Editor's note: This column appears each week to give ESPN Chalk readers a first look at the next week's NFL lines. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook also puts out the advance lines on the prior Tuesday (so Week 4 lines will be posted this upcoming Tuesday), and we'll examine how the weekend action affected those lines from the openers on the Don Best odds screen. We'll also look at which lines were the first to be bet by the professional bettors in Vegas (traditionally, those are the bettors most likely to fire away on these openers, though it's not the exclusive club that it used to be).
LAS VEGAS -- The New England Patriots have gone from a favorite over the Houston Texans in Week 3's Thursday Night Football game to an underdog.
In the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook's advance lines that it posted last week, the Patriots were 3.5-point home favorites, but now the Texans are 2.5-point road favorites after Jimmy Garoppolo was injured in New England's 31-24 win over Miami on Sunday. Garoppolo, starting in place of the suspended Tom Brady, led the Patriots to a Week 1 victory at Arizona and then threw three touchdown passes in amassing a 21-0 second-quarter lead over the Dolphins before getting injured on a hit by Kiko Alonso.
Rookie Jacoby Brissett, a third-round pick out of NC State, was thrust into action and helped the Patriots hold off a Miami rally. He's expected to be the starter on the short week.
The move from -3.5 to +2.5 is the biggest adjustment by far in the Week 3 lines at the Westgate. The CG Technology books here in Vegas opened at Houston -1.5 while offshore giant Pinnacle opened at pick 'em. By the end of Sunday night's Green Bay-Minnesota contest, all those books were at Houston -2.5 (-120), which means the books have taken early action on the Texans and we might be seeing this line move to 3.
Let's take a look at the other moves (the line in parentheses is as of end of Sunday night's game):