BEST LINE: Bet365 -1 -110

Posted Friday at 1:30 PM EST and updated Saturday at 7:30 AM EST. 

Saturday, Dec 20. 8:25 PM EST. The San Francisco 49ers were eliminated from the playoffs last weekend. In terms of making the playoffs, the Chargers are living on a dream and a prayer but they are not dead yet. The public loves to play the “must-win” angle on teams still alive while that’s one of our favorite angles to fade. Everything we look for in a game applies here to San Francisco. First, the 49ers stock is lower now than it’s been all year or any year for that matter in quite some time. San Fran has dropped three in a row overall and four in a row against the spread. The 49ers last win was by four measly points at home against the train-wreck Redskins. The entire betting world hates these 49ers right now and as we often say, the best time to jump on a team is when everyone else is jumping off.

The Chargers stock is not soaring but it’s not low either after very decent efforts against New England and Denver the past two weeks. The public will certainly forgive a team for losing to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning over the past two games, especially when they were close both times. In fact, San Diego’s defense held those two prolific offenses to 23 and 22 points respectively. That sticks out. Prior to that, the Bolts had won three straight. Based on the past two week results, San Diego has plenty of appeal here while the 49ers have none and we’re sure the public is going to eat up the points in this Saturday night prime time affair. What is lost in all of this is that the Chargers scored just 24 points combined against that aforementioned pair over the past two weeks and those games were both in San Diego. The Chargers have some ugly road games this year, which includes a 37-0 loss at Miami not to mention a three-point win in Oakland. When we see a number crashing (line opened at -2½) like this one it peaks our interest because it suggests to us an overreaction to something we may have otherwise missed. The reality for the Chargers is that two demoralizing home losses in succession is not easy to bounce back from. The Chargers hung their hats on winning one of those two games. Now they’re not braced for a big statement game in prime time, instead, they just flopped in two while the 49ers will leave nothing on the table in an attempt to not only win a game but to shut up all of their many critics.

Recommendation: Line is likely to rise a little bit after the announcement of a couple of key injuries to the Chargers. We put no weight on such injuries but the public does so our recommendation would be to bet it now.