Vikings At 49ers: Why You Don't Place Bets In April

Hat tip to our friends over at Niners Nation for noticing this first.

We often joke about the ridiculousness of certain endeavors, such as grading a draft less than 24 hours after it has taken place. Another thing that falls firmly under that heading is casinos and sportsbooks everywhere releasing betting lines for individual NFL games within hours of the schedule coming out.

In April.

Exhibit A for this insanity lies in the line for the week one matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and your Minnesota Vikings. According to the folks at OddsShark, when the numerous sportsbooks they aggregate first released the betting lines, the consensus was to install the 49ers as a 4.5-point favorite over our favorite football team.

Today, with the game just one week away? The Vikings are now favored by 2.5 points. That's a full touchdown swing from when the lines first came out. I'm not sure how many other lines for Week 1 have had that large of a shift, but I can't imagine it's very many.

The Niners, who recently celebrated one month without a player retiring, have gone through a lot of change this offseason. How much change? It got to the point where our friends at the mothership created a page to help fans visualize what would happen if their favorite team had been "Ninerized" this offseason. According to that site, to have an equivalent offseason to the Niners, the Vikings would have had to lose all of the following:

Mike Zimmer, Greg Jennings, Jarius Wright, Cordarrelle Patterson, Matt Asiata, Charlie Johnson, Phil Loadholt, Michael Harris, Sharrif Floyd, Chad Greenway, Brandon Watts, Jasper Brinkley, Audie Cole, Xavier Rhodes, Captain Munnerlyn, Marcus Sherels, and Jeff Locke.

Now, granted, not all of those players are Vikings right now, but they're basing it off of what's happened since the 2014 season came to an end. But yes, the Niners have lost a lot of personnel to retirement, cuts, disciplinary issues, and other things. I can't even begin to imagine what the roster would look like if this team took the number of hits that the Niners took this offseason.

Right now, I don't know if this is more that people are buying into the Vikings or have basically just given up on the 49ers. There's probably a pretty healthy dose of both. Hopefully the Vikings can justify those feelings. . .at least on their side. . .just one week from today at Levi's Stadium.