NFL Week 14 Steelers vs. Cardinals: Bizarre total trend on Pittsburgh as road favorite

Not surprisingly, Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin is sticking with undrafted rookie free agent QB Devlin "Duck" Hodges on Sunday when the surging Steelers visit the sinking Arizona Cardinals, who have lost five straight games. Kickoff is 4:25 p.m. ET on CBS from State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. Pittsburgh is a 3-point favorite on the NFL odds. Expect that stadium to be at least half-filled with Steelers fans, by the way.

Hodges, who won the FCS version of the Heisman Trophy last year at Samford, is 2-0 as a starter – both as a betting underdog. He led a 24-17 victory at the Chargers in Week 6 and then this past Sunday the Steelers were home underdogs to the Browns for the first time since 1989 but won 20-13 behind a solid game from Hodges. He has joined someone named Ed Rubbert (1987) as the only undrafted rookie quarterbacks to win each of their first two career starts since 1970.

Incidentally, Sunday's game should be the only one around the league featuring rookie starting quarterbacks in Hodges and Cardinals No. 1 overall pick Kyler Murray. They are two of the six rookie QBs to win a game this season. The record for number of rookie quarterbacks to earn at least one win in a single season is seven in 1987.

However, let's examine the total of 43.5 in this game because there's a crazy betting statistic on the Steelers. The past 20 times that Pittsburgh has been a road favorite of at least 3 points, the over-under is 1-18-1. So nearly 95 percent of the time the under has hit.

The one game that went over was last year on Opening Day when the Steelers were -4 in Cleveland and the game finished in a 21-21 tie; the total was set at 41. Overall, the total has gone under in 10 of the Steelers' last 11 games on the road, with an average combined score of 40.4 points.

Some books are listing the Steelers at -2.5 this week but some still at -3. Pittsburgh is taking around 91 percent of the NFL spread bets at DraftKings, so there's a good chance it will close at least with the Steelers as 3-point favorites and this trend will be in play.