The Daily Sweat: Bengals at Jaguars was supposed to be a marquee matchup

It's hard to know in April or May what NFL matchups will look good in December.

The NFL pretty much nailed Monday night's game. The Cincinnati Bengals at Jacksonville Jaguars looked like a great matchup to end Week 13. Both teams started the season a little slow but were among the AFC's best a few weeks ago. Then Joe Burrow suffered a season-ending wrist injury.

If you want to know why the NFL wants to expand it's capability to flex prime-time games, this is it. Instead of Burrow vs. Trevor Lawrence in one of the games of the weeks, we get Jake Browning leading a Bengals team that is a 10-point underdog at BetMGM.

It might end up being a good game but it's hard to get anyone excited for it. And that was just due to bad injury luck to one key player.

It still is an important game. The Jaguars are 8-3 and can tie the Baltimore Ravens and Miami Dolphins for the best record in the AFC with a win on Monday night. The Bengals obviously have a difficult road to a wild-card spot without Burrow, but they are still 5-6 and have a shot. We've seen crazier stories in the NFL.

But everything changes going from Burrow to Browning, who wasn't terrible in his first start but got the Bengals just 10 points. The Bengals do still have a lot around Browning, like elite skill-position players and a good defense, and maybe that keeps them in the game. Bettors don't think so, as the line moved from 7.5 to 10 through the week. Jacksonville is a good team getting hot at the right time.

The point spread should keep things interesting on Monday night, because 10 points is a lot for most NFL underdogs. It's just not the matchup the NFL was hoping for.

Here's the rest of the sports betting slate for Monday:

NBA's in-season tournament knockout round

The one drawback of the NBA's in-season tournament is it's changing the regular schedule. There were no games on Sunday, and just two on Monday and Tuesday. It's a light slate this week.

We do get two knockout-round games on Monday and Tuesday though. On Monday, the Boston Celtics are 5.5-point favorites over the Indiana Pacers, and the Sacramento Kings are 3.5-point favorites over the New Orleans Pelicans. The winners will advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas on Thursday. The championship will be on Saturday.

Best of the rest

There isn't much college basketball on Monday, though we do get Iowa at Purdue. Purdue is coming off a surprising loss at Northwestern to start its Big Ten schedule, and gets another early conference game on Monday. Iowa is typical Iowa, with a great offense and poor defense (basically the opposite of the Hawkeyes' football team), and is a 12.5-point underdog to the Boilermakers.

There are six NHL games and some good matchups, with the best probably being the Dallas Stars at Tampa Bay Lightning. Both teams are -110 odds to win.

What's the best bet?

It's reasonable that everyone is betting the Jaguars, which pushed the line to double digits. The Jaguars have a shot at the No. 1 seed, they're playing well and the Bengals obviously don't have their star quarterback anymore. But the first look at the Bengals with Jake Browning showed they can still be competitive, albeit limited on offense. Browning wasn't that bad in his first start. The Bengals defense is going to have to come up big, and it can. It just feels like 10 points is too much with a Bengals team that still has some faint playoff hopes and a lot of talent on the roster around the quarterback. I'll take Cincinnati and the points.