Montez Sweat Got Suspended and the Spread Never Blinked

Chicago lost a starting edge rusher on Tuesday and the spread did not move one inch.

As of Wednesday morning, DraftKings has Chicago minus three at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Total forty-nine and a half. I checked it twice, six minutes apart. Same number both times.

That is the same spread the game opened at.

Now here is the part nobody has written. One number did move this week, and it moved toward Atlanta. The moneyline opened with Chicago at minus one sixty-six. Sports Illustrated printed minus one seventy-five on Monday. This morning it reads minus one sixty-two.

Same book, all three. Peak Chicago was Monday.

So the market watched Montez Sweat get suspended two games for a PED violation — ESPN's Courtney Cronin had it Tuesday, Week 6 at Atlanta is the first of the two, eligible to return October 23 barring an appeal — and gave back thirteen cents of moneyline. And not one point of spread.

Thirteen cents. That is the entire price of losing a starting defensive end.

Let me be careful about what I am and am not saying. I am not telling you the number is wrong. Three days out, with a quarterback situation nobody has resolved, I do not know what the right number is and neither does anyone yelling about it on your timeline.

What I am telling you is that the reason the number allegedly moved does not survive reading the article it came from.

Sports Illustrated's Peter Dewey wrote Monday that Chicago went from a one-and-a-half-point underdog in the opening odds to a three-point favorite on a positive Caleb Williams update. Fine. Here is what the same piece reports, a few paragraphs down: Williams has missed three straight games with a Grade 2 hamstring strain. Tyson Bagent started the last two. Williams is week-to-week — which is Ben Johnson's own phrase, from October 5, never withdrawn.

And the quote everyone ran with, the one Johnson gave after the Green Bay loss on Sunday: "He's on track. We'll see if that's Atlanta or after. I think it's going to be close."

Close. That is the positive update.

As of this morning Williams is still listed as questionable. The designation went up Tuesday afternoon. Nothing has moved since, because Chicago has not practiced yet.

One more thing worth flagging, and then I will stop. Sports Illustrated named no sportsbook for that opening number. The only book record I can actually read — DraftKings, through ESPN — shows this game opening at Chicago minus three, not Chicago plus one and a half. I cannot reconcile those. So I am attributing the swing to SI rather than stating it as fact, and you should too.

Here is where I land.

On Saturday I wrote that the market had already picked Atlanta's opponent before the news broke. That was a number arriving early. This is the opposite problem. This is a number refusing to arrive at all, through a suspension, through three missed starts, through a head coach who will not say which quarterback takes the first snap Sunday.

The spread has held at three through every bit of it.

Bookmark this one. If Chicago shows up Sunday with Bagent under center and a defensive line missing its edge, and that number is still sitting on three at kickoff, somebody was not paying attention — and it was not the people who set it.