Justin Herbert’s injury status had a huge impact on this week’s Circa Sports Million and Circa Survivor.
The Jaguars, 7-point road underdogs at Herbert’s Chargers, are the No. 1 most-selected team in the Circa Sports Million contest (players make 5 plays a week vs. the contest lines). That was the point spread when Circa released its contest lines at 10 a.m. PT Thursday, but the news came out Friday that Herbert was questionable with fractured rib cartilage and it was likely backup Chase Daniel would get the start, so the line was bet down to Chargers -3. However, the contest lines are static and don’t change, so 1,884 of the Million’s 4,691 entries took the Jaguars + 7. The rest of the Week 3’s Top 5 consensus plays (6-4 so far this season) are the 49ers -1.5 at the Broncos (1,531 selected), Ravens -2.5 at Patriots (1,490), Chiefs -5.5 at Colts (1,177) and Falcons pick-’em at Seahawks (1,104). On VSiN’s “The Football Contest Show,” Circa’s Jeffrey Benson pointed out that 262 contestants still took the Chargers laying the stale 7-point spread, though it’s unsure how many used that to try and pick up a game on all those other players in case the Chargers still covered, or if a lot of those are going for the quarterly or season-long booby prizes. VSiN’s dedicated Circa contest page is HERE. Circa owner Derek J. Stevens said he believed the Chargers would have been the most-selected team in Circa Survivor if not for the Herbert injury (since they were the biggest favorite on the board as of mid-week), but instead it was the Bengals that were the top choice with 608 of the 2,012 entrants that were still alive entering this week. The rest of the Top 5 were the the VIkings (367), Chiefs (260), Eagles (224) and Browns (206), as those players are already on to Week 4 with the Browns’ win on Thursday night, Interesting enough, the No. 6 choice was still the Chargers (128). There were 11 entries that survived the carnage of the first two weeks, yet did not get their picks in, so technically Circa Survivor is down to 2,001 entering Sunday’s games.