Those numbers are not out yet. Our projection won't be 8.5. More likely 7 over or 7.5 under.
The 5Dimes website has 8.5 alongside the Dolphins but those numbers are not bettable. Notice the lack of juice on the right side. The college over/unders will have let's say 9.5 at left along with -180 at right. That means 9.5 wins with a money line of -180 (180 to win 100) to go over 9.5. That means it's bettable...right now. When the juice is absent it's a work in progress.
Also, and this is admittedly a minor point, but the author of the article linked atop this thread doesn't fully understand betting odds and probability if he merely adds up the number of times a team is favored and announces that the team is therefore favored to have a winning record heading into the final game. It doesn't work that way. For example, let's say a team is favored 10 times by 1 point and underdog 5 times by 10 points. That hardly means they are favored to be 10-5 after 15 games. Not even close. The 1 point games carry a theoretical win likelihood of roughly 53% and the 10 point games would align with roughly a 22% chance. Instead of 10-5 the over/under would be a record of 7-8.
In this case I didn't look at it closely but it appeared the Dolphins were underdogs by slightly higher amount than their favoritism, particularly prior to the final two games listed.
Regardless, I despise Cantor Gaming and its overdone flashing light approach to sports gaming, sticking neon screens in your face and ruining some of the classically simple Las Vegas sportsbooks like Venetian and now Palms.