Nearly a million homes and businesses in South Carolina are without power after Hurricane Helene hit Florida on Thursday morning.

According to PowerOutage.US, 894,495 customers were without power in South Carolina as of 12:30 p.m. ET, making it the state with the most power outages caused by the storm. The state is followed by Georgia with 671,367 power outages and North Carolina with 547,630.

In total, nearly 2.5 million homes and businesses in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Virginia are without power after the severe storm swept across the country.

The storm also caused historic flooding in several states and caused $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage, mostly spanning Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Live updates:NC picks up the pieces after Helene delivers a stunning blow

Map of South Carolina power outages

Sign on to social media these days and you’ll soon find posts warning about the threat of immigrants to your family’s – and your pets’ – safety.

Immigrants are eating the dogs, cats and geese in Springfield, Ohio, some posts have claimed. (They’re wrong.) They’re also taking over apartment complexes in Colorado and Chicago, or hijacking school buses in California, others have said. (No, they’re not. That’s false.)

Much of the rhetoric about a purported immigrant crime wave has stemmed from or was amplified by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, his supporters and other high-profile conservatives on social media, such as X owner Elon Musk.

Trump has said immigrants “are poisoning the blood” of our country. He recently said in Wednesday’s campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, if Vice President Kamala Harris had closed the border years ago, “we wouldn’t have hostile takeovers of Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado, where they’re actually going in with massive machine-gun type equipment. They’re going in with guns that are beyond even military scope.”

Violent crimes in which immigrants are suspects have fueled the rhetoric, such as the slaying of Georgia college student Laken Riley, whose death came up in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech in March. There are also real concerns about a growing presence of Venezuelan gangs in the US, say federal and local law enforcement.

But experts told PolitiFact – and crime statistics and studies show – that the rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false.

Such rhetoric is nothing new, especially during a political campaign, experts said.

“Ever since the US has had migrants, a subset of them have been vilified,” Alex Piquero, a University of Miami criminology professor and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said. The same thing is happening elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, he added.

PolitiFact has debunked numerous claims about immigrants and crime:

There’s no evidence Haitian immigrants are eating pets, wildlife in Springfield

Perhaps no claim about immigrants and crime has garnered more attention than this one. In early September, social media posts flooded the internet with claims that Haitian immigrants, thousands of whom have flocked legally to Springfield in recent years, were eating residents’ pets and ducks and geese at local parks.

The claim is baseless, Springfield officials told PolitiFact and have said repeatedly.

It stemmed from a fourthhand account in a private Facebook group that went viral after a screenshot of the post was shared by the verified X account End Wokeness, whose post received nearly 5 million views. The Facebook post said a neighbour’s daughter’s friend came home from work to find a pet cat butchered and hanging from a tree in a Haitian neighbour’s yard. The post’s author said Haitians were doing the same to dogs and ducks and geese at a local park.

The woman behind the original post later told NBC News she had no firsthand knowledge of immigrants eating pets, and that she regrets the fallout from sharing the post. The neighbour referenced in her post told NewsGuard she also had no proof of the rumour.

The claims about eating pets and birds were further amplified on X and in interviews by Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate. Trump repeated the baseless claim in his September 10 debate with Harris in Philadelphia, saying “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

The Trump-Vance campaign persisted with their claims, pointing to a Federalist report about a person calling the Clark County Communications Center claiming to have seen four Haitians carrying geese. PolitiFact reported that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources followed up on the report but found no evidence to support the claim.

The claims have had a lasting impact on Springfield’s Haitian immigrants, many of whom told PolitiFact that they now fear for their safety.

A Venezuelan gang takeover in Aurora, Colorado? City officials, residents say no

After surveillance video showing what appears to be armed, Spanish-speaking men entering an Aurora, Colorado apartment complex, fears were stoked online about a Venezuelan gang seizing control of the building.

Social media posts said the men were part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The claims were amplified on X by Elon Musk and Trump, who said in a September 6 interview that noncitizens “took over buildings” in Aurora.

Tren de Aragua formed in the Venezuelan state of Aragua more than a decade ago. It does have a presence in the US, but Aurora city officials and apartment residents at The Edge, the apartment building seen in the video, disputed claims that the gang took over the building, PolitiFact reported.

Residents at The Edge blamed poor conditions there on the landlord.

Reports about 32 Venezuelan armed migrants taking over a Chicago building are fake

As social media posts warning of migrants taking over neighborhoods across the country proliferated online, an audio recording of a police dispatcher in Chicago had high-profile accounts sharing the news that Venezuelan migrants had purportedly taken over a building there.

“Caller says 32 Venezuelans are trespassing the building, showing guns in the courtyard,” the dispatcher said.

PolitiFact reported that the Chicago Police Department said it received a service call about Venezuelans with guns trespassing, but the incident reported in the call was “not bona fide”.

The alderperson who represents the area where the incident was reported said the reports were untrue. So did migrants living in the building and residents in the area.

Two school buses filled with children weren’t hijacked by migrants in San Diego

Incidents involving two San Diego-area school bus routes sparked misinformation on social media that armed migrants were trying to hijack the buses, PolitiFact reported.

In separate incidents, groups of people approached two Jamul-Dulzura Union School District buses on Highway 94 in Dulzura, an unincorporated part of San Diego County.

On August 27, three men walked into the middle of Highway 94 and tried to stop a bus. The bus driver steered around the group in response. The next day, it appeared a group of about 20 people intended to board a school bus during morning pickup at a bus stop.

Officials said there was no attempted hijacking and no crimes were committed. Many migrants who crossed the San Diego-Mexico border are served in that area by humanitarian groups as they await processing. Some of the groups operate vehicles similar to school buses.

Assault suspect in Wisconsin wasn’t ‘released’ by Madison police

Police in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, arrested a man they said they believe is a member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in the assault of a woman and her daughter in September.

That case became fodder for Republican political candidates, who claimed the suspect was arrested and released in Madison because of sanctuary city policies.

PolitiFact Wisconsin took a closer look at the case. It found that Madison police did have a warrant for the suspect’s arrest before the assault, but he was never in custody, the Dane County sheriff’s office and Madison police said. Madison also does not have an official sanctuary city policy, and the Dane County sheriff disputed claims that the department is “noncooperative” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What does the data show?

Studies have historically shown that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than US citizens. No available data backs claims that there is a migrant crime wave happening in the US, despite the online and political rhetoric.

There is no national data that tracks and correlates immigrants coming into the country with crime, and any research studies on the topic tend to lag behind releases of FBI crime statistics, experts told PolitiFact.

“If we pay attention to what the last 80 years of studies have told us, we would see, in general, that there’s likely to be no significant impact on crime” because of increased immigration, Charis Kubrin, a University of California, Irvine criminology, law and society professor, and member of the Council on Criminal Justice, said.

Several studies compared US citizens and immigrants in Texas, the only state that keeps immigration status records on people arrested and convicted of state crimes. They overwhelmingly found that noncitizens are less likely than citizens to be convicted or incarcerated.

Some examples:

• A July 2023 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at incarceration rates nationally of immigrants and US-born citizens over a 150-year period (1870 to 2020) and found immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated.
• A study of Texas data from 2012 to 2018 showed undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for violent and drug crimes.
• Two other studies out of Texas showed similar results. One published in 2000 showed immigrants with lower incarceration rates from homicide than US-born offenders. Another in 2021 comparing people incarcerated for homicide in Texas showed US citizens had higher crime rates than immigrants over the course of their criminal careers.
• A Cato Institute analysis comparing Texas’s homicide conviction rates among immigrants legally and illegally in the US and US citizens from 2013 to 2022 showed native-born Americans had the highest rate.
• The Marshall Project examined crime data in cities such as New York and Chicago after Texas. Governor Greg Abbott began busing migrants to what he called sanctuary cities. They found no link between crime and the recent migrant influx.

An FBI data release published on September 23, though not specific to immigration status, also dampens any claims of increased crime because of immigrants. That’s because US crime was down significantly in 2023, the most recent data available – violent crimes were down 3 percent from 2022 and property crimes were down 2.4 percent. Murder has dropped 11.6 percent, the data shows.

The FBI data “is inconsistent with the idea that an influx of migrants is driving up crime across the US”, said Graham Ousey, a College of William & Mary sociology professor. “If a recent surge of migrants was creating a crime wave, we’d expect the recent data to show this. It really does not.”

Ousey pointed us to more recent data from the Real-Time Crime Index which has tracked data through June 2024 that shows a drop in violent crime this year, including in big cities.

A July Council on Criminal Justice analysis showed violent crimes in US cities through June 2024 have dropped to or are slightly below pre-pandemic levels.

Another data point that dispels the notion of a rise in immigrant violent crime is a 30 percent spike in US homicides in 2020, the same year immigration dropped sharply because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.

“In 2020 border crossings and apprehensions dropped dramatically, and yet, it was that year that the US saw the largest increase in homicide on record,” Light wrote in an email. “These homicide increases disproportionately involved young Black men, which again, suggest that they had little to do with immigration flows.”

Why are these false claims proliferating?

Experts told us a false narrative about immigrants and crime has proliferated for decades and is often heightened by politics.

Kubrin, who co-authored the book, Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, with Ousey, said these claims pop up during election cycles, or when crime rates are higher or immigration is increasing.

“There’s this kind of response to treat immigrants as the scapegoats for problems in American society,” Kubrin said, adding that social media has made the spread of such fears easier.

“There’s always these kind of moral panics about immigration,” Kubrin said.

Kubrin, who teaches a college class where students examine immigration in different time periods, cited the false claims out of Springfield, Ohio, as an example of a historical trope demonising immigrants as the “other” or as savages.

“It really taps into the xenophobia that many people have around otherness and foreign bornness,” Kubrin said. “On the one hand, it’s laughable and silly and ridiculous. On the other hand, it’s very dangerous.”

Ousey said the narrative about immigrant crime is an attempt to aid political objectives.

“When politicians amplify fears in the population, and then claim they (the politician) are the only ones capable of providing protection and security from whatever ‘threat’ creates the fear, the politician derives an electoral benefit,” Ousey said. “That’s the goal and that’s why they keep hammering on the narrative.”

Piquero said it’s rooted in a “long-standing theory called ‘minority threat,’” which holds that as a minority group grows and gains power, “the majority group becomes threatened and then they are vilified.”

There are real crimes committed by immigrants, Kubrin said, that shouldn’t be dismissed. But to extrapolate isolated cases and use language like “migrant crime wave” is problematic.

The Philadelphia Phillies have one game left in the regular season, against the Washington Nationals.

After losing the first two games of this three-game weekend series, the Phillies will look to bounce back on Sunday and start the postseason on a high note.

On the mound for Philadelphia will be veteran righty Aaron Nola (13-8, 3.52 ERA).

In his last start, Nola allowed two earned runs on seven hits and two walks while striking out seven in six innings to pick up his 13th win of the season.

Nola’s September struggles continued this season, as the veteran posted a 4.82 ERA with a 1.32 WHIP and 37 strikeouts in 28 innings in five starts this month.

The right-hander has had another solid season and is just 5 2/3 innings away from his fourth career 200-inning season.

On Sunday, Nola will face the Nationals for the fourth time this season.

In his first three games, he allowed a combined two earned runs on 11 hits and 9 walks while posting 13 strikeouts in 19 1/3 innings.

The Phillies are hoping for another strong performance from the veteran to lead them to the postseason.

Here is Philadelphia’s lineup on Sunday:

1.) DH Kyle Schwarber
2.) SS Trea Turner
3.) RF Nick Castellanos
4.) 2B Bryson Stott
5.) 1B Alec Bohm
6.) CF Brandon Marsh
7.) LF Kody Clemens
8.) 3B Edmundo Sosa
9.) C Garrett Stubbs

SP Aaron Nola

Washington will counter with its own right-hander in Jake Irvin (10-13, 4.22 ERA).

In his last start, Irvin allowed five earned runs on four hits and four walks while striking out three in four innings and suffered his 13th loss of the year.

The Phillies have played Irvin three times this season and beat him well.

In those three contests, Philadelphia hit a combined .269/.319/.522 with four home runs in 72 plate appearances.

Here’s how the Nationals will line up on Sunday:

1.) 2B Luis Garcia Jr.
2.) LF James Wood
3.) DH Juan Yepez
4.) 3B Jose Tena
5.) RF Dylan Crews
6.) 1B Joey Gallo
7.) C Drew Millas
8.) CF Jacob Young
9.) SS Nasim Nunez

SP Jake Irvin

First pitch for Sunday’s game is scheduled for 3:05 p.m. EST.

The game will be broadcast on NBC Sports Philadelphia and MASN.

Phillies fans can listen to the game on 1210 WPHT or WTTM 1680.

You can also watch it on fuboTV with a free trial by signing up here!

As North Carolina recovers from Hurricane Helene, residents are looking for essential services like gas stations, grocery stores and pharmacies.

Here’s a guide to what’s open and operating across the state as communities begin to rebuild.

More:Live updates on flooding in Asheville, North Carolina: Fresh Market is distributing fresh water

See map: What’s open and where to buy food and gas?

Do you feel like stocks just aren’t producing the same net gains as they did in the past? It’s not a completely crazy conclusion. Things haven’t seemed the same since the dot-com crisis in 2000. Even if one ignores the extreme volatility in the meantime, long-term returns have been below average for some time.

But the fact is that the S&P 500 index is as successful as ever, posting an average annual gain of just under 10% when dividend payments are excluded. When dividends are taken into account, the typical annual yield rises to just over 11%.

But there’s a catch. Unlike most cases before 2000, you now need a 20-year holding period to ensure you get the reliable returns you expect – and need – from the stock market. An investment period of five or even ten years may not be enough.

Welcome to Week 4 of the 2024 NFL Season! While this week started on Thursday night with the Dallas Cowboys defeating the New York Giants, Sunday’s main slate is packed with must-see matchups. These include a playoff rematch between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Buffalo Bills traveling to Baltimore to face the Ravens, and various divisional matchups such as the Kansas City Chiefs taking on the Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium Chargers compete.

Of course, with all the action, it will be difficult to keep track. This is where we come into play. This is your one-stop shop for all the notable moments from Week 4, as this live blog covers all the top plays from every game as well as game recaps and analysis.

Week 4 schedule

Thursday

Cowboys 20, Giants 15 (snack)

Sunday

Saints at Falcons, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Bengals at Panthers, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Rams at Bears, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Vikings at Packers, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Jaguars at Texans, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Steelers at Colts, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Broncos at Jets, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Eagles at Buccaneers, 1 p.m. ET (Gametracker)
Commanders at Cardinals, 4:05 p.m. ET (Preview)
Patriots at 49ers, 4:05 p.m. ET (Preview)
Chiefs at Chargers, 4:25 p.m. ET (Preview)
Browns at Raiders, 4:25 p.m. ET (Preview)
Bills at Ravens, 8:20 p.m. ET (Preview)

Monday

Titans at Dolphins, 7:30 p.m. ET (Preview)
Seahawks at Lions, 8:15 p.m. ET (Preview)

CNN
—

Week 4 is the last slate of games in months to feature all 32 teams, as four teams have a bye starting next week.

With injuries mounting, it will be a relief for teams that players placed on injured reserve before the season will be available to return in Week 5.

Week 4 began on Thursday with the Dallas Cowboys’ narrow 20-15 victory over the New York Giants, but the bulk of the action will take place over the weekend.

Here are the three most important matchups in Sunday’s Week 4 games:

This NFC North rivalry has a little more spice in 2024.

The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers are two of the most intriguing teams in the league and Sunday’s clash is must-watch TV.

The Vikings are on the rise thanks to the inspired quarterback play of Sam Darnold and a swarming defense; Brian Flores’ team has allowed the third-fewest rushing yards and had the second-most interceptions and sacks in three weeks.

There’s additional motivation for Minnesota’s new running back Aaron Jones, who joined in the offseason after leaving Green Bay at the end of last season.

Jones scored 63 touchdowns in his seven seasons with the Packers, and in his first return to Lambeau Field since switching from green to purple, he says he will “definitely” do the famous “Lambeau jump” if he scores on Sunday. During the “Lambeau Leap,” players who score touchdowns in the Packers’ home game jump into the stands and celebrate with the fans.

“Of course. “If you’re not thinking about the end zone, you’re thinking about the wrong thing,” Jones told reporters Wednesday.

The Packers are also riding high after two impressive wins, which is all the more positive considering they were without starting signalman Jordan Love in the lineup.

Love has missed the last two games after suffering a knee injury in the final seconds of Green Bay’s Week 1 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Brazil.

In Love’s absence, Malik Willis has performed dutifully. Paired with a creative offensive concept under head coach Matt LaFleur, the Packers lead the league in rushing attempts and yards on the ground.

It’s uncertain whether Love will start against the Vikings on Sunday, but even if he doesn’t, Willis and the rest of Green Bay’s offensive talent could provide an intriguing matchup against Flores’ defense.

“They give you a lot of different looks, and similar to how we talk about the illusion of complexity, where we like to give looks that are difficult for the defense but easy for us, I feel like they do just that,” Packers head coach LaFleur said on Wednesday. “They have a system in place that makes it easier or easier for their players to go out there and execute. But it makes it extremely difficult to counter the attacks they are up against.”

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been one of the surprise packages of the NFL season so far, having won all three games despite the offense not yet hitting its stride.

The group – led by Justin Fields at quarterback, who was forced into the starting lineup only after an injury to offseason newcomer Russell Wilson – has scored three offensive touchdowns in three weeks, the fewest in the NFL.

However, Pittsburgh was able to earn victories thanks to its defense and special teams. Kicker Chris Boswell has made 10 field goals in three weeks – including six in Week 1, when he scored all 18 of the Steelers’ points in an 18-10 win over the Atlanta Falcons.

And the Steelers defense has also grown, allowing the second-fewest rushing yards and conceding zero rushing touchdowns.

Pittsburgh faces an Indianapolis Colts team searching for its identity after three up-and-down performances so far.

The Colts got their first win of the season last time out, but quarterback Anthony Richardson wasn’t pretty. The second-year signal caller will make some excellent throws and then some head-scratching interceptions that will put his team on the defensive.

Positive for Indianapolis in Week 3 is the outstanding performance of running back Jonathan Taylor, who finished the game with 23 carries for 110 yards and two touchdowns.

Heading into Sunday, Taylor talked about how the Colts are starting to come to terms with their young core of players.

“I feel like we definitely managed to play a role. We finally got one, but it’s a week-to-week league,” he told reporters on Thursday. “We definitely have to earn it again this week. (Steelers head coach) Mike Tomlin, he always has his guys ready to play – a tough team.

“But it’s another great opportunity at home. We will harness that energy at Lucas Oil (Stadium) and we just have to fight hard to get another win.”

Sunday Night Football pits two of the AFC’s supposed superpowers against each other, with one flying high and the other fighting to save their season.

The Buffalo Bills have been arguably the hottest team in the NFL so far this season, staging a stellar 14-point comeback in Week 1, defeating the Arizona Cardinals before sweeping the Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars.

Bills QB Josh Allen was the league’s best passer in Week 3 despite losing two of his top targets – Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis – in the offseason. He has thrown seven touchdowns and no interceptions so far, with the combination of Khalil Shakir, Dalton Kincaid, Keon Coleman and James Cook becoming stars with Allen at the helm.

Buffalo’s explosive start to the season makes them one of the early favorites to reach the Super Bowl. And normally you would expect the Baltimore Ravens to be among those contenders, but it’s been a tough start to the 2024 season for the Maryland-based team.

They came within a whisker of going to overtime in their season opener against the Chiefs, and then they were beaten at home by the Las Vegas Raiders before finally getting their first win of the season – just – by overtaking the Dallas Cowboys.

Baltimore’s defense underwent significant upheaval in the offseason – coordinator Mike Macdonald was named head coach of the Seattle Seahawks and both defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson and defensive line coach Anthony Weaver were given coordinator roles at Tennessee and Miami, respectively.

Therefore, the group is still in its infancy, but shows promise and has the best run defense in the league, but also the worst pass defense. And it will be a lot of work for them against the Bills and Allen, who has the second-highest pass completion rate (75%) of all 32 starting quarterbacks.

Ravens linebacker Kyle Van Noy was effusive in his praise for Allen when asked what makes him such a dangerous opponent.

“I mean, we could be here all day talking about this,” Van Noy told reporters with a smile. “(Allen is) just an incredible player who plays at such an extremely high level. I think that (he) and (Bills offensive coordinator Joe) Brady, when they’re calling the plays, they’re in sync right now, their offense and their identity is well in sync and they’re doing an extremely good job of just getting everyone involved.”

In response, Allen spoke nothing but good things about Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson.

“I think he’s an inspiration to a lot of people in this country,” Allen told reporters. “The way he plays the game, the doubters he brought out … and then him showing the resilience and the work ethic and the attitude to go forward and win two MVPs, people in the The whole league, you can see that.”

“He’s really changed the way guys play the game in my opinion, but make no mistake, he can kick the snot out of football and (I) have a lot of respect for him, a lot of love for him.”

Away at home

New Orleans Saints (2-1) @ Atlanta Falcons (1-2) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Cincinnati Bengals (0-3) @ Carolina Panthers (1-2) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Los Angeles Rams (1-2) @ Chicago Bears (1-2) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Minnesota Vikings (3-0) @ Green Bay Packers (2-1) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Jacksonville Jaguars (0-3) @ Houston Texans (2-1) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Pittsburgh Steelers (3-0) @ Indianapolis Colts (1-2) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Denver Broncos (1-2) @ New York Jets (2-1) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles (2-1) @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-1) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Washington Commanders (2-1) @ Arizona Cardinals (1-2) – 4:05 p.m. ET

New England Patriots (1-2) @ San Francisco 49ers (1-2) – 4:05 p.m. ET

Kansas City Chiefs (3-0) @ Los Angeles Chargers (2-1) – 4:25 p.m. ET

Cleveland Browns (1-2) @ Las Vegas Raiders (1-2) – 4:25 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills (3-0) @ Baltimore Ravens (1-2) – 8:20 p.m. ET

KUWAIT CITY, September 29: The Court of Cassation announced its decision in the case of passing on secondary school examinations. Sentencing the main defendants – a male citizen and a female citizen – to two years in prison with hard labor, while an expatriate and another male citizen were sentenced to six months in prison for leaking Ministry of Education secrets; and ordered the recovery of KD 308,000 that the defendant received from the sale of the exams and the acquittal of seven defendants. Previously, the criminal court sentenced a male citizen and a woman to ten and seven years in prison with hard labor, respectively, while another male citizen and an expatriate were sentenced to one year in prison with hard labor and the expatriate’s deportation after serving their prison time.

Before pronouncing the verdict, the prosecution detained the defendants for 21 days to complete the investigation and then transferred them to the Central Prison for involvement in money laundering through illegal fundraising. The results of the investigation revealed that the defendants sold the corrected exams for amounts between KD 25 and KD 50 per subject.

By Jaber Al-Hamoud, Munif Naif
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times staff and agencies

The San Francisco 49ers are dealing with injuries on multiple fronts as they return home for a Week 4 game against the New England Patriots on Sunday.

My predictions for the 49ers vs. Patriots game have running back Jordan Mason once again picking up the slack for San Fran’s struggling wide receiver corps.

Here are my top free NFL picks for this matchup on September 29th.

Patriots vs 49ers prediction

My best choice
Jordan Mason 75+ Rushing Yards (-155 at BetMGM)

My analysis

When Christian McCaffrey was placed on IR, not many people knew the name Jordan Mason.

The former Georgia Tech standout went undrafted in 2022 but was ultimately signed by the San Francisco 49ers. He played a backup role in the Bay Area the last two seasons and has already surpassed his career high in rushing yards after just three weeks.

Mason made a big statement in his first NFL start in Week 1, dominating the Jets with 147 yards on the ground. He kept it up in Week 2, rushing for another 100 yards against the Minnesota Vikings before adding another 77 yards in Week 3 against the Los Angeles Rams.

Now you can see why this bet is worth it. Mason has rushed for over 75 yards in every single contest so far in 2024.

San Fran has relied heavily on the run game and the New England Patriots aren’t the best against the run either. They allowed an average of 83 rushing yards per game and 101.5 on the road.

Mason also had at least 19 carries in every contest. Expect him to celebrate and play a key role in Sunday’s result.

Patriots vs. 49ers, same game play

I expect Mason to do his job in the 49ers backfield, but so does Brock Purdy under center.

Despite the team’s 1-2 record, Purdy has been solid so far, completing 72.6% of his passes for 842 yards and four touchdowns against one interception.

He has surpassed 250 yards passing in his last two games, throwing for 319 against Minnesota and 292 against the Rams. Jauan Jennings and Brandon Aiyuk are his two main targets right now, while George Kittle is also important.

Sure, the Niners may like running the football, but Purdy throws it a lot too.

The Patriots defense is allowing 244.3 passing yards per game and allowed 263 to Aaron Rodgers and the Jets last weekend. Although Purdy has never played against New England since entering the NFL, all signs point to him being a has another big game ahead of him, especially since he’s also averaging 251.5 yards per game at home in his career.

The 49ers are struggling on both sides of the ball – that’s no secret. Defensively, Javon Hargrave, Dee Winters, Jordan Elliott and Curtis Robinson are all dealing with injuries. Offensively, Deebo Samuel is questionable for Sunday (ankle), while OT Trent Williams is also questionable. CMC is still out there too.

The Patriots are 2-1-0 against teams this season, and I believe they can get this game closer to the 10.5 point mark just based on how exhausted San Francisco is.

Learn how to place a bet in the same game with these helpful tips and strategies.

Patriots vs 49ers odds

Patriots vs 49ers live odds

Patriots vs. 49ers opening odds

• Spread: New England +10.5 | San Francisco -10.5
• Money line: New England +425 | San Francisco -600
• Over/Under: Over 40 | Under 40

Odds courtesy of BetMGM

Patriots vs. 49ers distribution and over/under analysis

• The Patriots are 2-1-0 against the spread this season.
• The 49ers have just one win against the spread.
• New England has reached the over in just one game.
• San Francisco has reached the over in two of three contests.

Things worth knowing about the “Patriots vs. 49ers” betting trend.

The Patriots have only covered the spread in six of their last 20 games (-7.20 units / -33% ROI). Find more NFL betting trends for Patriots vs. 49ers.

Information about the Patriots vs. 49ers game

Latest Patriots vs. 49ers injuries

Weather Patriots vs. 49ers

Monitor game conditions with our live NFL weather information and learn how the weather affects NFL betting.

Pages on this topic