moment to go against a Bills team that has covered the spread in six of its last seven games, easily exceeding most of those spreads by a comfortable amount. This is quite a departure, though, going from the snow-covered ground of Orchard Park to SoCal to take on a team that might be rounding into their crunch-time form. While the Buffalo offense should get theirs, I suspect the Rams can answer with their own weapons to the extent that this one is kept competitive, with the Rams getting the cover at home. I’ll take the Rams.

Loot’s Prediction to Cover the Point Spread:

I’m betting on the Los Angeles Rams plus 4.5 points.