If you’re looking for Week 6 XFL Vegas Vipers vs. St. Louis Battlehawks odds, picks, and predictions for this thrilling Saturday night matchup, then you’ve come to the right place. We’ve analyzed each team’s highest-probability game scripts to assess the most likely outcomes, including which players are in line to thrive more than anticipated or fall short of expectations.
Vipers vs. Battlehawks Week 6 Odds and Betting Lines
The following odds and betting lines for the Vipers vs. Battlehawks are as of the evening of Thursday, March 23, and come from DraftKings Sportsbook. Clearly, they’re subject to change. That said, barring an unforeseen injury to a significant starter, we should assume that these lines will remain largely intact.
- Point Spread: Battlehawks (-3)
- Moneyline: Battlehawks (-155), Vipers (+135)
- Over/Under: 44.5 (-110)
Vipers vs. Battlehawks Picks and Predictions
Full disclosure as always: After going 13-3 on a combined point spread and moneyline of XFL picks in Weeks 3 and 4, I settled into a middling 2-2 performance in Week 5. Fortunately, my struggles with over/unders reversed course, as I finished 3-1.
Now, I’ll look quite dumb if what I’m about to say proves to be completely wrong. I’m willing to take that risk, however, because I believe it and have reasons to believe it.
The 1-4 Vipers are merely three-point underdogs against the 3-2 Battlehawks. After bouncing between quarterbacks, Vegas appears to have found its rest-of-season starter in Luis Perez.
MORE: 2023 XFL Standings | XFL TV Schedule
But . . . I believe this narrow point spread is based almost entirely on the Vipers’ explosive offensive performance last weekend . . . versus the 0-5 Guardians.
Before that, Vegas was averaging a pedestrian 17.5 points per game. They’d lost pretty soundly to the Defenders twice. Nothing wrong with that. DC is undefeated. And the Vipers lost narrowly to the 3-2 Sea Dragons and 3-2 Renegades.
However, we can’t look past that Orlando game. Because it suggests to the market that the Vipers’ offensive challenges are now “fixed.” Perez will continue to shine. Rod Smith and John Lovett are now above-average XFL co-starting running backs. And so on.
But it doesn’t usually work that way. Teams don’t often solve offensive issues when they beat the league’s worst defense. This merely delays the solution.
The Battlehawks are tougher on both sides of the ball. And while they’ve been quite vulnerable against the run, St. Louis often has successfully contained opposing passing attacks. They even limited the Sea Dragons’ elite aerial game to 18 points, despite never sacking Ben DiNucci or even picking him off.
St. Louis plays teams tough, even though they’re not known as high-end defensive playmakers. And their offense includes one of the league’s top quarterbacks (AJ McCarron), running backs (Brian Hill), and wideouts (Hakeem Butler). With this offense, the Battlehawks nearly knocked off the undefeated Defenders twice, racking up a combined 48 points.
By comparison, Vegas collected only half of that point total in their two games against DC.
I’m not saying the Battlehawks are close to unbeatable (they aren’t). And I’m not saying the Vipers were lucky last week (they deserve credit for capitalizing on the opportunity).
Instead, I see a very good team facing a sub-middling team, with the latter coming off an unsustainably great performance, and the former deceptively better than their 3-2 record suggests.
There are no such things as locks. And playing on the road creates a degree of added chaos for the Battlehawks.
But Vegas just surrendered 32 points to a previous backup QB making his first extended appearance of the year. In fact, the Vipers have given up 30+ points in each of their last three outings.
For the Vipers to compete, their offense has to be as good as last week’s, and their defense has to be much better. Given the added challenges of facing a team like the Battlehawks versus a team like the Guardians, I can’t rationally bet against St. Louis to win and cover.
- Recommended Point-Spread Bet: Battlehawks (-3)
- Recommended Moneyline Bet: Battlehawks (-155)
- Over/Under: Under 44.5 (-110)