Week 5's slate has generally been considered a pretty tough one for finding strong plays, with many of the spreads and totals lined about where they should be. My power ratings spread projections only have two lines that are more than 1.5 points off, and even with those I'm not that comfortable just blindly playing the side that's supposed to have value. In the three games where there's exactly a 1.5-point gap between what's posted in the contest and my ratings, there's only one I truly like, which I'll share now before revealing my full contest card of five best bets against the spread once it's locked in on Saturday.

If you're a SportsLine subscriber, you can get all my picks, which in a typical NFL week number can near double digits, at the same time as I make them by downloading the app and signing up for alerts on my expert page. That's crucial, as you might not have access to the same lines from the Las Vegas contests, which don't move after they're posted mid-week. This week, I'm fading the worst defense in the league by taking the Green Bay Packers -3.5 against the Los Angeles Rams.

Jordan Love seemed to take a bit of time shaking off the rust against the Vikings last week before nearly rallying his team to what would've been one of the biggest comeback wins in history. While he threw interceptions on his second and fourth drives, he took his team into field goal range three other times in the first five drives and came away with no points. In all, the Packers drove into field goal range nine times and came away with four TDs, two missed FGs, two turnovers on downs and an interception. They still scored 29 points against what's been one of the two or three best defenses in the league and had the opportunity for more.

Now they head indoors to face what's been the worst defense in the league in the Rams, and I don't know what the cap is on the number of points the Packers could score here. Fifty? More? The Rams defense is last in yards per drive, last in net yards per pass attempt, last in rush yards and next to last in percentage of drives ending in a score. The pressure is going to be on for Matthew Stafford to keep up with a set of weapons that still won't feature his two best receivers. With the Rams limping into the bye, the only way I think they cover here is by getting out to a quick lead and then leaning on the run game to limit the number of possessions in this game, and even then I could see the Packers winning by a score like 34-28.

I've been SportsLine's No. 1 NFL against-the-spread expert over the last seven years, going 636-534-34 against the spread to put me up about 49 units on those picks at SportsLine since 2017. I've also delivered a 56.7% hit rate on my Vegas contest picks over the last nine seasons, which is exactly what you're getting below. And that run includes two finishes in the money, including finishing 18th out of 2,748 entries back in 2017.  

Get the rest of my Vegas contest picks for Week 5 below.

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