USA TODAY Sports. Pictured: Nick Saban and Tom Brady
- It's a common question: Could Alabama really hang with an NFL team?
- The answer, of course, is no. But here's a more interesting question: Could Alabama cover vs. an NFL team?
- Here are hypothetical spreads for this 2018 Alabama team vs. every NFL squad, courtesy of the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published back in November, before Alabama made the National Championship Game vs. Clemson.
Let’s make a few things clear at the top: 1) There’s no chance the University of Alabama will ever play a football game against an NFL team. And 2) There’s even less of a chance Alabama would ever beat an NFL team.
But it’s still damn fun to think about, which is why when Westgate bookmaker Jeff Sherman tweeted a hypothetical Alabama-Bills spread last week, the sports world lost its collective mind.
While Bama vs. the Bills is fun — yay, alliteration! — Bama vs. the NFL is even better.
Sherman was kind enough to indulge our request and provide hypothetical spreads for Alabama versus all 32 NFL teams.
One stipulation from Sherman: The spreads below “aren’t pure power-rating differences between NFL teams. We felt there would be some let-up at some point in the second half.”
These are also based on if they played on a neutral field and for games played with NFL rules.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s run through Sherman’s 32 extremely hypothetical and not-at-all-controversial spreads, along with a fake prop from yours truly.
Alabama vs. Buffalo Bills
- Spread: Bills -28.5
- Fake prop: Over/under 4.5 times Sean McDermott gets caught day dreaming about having Tua Tagovailoa as his QB.
Alabama vs. Arizona Cardinals
- Spread: Cardinals -30.5
- Fake prop: Over/under 7.5 times the announcer mentions how much Nick Saban admires Larry Fitzgerald.
Alabama vs. Oakland Raiders
- Spread: Raiders -31.5
- Fake prop: Over/under 1.5 times Jon Gruden tries to trade AJ McCarron back to Bama before realizing McCarron no longer has college eligibility.