- The XFL returns with Week 5 action, and Sunday’s games are the most hotly contested of the week.
- The St. Louis BattleHawks are 5.5-point road favorites over the D.C. Defenders.
- The Los Angeles Wildcats are 2.5-point home favorites over the Tampa Bay Vipers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The XFL is back with Week 5 of the season, and once again Saturday and Sunday both hold two excellent XFL games.
This column will focus on Sunday’s games, which should be excellent showcases for the still-new XFL, as the league landscape has shifted drastically in the last two weeks.
St. Louis BattleHawks vs. DC Defenders Betting Preview
Three weeks ago, Jordan Ta’amu of the St. Louis BattleHawks and Cardale Jones of the DC Defenders were widely regarded as two of the best three quarterbacks in the XFL.
For Ta’amu, this is still, perhaps, true. For Jones, it is decidedly not.
The Defenders' offense has scored a total of nine points over the last two weeks, and Jones looks spent. He lumbers around the field, missing passes that he should make, and then walks over to the bench, upset.
Unsurprisingly - given the Defenders’ slide – the BattleHawks are favored going into the game (-5.5 on the spread and -220 on the moneyline).
The Defenders are +170 on the moneyline.
The over/under line for this game is set notably pretty low, at 38.5 points. This likely reflects the loss of faith in the quality of the DC offense – if one team can’t score points at all, it’s pretty hard to hit a high over.
Still, this game is between the number two and number three teams in the XFL, according to oddsmakers. The BattleHawks have +270 odds to win the XFL Championship, while the Defenders boast +400 odds.
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Look for those odds to change drastically following the result of this game, as it has major implications for the rest of the season.
Tampa Bay Vipers vs. Los Angeles Wildcats Odds Breakdown
The Vipers are back from the dead!
The team claimed their first victory last week in Week 4 and now appear to be a genuine threat to the Los Angeles Wildcats.
The Wildcats are at home, and yet, are only favored by 2.5 points over a Tampa Bay team that didn’t have a win until last week. On the moneyline, Tampa Bay is +120, while Los Angeles is -150.
The over/under for this game is set at 40 points. Set as the second-highest over/under of all the XFL games played this weekend, it trails only the clash between the Seattle Dragons and the Houston Roughnecks.
This game also has the smallest spread of any XFL game played this weekend, by a pretty fair margin.
In other words, the online sportsbooks think that this is the most even game of the week and the spread seems to be based mostly on the fact that one of these teams is playing at home.
These are two of the worse teams in the league – sixth and seventh place in terms of odds to win the XFL championship – so that’s not entirely a surprise. However, the over/under line being this high while both teams are this bad is an interesting anecdote in a league defined by bad quarterback play leading to low scores.
Maxwell joined the USAOnlineSportsbooks team in 2019. He focuses on creating sports betting content that informs and educates. He focuses on the NBA, the NFL, College Football and Basketball, and whatever else comes across his desk.
