Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Tampa Bay +145 over Green Bay

1:00 PM EST. Man, what a matchup. If you've been betting Green Bay this year, you're probably not in any hurry to get back to the window. If you've been betting Tampa Bay, you may feel like puking blood. The Buccaneers have now gone 12 consecutive games without covering a point spread, while the Packers have been a lousy investment themselves. So forget trying to identify which of these teams is more trustworthy. Neither is. The exercise here is figuring out whose stock has been beaten down further than it deserves, and we're going to hold our noses and take +3½ with Tampa Bay.

The first reaction is obvious. Baker Mayfield dislocated the thumb on his throwing hand last week and now Jalon Daniels makes his first NFL start. Green Bay has Jordan Love, an established NFL quarterback, while Tampa Bay is handing the offense to a rookie who hasn't completed an NFL pass. That disparity alone is going to push bettors toward Green Bay. But there's considerably more to the Daniels story than simply labeling him a rookie backup who has suddenly been thrown into the fire.

Daniels earned this job. Tampa Bay brought in Jake Browning during the offseason on a one-year contract, and Browning wasn't some anonymous camp arm. He had started NFL games for Cincinnati and had been trusted to replace Joe Burrow when Burrow was injured. Yet Browning didn't even make it through final cuts with Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers released him on August 30, leaving Daniels behind Mayfield. In other words, Daniels wasn't sitting third on the depth chart and suddenly got promoted because everybody else got hurt. He beat out an experienced NFL backup for the job.

Daniels is intriguing as hell. At Kansas, he accumulated more than 9,000 passing yards and 1,400 rushing yards, with 67 touchdown passes, and he spent years operating an offense rather than arriving in the NFL as some one-year college wonder.    Pasted markdown He's mobile, athletic and capable of creating when the play breaks down. That doesn't mean he's going to walk into his first NFL start and light Green Bay up. Rookie quarterbacks can look terrific for one possession and completely lost on the next. But Tampa Bay's offense has been stale and Mayfield spent much of the first three games running for his life. Maybe introducing a quarterback who can escape pressure and create something with his legs isn't the catastrophe everyone assumes. Maybe it actually gives this offense a little spark.

That becomes especially interesting after watching what Atlanta did to Green Bay last week. The Falcons ran for 224 yards while pounding the Packers 35-14. Now Green Bay has to prepare for a quarterback whose legs are a legitimate part of his game. Tampa Bay can move Daniels around, use the read-option element, change the launch point and force Green Bay's front to account for the quarterback instead of simply attacking a stationary target. Daniels doesn't have to become Lamar Jackson on Sunday. Just the threat of him pulling the ball down and running changes what the defense has to defend.

Before anyone starts getting excited about laying points with Green Bay because Love has the experience advantage, let's examine exactly what we're buying. The Packers are 1-2 and could very easily be 0-3. They were fortunate to escape the Jets in Week 2, then followed it by getting demolished by Atlanta. They're averaging only 18.7 points per game, the running game has been ineffective, there are problems along the offensive line and Jayden Reed is unavailable. Love threw the ball 53 times last week because Green Bay couldn't establish anything on the ground. This is the team we're supposed to lay more than a field goal with on the road?

Tampa Bay is 0-3. It hasn't covered in forever. Its starting quarterback is injured. A rookie is making his first NFL start. We get it. There isn't a single one of those facts that hasn't already been beaten into this number. That's what makes the Buccaneers worthy.  If Mayfield were healthy and Tampa Bay hadn't spent the past year burning bettors' money, Green Bay isn't walking into Tampa laying 3½. The market is charging the Buccaneers for every piece of bad news attached to them while seemingly giving Green Bay a pass for being pretty damn bad itself.

Maybe Daniels comes out looking like a rookie and Tampa loses again. That's certainly possible. But there's another possibility: the kid who played a ton of football at Kansas, beat out an established NFL backup and brings an element with his legs that Tampa hasn't had comes in and gives a dead offense some life. Against a Green Bay defense that just surrendered 224 rushing yards, that's enough intrigue for us. We're getting +3½ at home against a 1-2 team that could easily be 0-3. Come on.

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