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We're still a little more than three months away from the start of the 2016 NFL regular season, but since you can gamble on pretty much anything in this country any time you want, we have some win total projections for the National Football League to look at, specifically the total for the Minnesota Vikings.
The folks from the Bovada Sportsbook have released their most recently updated over/under win totals for this season. Here's what they've got for us:
NFL win total over/unders, via @BovadaLV: pic.twitter.com/Z3u6T0V4Jz
— Chris Burke (@ChrisBurke_SI) May 18, 2016
At this time last year, the sharps had the Vikings at 7.5 wins, and we told you that the "over" was the ridiculously easy play. Even though the number for the Vikings this offseason has gone up a couple of wins to 9.5, it would appear that "over" is the ridiculously easy play once again.
We've gone over this in some other posts already, but it still boggles my mind that people are actively predicting that the Vikings are going to regress somehow from the 11-5 team that we saw in 2015. They're matched up against the NFC East and the AFC South. Those two divisions were the worst divisions in their respective conferences last season, and though they've improved during the offseason, there's little reason to project that they won't be the worst divisions in their respective conferences again. That alone should help the Vikings get a significant amount of the way to matching their 2015 win total.
In addition, as we've pointed out several times, this team hasn't lost anybody of any actual consequence. Their biggest loss, if you can call it that, is wide receiver Mike Wallace, who was pretty unproductive in 2015. The offensive line has been bolstered, and the wide receiver position should be improved as well. . .though, in the case of the latter, it may just be that it couldn't have gotten a heck of a lot worse. Oh, and the defense is still going to be really, really good, too.
The only thing that's going to stop the Vikings from racking up a bunch of wins this year is injuries. Obviously, you can't project those, but these over/under numbers are largely based on the supposition that everyone stays healthy and plays at full strength all season.
If you're a gambling man or woman and you can still get the Vikings at 9.5 wins on the over/under, get yourself to the counter and throw down on the "over." By the time January. . .at the latest. . .comes around, you'll be happy that you did.