Chad Ryland's six field goals beat the Rams -12.5 outright

We wrote that laying thirteen into a backdoor is how a good read turns into a bad ticket, called it a zero-edge pick, and put it on the card anyway. Arizona never reached the end zone and won: Chad Ryland kicked six field goals, the last from 43 as time expired, after a 15-yard roughness penalty on Josh Wallace handed him the range. Tyler Higbee's fourth-quarter fumble cost Los Angeles the ball in Arizona territory. Cardinals 18, Rams 16, which is 14 and a half from the number.

Every unit battle here goes one way. Arizona's defense is 29th in EPA per play and second-worst against the pass at +0.33 allowed, their line is rated 30th with the worst blocking score in the league, and they just shipped Marvin Harrison Jr. to Houston, which removes the one player who scared anybody off a Jacoby Brissett offense. Matthew Stafford against that coverage, behind a line rated tenth, is the cleanest spot on the board, and it's a division game so we only credited a point of home field. The trouble is there's nothing to collect: we make it Rams -12.5 and the market says -12.5. Laying thirteen into a backdoor with a 51.5 total is how a good read turns into a bad ticket, and our own grading says the zero-edge picks we talked ourselves into last week should have been passes. We took Arizona plus the points last week and got run over by Detroit, which has nothing to do with this, and this one is on the card because we pick every game, not because we found something.