Packer Central

Injury News Means Surprising Shift to Packers-49ers Betting Line

The Green Bay Packers are 5.5-point favorites for Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, who will line up without Brock Purdy and Nick Bosa.

Bill Huber

The San Francisco 49ers will line up without quarterback Brock Purdy and defensive end Nick Bosa for Sunday at the Packers.
The San Francisco 49ers will line up without quarterback Brock Purdy and defensive end Nick Bosa for Sunday at the Packers. / Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers opened as 1.5-point favorites for Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

After the 49ers ruled out quarterback Brock Purdy and defensive end Nick Bosa on Friday, the line moved to 5.5 points at FanDuel Sportsbook, DraftKings, BetMGM and others. The over/under fell from 47.5 to 44.5.

The four-point swing on the spread is huge in betting circles but surprisingly small at the same time.

Before the season, sports gambling insider Ben Fawkes asked 11 oddsmakers for the difference in point spread between the starting quarterback and the backup. For Purdy, the difference was 4.67 points.

Paired with the absence of Bosa, who is one of the most feared defenders in the NFL, it’s somewhat surprising that the line moved only to 5.5 points.

“I bet the Packers -1.5 early in the week before the news broke,” Tyler Shoemaker, a betting analyst at VSiN.com and creator of the T Shoe Index, said via an e-mail. “I was surprised to only see the line go to 5-5.5 with both an MVP-level QB and DPOY-caliber pass rusher out.

“It’s tough to quantify defensive players, but I think Bosa would be worth a point, and I personally think most competent NFL QBs are worth at least five points to the spread themselves.”

Purdy is more than competent. Among quarterbacks with at least 900 career passing attempts, he is No. 1 in NFL history in passer rating.

Brandon Allen will start in place of Purdy against Green Bay. The 32-year-old entered the NFL as a sixth-round pick by the Jaguars in 2016. He’s got a 2-7 record in nine career starts – 1-2 with the Broncos in 2019, 1-4 with the Bengals in 2020 and 0-1 with the Bengals in 2021.

His last three passes in a regular-season game came with Cincinnati in 2022. He did not play in a game in 2023 and took one kneel-down snap for the 49ers in 2024.

His over/unders at FanDuel are 192.5 yards and 0.5 touchdowns.

“The circumstances are what they are, but I think our team, all year long, we've been kind of dealing with injuries here and there, and it's been a big next-man-up mentality,” Allen told reporters on Friday.

“So, it's definitely an opportunity for me to go out and play well and put our guys in a good position to win the game. Obviously, we want Brock back and healthy and all that but, for the time being, it is an opportunity for me.”

Allen was with the Rams in 2017 and 2018 but didn’t see any action. Packers coach Matt LaFleur was the offensive coordinator in Los Angeles in 2017, when Allen was the No. 3 quarterback behind Jared Goff and current Packers assistant coach Sean Mannion.

“He’s played, he’s been in the league now a long time,” LaFleur said. “But I wouldn’t expect their offense to change a whole bunch.”

In 2020, the 49ers lost 31-17 to the Packers in San Francisco. With Jimmy Garoppolo injured, backup Nick Mullens threw for 291 yards – though most of that was fluff, with Green Bay up 31-3 in the fourth quarter.

The Packers enter Week 12 with a 7-3 record and are in sixth place in the NFC playoff race. With a victory, they’d move to a playoff probability of greater than 90 percent.

The 49ers are 5-5. They are one game behind the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC West and trail the Washington Commanders (7-4) by 1 1/2 games in the race for a wild-card spot.

The Packers are +1700 to win the Super Bowl at FanDuel.

The 49ers, who lost to the Chiefs in last year’s Super Bowl and have reached at least the NFC Championship Game four of the last five seasons, are +2500; they were +2200 a couple days ago.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.