Sunday Night Football Betting: Can the Favored 49ers Hold Serve at Home?

A west coast matchup will round out a wild Sunday of Week 10 NFL action.

The San Francisco 49ers (4-4) host the Los Angeles Chargers (5-3) as 7.5-point favorites.

numberFire's nERD rankings pit the San Francisco 49ers 10th overall. The Los Angeles Chargers sit only 20th.

Let's see if we can unlock some interesting betting angles for some Sunday Night Football.

Game Preview and Key Matchups

Jimmy Garoppolo has been damn good in relief of Trey Lance. Among passers with 100 or more drop backs, Garoppolo ranks fourth-best in Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) per drop back.

On the flip side, Justin Herbert has been solid with a mark of 0.11 Passing NEP per drop back.

Overall, we rank San Francisco as the league's 5th-best offense but Los Angeles 10th.

Both of these teams do not run the football nearly as well as they pass it. San Francisco clocks in marginally better at 25th, while the Chargers are only 28th.

In his return from injured reserve, incumbent Elijah Mitchell will be rendered to second-fiddle duty after the monstrous trade for Christian McCaffrey. Prior to the bye, the Panther-turned-49er racked up 149 all-purpose yards and 2 scores in a rout of the division-rival Los Angeles Rams.

Austin Ekeler has owned lead running back duties for the Chargers (98 carries), and he's logged a 0.04 Rushing NEP per carry mark this season.

As we look at the teams in our nERD rankings, the historically strong San Francisco defensive unit has been solid yet again, clocking in 12th overall. Los Angeles, however, has struggled -- they rank 22nd overall, and they have been gouged on the ground as the league's 5th-worst unit.

Bets to Consider

The home 49ers seem like they are in a good spot this week, especially after a bye week. Our model thinks they will take this one by a score of 26.7 to 20.2.

Using that as our guide, a 7.5-point spread for San Francisco may be a little bit much. We think that the road Chargers are going to cover the spread 56.7% of the time.

As I mention below, an under bet with San Francisco has been a winning proposition, but it has slowly shrunk to only 45.5 points tonight. We think the over will hit 53.4% of the time.

Peeping our projections this week, this looks to be a smash spot for McCaffrey. We are pegging him for 91.5 rushing yards with the player props odds currently posted at 82.5 (-110). He's also a major factor in the passing game as well. His receiving prop is set at 35.5 yards, which we have him slamming (46.0 yards).

Historic Betting Trends

-- Interestingly, the Chargers have dominated this matchup of late, winning the last five contests straight up.
-- In the last 11 games between these two teams, the over has hit eight times.
-- The under has hit in 12 of San Francisco's last 16 games.