Beak Week redux & déjà vu: Seahawks open as road underdogs against the Cardinals

Seattle opened as a 2-1/2 point underdog when they hosted Arizona in Week 6. Three weeks later, the Hawks open as 2-1/2 point underdogs when they travel to the House of Horrors State Farm Stadium in Scottsdale, Arizona for the rematch.

Déjà vu, and welcome to Beak Week redux.

Three weeks ago, the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals had matching records (2 up, 3 down) and were locked in a 3-way tie with the Rams for last place in the NFC West.

This time around, the Seahawks (+130) are alone in first place with a 5-3 record while the Cardinals (-150) are alone in last place at 3-5.

Yet, despite the Seahawks’ 2-game advantage in the standings and their 19-9 head-to-head victory the first time around, DraftKings Sportsbook has the Cardinals as the favorites this week.

For some context on that, there are 13 games scheduled in Week 9 and in eleven of those thirteen games, the team with the higher winning percentage is favored. The only exceptions are:

• Los Angeles Rams at Tampa Bay
• Seattle at Arizona

Go figure.

For what it’s worth, Seattle is 5-3 against the spread this season, including 2-1 as the favorite and 3-2 as the underdog, while Arizona is 1-1 as the favorite and 4-4 against the spread overall.

Field Gulls will undoubtedly have a number of articles previewing this rematch over the next few days, but here are some morsels to nibble on today:

Wins and Losses

• The Seahawks lead the all-time series 24 to 22 (with one grotesque tie).
• Prior to the Seahawks’ Week 6 win, the road team had won 6 straight games in this series.
• During the Pete Carroll/John Schneider era, the Seahawks are 8-3-1 against the Cardinals in Arizona (and 0-1 against the rest of the league).

Points

• The Cardinals have yet to score a first quarter touchdown and have managed to put only 9 points on the scoreboard in the first quarter through their first 8 games (1 field goal in each of their last 3 games).
• Unsurprisingly, given the previous morsel, the Cardinals have a first half point differential of minus-50 (67 points scored, 117 allowed). After the break, they are plus-22 (115 scored, 93 allowed), including their 6-0 advantage in overtime (Week 2).
• By comparison, Seattle is plus-30 in the first quarter (61-31), plus-17 in the first half (123-106), and minus-6 after the break (87-93).

But ...

• Since their defensive turnaround, which started against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 6, the Seahawks are plus-19 in the first half (43-24) and plus-19 in the second half (40-21).

Last but not least, the Over/Under on the Seahawks v. Cardinals game is 49.5 points which just so happens to be the highest Over/Under of the week.

Go Hawks!