{"id":34852,"date":"2014-08-11T11:17:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T16:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=34852"},"modified":"2014-08-11T11:26:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T16:26:39","slug":"nfl-preseason-week-2-picks-jacksonville-jaguars-vs-chicago-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nfl-preseason-week-2-picks-jacksonville-jaguars-vs-chicago-bears-34852\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Preseason Week 2 Picks: Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Chicago Bears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Chicago Bears
\nThursday, 8\/14\/14, 8:00 PM EST
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Chicago -6
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Chicago -4
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 38.5
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 39
\nOdds Courtesy of 5Dimes<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bears<\/a>
The Chicago Bears looked very good on offense in Week 1 of the 2014 NFL preseason<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jacksonville picked up a 16-10 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as 2.5-point home favorites in their preseason opener, which is important to consider when making your NFL betting picks Thursday night.\u00a0 The Jaguars were impressed by first-round selection Blake Bortles, but the former UCF signal-caller will still be listed No. 2 on the depth chart\u2014completing 7 of 11 passes for 117 yards.\u00a0 Offensively, the team is hoping to get better consistency out of wide receiver Marqise Lee, as he wasn\u2019t even targeted in the passing game.<\/p>\n

The Jaguars first-team defense was very impressive, as they held the Buccaneers to just a single first down, with linebacker Paul Posluszny giving a lot of the credit to the defensive line play.\u00a0 Jacksonville made some serious upgrades at that particular position during the offseason, which can\u2019t be ignored when looking over the pro football odds page.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to keep a watchful eye on the injury report this week, as there\u2019s an outside chance that running back Toby Gerhart could see some action, but he\u2019s been out for 10 days due to a hip flexor.<\/p>\n

Chicago also opened up in the win column to start its second year under head coach Marc Trestman\u2014improving to 3-2 SU and 2-3 ATS over that span.\u00a0 The Bears\u2019 quarterbacks combined to complete 29 of 44 passes for 399 yards and four touchdowns with a passer rating of 106.9 in last week\u2019s 34-28 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles as one-point home underdogs.\u00a0 The performance was markedly different from the squad\u2019s 2013 preseason opener at Carolina, but that\u2019s too be expected now that the roster is comfortable with the system on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

The Bears need to be a bit concerned about the running game in this matchup, as they gained just 16 yards on 12 carries with starters and second-team players on the field.\u00a0 Chicago has better depth throughout the roster than last year, but that\u2019s starting to wear down, especially on the offensive line.<\/p>\n

Sports bettors will likely back the Jaguars due to the Bears being 1-11 SUATS in preseason home games when coming off such a contest a week earlier.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the NFL handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Chicago Bears Thursday, 8\/14\/14, 8:00 PM EST Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Chicago -6 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Chicago -4 Opening Total:\u00a0 38.5 Current Total:\u00a0 39 Odds Courtesy of 5Dimes Jacksonville picked up a 16-10 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as 2.5-point home favorites in their preseason opener, which is important to consider when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,132],"tags":[7745,359,297,7858,31,8422],"class_list":["post-34852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nfl-handicapping","tag-blake-bortles","tag-chicago-bears","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-marc-trestman","tag-nfl","tag-toby-gerhart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34854,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions\/34854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}