BeASaint
Well-Known Member
I'm trying to get my picks done early in the week so I can spend the rest of my time being an unabashed homer. Here are my picks and the reasoning behind them.......
1. Indianapolis (+4/-104) @ Baltimore (-4/-104) ; Total 41(Over -107/Under -103)
Does anyone really want to bet on Peyton Manning on the road and outdoors in the second round of the playoffs? While the colts do, in fact, have the best quarterback and best set of wide receivers in this game, that is the only advantage they have. I’m still not sold on Baltimore for the reason that, like the Bears, they rely just a little too much on the other team turning it over and having their defense turn those turnovers into points. Fortunately for them, Manning threw three interceptions at home against a mediocre Chiefs defense and there’s really no reason to believe that he won’t do something similar against the best all-around defense in the league. Particularly interesting was that both of Ty Law’s interceptions appeared to be due to miscommunication b/w Manning and Harrison, allowing Ty Law to have a couple of Larry Brown type picks. On the other side of the ball, the Colts defense was very impressive against the run, but I believe they basically decided to sell-out against Larry Johnson and dare Trent Green to beat them. When they realized he was unable to do so, their job was very easy. Steve McNair and Trent Green are very similar, but you have to think Derrick Mason and Mark Clayton will perform better than Eddie Kennison and Samie Parker. While Brian Billick is a severely overrated offensive coach, he does have significantly more flexibility than Herm Edwards, which should present some issues for the Indy defense. If the ravens get up early, I would look for about 25 carries for Jamal Lewis with Baltimore trying to just grind the game down to a standstill.
The line opened at Baltimore (-4) and moved up to Baltimore (-4.5) yesterday before coming back down after some Indianapolis money came in. With Baltimore (-3.5) currently on the board at -113, I’m going to buy the hook. Ravens (-3) is -140, which is probably just a little too much to give up for a full point. The total opened at 40 and moved up a full point since Saturday afternoon. I really like the Under in this game and will probably wait until later in the week to bet it. With the Over price currently at -107 the books are trying to discourage Over money, leading me to believe the line hasn’t stopped moving yet.
Weather currently forecast to be Sunny with a high of 69 and a low of 59.
Baltimore (-3.5); Total Under 41
2. Philadelphia (+5/-101) @ New Orleans (-5/-107; Total 48 (Over -108/Under -102)
This is going to be the “De Facto NFC Championship Game”. The team that comes out of this game will have a great shot at the conference championship because they will either have a great shot at going into Chicago and winning or they’ll be hosting Seattle at home. Either way, you’d have to love the confidence that the winner of this game will take into the following week’s matchup. I thought this line should have been somewhere around 3.5 or 4 simply because of home-field and the saints win earlier this season on the same field against the eagles when they had McNabb.
I’ve wondered if McNabb going down actually makes the Eagles a better team because they are not as focused on him throwing the ball all over the place and are actually running the ball and running it well. Maybe McNabb’s injury simply coincided with Reid delegating the play-calling duties. Whatever happened, it has done nothing but work well for this team over the last seven weeks.
The thing that concerns me about this team is that their defense, while playing better than they were earlier in the season, has not shut down any team outside of dallas over the final weeks of the season. They have given up an average of 18 pts/gm over the last 6 weeks. It jumps to 22 if you count the Indy game, but I think the situation of that game with the team adjusting to life w/o McNabb probably justify leaving that game out of the analysis. But, in the end, the 18 pts/gm were not given up against what you might term offensive powerhouses of Carolina, Washington, NYG (twice), Dallas and Atlanta. The only game in which they played very well defensively was against Dallas and I’m still not completely sure whether that was totally attributable to their defensive play or Romo’s play at the quarterback position.
On the other hand, the Saints defense has not been head and shoulders better over the last few weeks either. They are playing above their talent level, but probably at the same overall level of the Philly defense. The battle at the line of scrimmage will be a big factor in the game as both teams have excellent offensive lines that have played together for the vast majority of the team’s snaps this season with minimal time missed due to injuries. Pressure on the quarterback will help both defenses cover a little for their deficiencies in the secondary. Lito Sheppard dislocating his elbow seriously hurts what the Eagles like to do on defense as it will prevent Philadelphia from playing quite as much man coverage and sending an extra man or two on a blitz. Neither team plays spectacular run defense, with Philly ranked 26th and New Orleans ranked 23rd, so getting an early lead will be paramount for both teams as it will pressure the opposition to run a little less than they’d like. Overall, the defensive matchup very slightly favors New Orleans, IMO.
On offense, I don’t think there’s a question that the Saints have significantly more firepower than Philadelphia. The key to stopping the Saints on offense this season is always going to be the level of discipline the defense has when handling Reggie Bush. The fake end-around to Bush in which Brees also play fakes to McAllister is one of the more devastating plays any team in the NFL runs insofar as it tends to keep the defense in a basic alignment since the linebackers must account for the ability of the saints to hand the ball to either of the backs or have Brees keep it and throw deep. This one play was the downfall of the Cowboys a few weeks ago as it completely neutralized the ability of DeMarcus Ware to rush the quarterback and froze their safeties for the split second needed to get Devery Henderson open deep. Jim Johnson will have to come up with a good defensive game plan and Philadelphia’s linebackers and safeties will have to be ultra-disciplined and play one of their better games to counteract these types of plays.
On the Philly side of the ball, there is no question that you are able to run the ball against the Saints defense, but you must run it outside. With Hollis Thomas in the middle of the defensive line, there is usually not very much room to run. Ladell Betts exposed what the Saints have in Thomas while he was out with a suspension by repeatedly running up the middle for big gains. There won’t be very much room there now, but if the Eagles’ offensive line can get to the edge before the Saints’ slower linebackers, they will have success running the ball.
In the end, I don’t think the spread in this game matters all that much. If Philadelphia is able to run the ball effectively and keep the Saints offense off the field, then that means they probably have the lead. If they are not running, then they are probably behind, and the saints really click when they are able to get the other team into the cycle of throwing the ball all over the field with them. The Saints offense is one of the best in the league at playing with a lead because they can do whatever they need to do to take advantage of what the defense is giving them. Be it two backs over 100 yards at NYG or Brees with 5 TD passes at Dallas, the Saints simply have more horses than Philly. The entire key is the number of possessions they have.
If the Saints are no worse than -1 in the turnover battle, they win and cover the spread. If that is not the case, then Philly wins outright. If you like Philly in this game, then an Eagles ML bet at +210 is the way to go. If you like the Saints, lay the points.
New Orleans (-5); Total Under 48
3. Seattle (+9.5/-113) @ Chicago (-9.5/+105); Total 37 (Over -107/Under -103)
I’ve been saying for two months that I can’t wait to bet against the bears in the playoffs. With Chicago’s performances over the final weeks of the season, though, I thought that everyone else might finally catch on to the fact that the Bears are probably not even the second best team in the NFC, much less top of the heap. Fortunately, everyone is still in love with that “great” defense that somehow managed to surrender 31 points to Tampa and 27 points to St. Louis. I won’t go into their Quarterback issues, which everyone is already overly familiar with.
To me, the key factor in this game is to look at how Chicago has won this season, which will rehash the foundation of why I think Chicago is a mediocre team. They beat Arizona on the road 24-23 and the offense scored 3 points. They beat Minnesota at home 23-13 and the offense scored only 7 points. They beat St. Louis on the road 42-27 and got two return touchdowns from Devin Hester. The point behind these three games is that Chicago not only relies on its defense to stop the other team, but also to score points for it. When the playoffs come around, you’re no longer playing Arizona, St. Louis and Minnesota. While Seattle may not be substantially better than those teams, they do have a pro bowl quarterback and the league’s 2005 MVP running the ball, so I would not necessarily want to bank on a slew of turnovers. The reason why teams that win games this way during the season turn around and lose during the playoffs is because good teams do not turn the ball over and do not allow big special teams plays. Maybe because they nearly lost their wild-card game because of a kick return they’ll work extra on that this week.
The most compelling argument against the Bears, though, is that they never actually rested their starters at the end of the season. In their finally three games, they were actively competing to win the games. These ended up being a 34-31 overtime win against Tampa Bay, a 26-21 come-from-behind victory on the road at Detroit and a 26-7 whipping at home against the Packers. The defense is having issues stopping the other team and we all know what kinds of issues Grossman is having throwing the ball to the other team. After his Blutarski-like QB rating against the Packers (0.0), he’s spending the past two weeks reading and hearing about whether the team should go to Brian Griese and this is supposed to be good for his state of mind?
It would be an error to overlook the banged up nature of the seahawks defense, with the three cornerbacks in their nickel package having aggregated a total of 2 starts this season among them. They played reasonably well against the Cowboys on Saturday night, but were simply solid and did nothing outstanding nor detrimental to the team on defense. Whether this was a product of their solid play or the Cowboys inconsistency on offense, I’m not sure, but I’m fairly confident thinking that the Bears will not be significantly better than Dallas in this department. This is probably as even a matchup as the Bears could hope for.
What this game comes down to, in my opinion, is Hasselbeck’s ability to move the ball against the chicago secondary. Tim Rattay, Jon Kitna and Brett Favre have been able to accomplish this in the past few weeks, so I think Hasselbeck will have a fair amount of success against them.
The line opened at Chicago (-7.5) and shot up to Chicago (-9.5). Evidently nobody really agrees with my analysis of the game or something very fishy is going on with the line movement. This is a ton of points to be laying in a playoff game on a team that has not performed well. Following the reasoning that Chicago will not get their turnovers or return scores and that their offense plays horribly, I like the total to go under. The price on the over is creeping up, leaving the possibility that you might be able to get 37.5 or 38 later in the week. I bought the "10" at -126 last night.
Seattle (+10); Total Under 37
4. New England (+5/-103) @ San Diego (-5/-105); Total 46.5 (Over +100/Under -110)
Falling under the same heading of “Do you really want your money on this guy in the playoffs?” I’m not sure I can muster the courage to lay this many points on Marty Schottenheimer and Philip Rivers against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. The Chargers are probably the best team in the NFL and most certainly in the top 2, depending on what you think of Baltimore by comparison. But, several factors with this team concern me.
First, their quarterback could probably be said to be “rookie-lite” in his experience. This is his first year as a starter, but he got a nice apprenticeship for two seasons sitting behind Drew Brees. Lost in the shuffle of “what are the Bears going to do about their quarterback situation” has been Rivers playing inconsistently over the last half of the season. He alternately has good games and bad games. In his last six games, three games saw him with a combined 32/84 (38%), 411 yds and 3 TD, while the other three games in that span he went a very good 51/76 (67.1%), 670 yds and 5 TD. Fortunately, he is not asked to carry the team and has Tomlinson and Gates to fall back on in tight situations.
I think everyone is familiar with what San Diego can do on offense, but I think the publicity their defense receives is a little out of line and overblown. While their defense is very good, I don’t believe it is at the level everyone believes it to be. Merriman rightfully gets a lot of publicity for his sack numbers, but I’ve seen teams move the ball far too often on the Chargers to be left with the opinion that they can rely on their defense if the offense has an off day. They were 10th in total defense, 7th in scoring defense and 16th in passing defense, while New England ranked ahead of them in every category. This has somewhat to do with New England’s weak schedule this season, but it cannot be totally dismissed.
On the other side, New England sure does seem to be peaking at the right time with an unbelievable cast of characters on offense. The defense is the main area I’m concerned about with the Patriots. Having Tedy Bruschi running around trying to contain Leon Washington was a failure at best and their secondary did not seem to have an answer for Chad Pennington until the point where he was forced to throw it up field and their defensive backs could drop ten yards off the line of scrimmage. Prior to this, though, the Jets seemed to move the ball at will until the pats would stop them at around the 15 yard line. Perhaps this was Belichick’s plan, but I definitely doesn’t inspire confidence in his defense as they travel to play an infinitely better offensive team than the Jets.
In the end, the line is just too big for me to lay the points on San Diego. While 5 points is not all that different than 4.5, I don’t think San Diego’s combination of Marty and Rivers against Belichick and Brady will cover that. If Belichick can negate Rivers, then he will be freed up to be more creative in trying to stop Tomlinson. His overall team seems to get worse and worse every year, but he still manages to stop better teams when it comes down to it.
San Diego may win, but they will have to pull the game out with a late FG or TD to win by 3 or 4.
New England (+5); Total Under 46.5
1. Indianapolis (+4/-104) @ Baltimore (-4/-104) ; Total 41(Over -107/Under -103)
Does anyone really want to bet on Peyton Manning on the road and outdoors in the second round of the playoffs? While the colts do, in fact, have the best quarterback and best set of wide receivers in this game, that is the only advantage they have. I’m still not sold on Baltimore for the reason that, like the Bears, they rely just a little too much on the other team turning it over and having their defense turn those turnovers into points. Fortunately for them, Manning threw three interceptions at home against a mediocre Chiefs defense and there’s really no reason to believe that he won’t do something similar against the best all-around defense in the league. Particularly interesting was that both of Ty Law’s interceptions appeared to be due to miscommunication b/w Manning and Harrison, allowing Ty Law to have a couple of Larry Brown type picks. On the other side of the ball, the Colts defense was very impressive against the run, but I believe they basically decided to sell-out against Larry Johnson and dare Trent Green to beat them. When they realized he was unable to do so, their job was very easy. Steve McNair and Trent Green are very similar, but you have to think Derrick Mason and Mark Clayton will perform better than Eddie Kennison and Samie Parker. While Brian Billick is a severely overrated offensive coach, he does have significantly more flexibility than Herm Edwards, which should present some issues for the Indy defense. If the ravens get up early, I would look for about 25 carries for Jamal Lewis with Baltimore trying to just grind the game down to a standstill.
The line opened at Baltimore (-4) and moved up to Baltimore (-4.5) yesterday before coming back down after some Indianapolis money came in. With Baltimore (-3.5) currently on the board at -113, I’m going to buy the hook. Ravens (-3) is -140, which is probably just a little too much to give up for a full point. The total opened at 40 and moved up a full point since Saturday afternoon. I really like the Under in this game and will probably wait until later in the week to bet it. With the Over price currently at -107 the books are trying to discourage Over money, leading me to believe the line hasn’t stopped moving yet.
Weather currently forecast to be Sunny with a high of 69 and a low of 59.
Baltimore (-3.5); Total Under 41
2. Philadelphia (+5/-101) @ New Orleans (-5/-107; Total 48 (Over -108/Under -102)
This is going to be the “De Facto NFC Championship Game”. The team that comes out of this game will have a great shot at the conference championship because they will either have a great shot at going into Chicago and winning or they’ll be hosting Seattle at home. Either way, you’d have to love the confidence that the winner of this game will take into the following week’s matchup. I thought this line should have been somewhere around 3.5 or 4 simply because of home-field and the saints win earlier this season on the same field against the eagles when they had McNabb.
I’ve wondered if McNabb going down actually makes the Eagles a better team because they are not as focused on him throwing the ball all over the place and are actually running the ball and running it well. Maybe McNabb’s injury simply coincided with Reid delegating the play-calling duties. Whatever happened, it has done nothing but work well for this team over the last seven weeks.
The thing that concerns me about this team is that their defense, while playing better than they were earlier in the season, has not shut down any team outside of dallas over the final weeks of the season. They have given up an average of 18 pts/gm over the last 6 weeks. It jumps to 22 if you count the Indy game, but I think the situation of that game with the team adjusting to life w/o McNabb probably justify leaving that game out of the analysis. But, in the end, the 18 pts/gm were not given up against what you might term offensive powerhouses of Carolina, Washington, NYG (twice), Dallas and Atlanta. The only game in which they played very well defensively was against Dallas and I’m still not completely sure whether that was totally attributable to their defensive play or Romo’s play at the quarterback position.
On the other hand, the Saints defense has not been head and shoulders better over the last few weeks either. They are playing above their talent level, but probably at the same overall level of the Philly defense. The battle at the line of scrimmage will be a big factor in the game as both teams have excellent offensive lines that have played together for the vast majority of the team’s snaps this season with minimal time missed due to injuries. Pressure on the quarterback will help both defenses cover a little for their deficiencies in the secondary. Lito Sheppard dislocating his elbow seriously hurts what the Eagles like to do on defense as it will prevent Philadelphia from playing quite as much man coverage and sending an extra man or two on a blitz. Neither team plays spectacular run defense, with Philly ranked 26th and New Orleans ranked 23rd, so getting an early lead will be paramount for both teams as it will pressure the opposition to run a little less than they’d like. Overall, the defensive matchup very slightly favors New Orleans, IMO.
On offense, I don’t think there’s a question that the Saints have significantly more firepower than Philadelphia. The key to stopping the Saints on offense this season is always going to be the level of discipline the defense has when handling Reggie Bush. The fake end-around to Bush in which Brees also play fakes to McAllister is one of the more devastating plays any team in the NFL runs insofar as it tends to keep the defense in a basic alignment since the linebackers must account for the ability of the saints to hand the ball to either of the backs or have Brees keep it and throw deep. This one play was the downfall of the Cowboys a few weeks ago as it completely neutralized the ability of DeMarcus Ware to rush the quarterback and froze their safeties for the split second needed to get Devery Henderson open deep. Jim Johnson will have to come up with a good defensive game plan and Philadelphia’s linebackers and safeties will have to be ultra-disciplined and play one of their better games to counteract these types of plays.
On the Philly side of the ball, there is no question that you are able to run the ball against the Saints defense, but you must run it outside. With Hollis Thomas in the middle of the defensive line, there is usually not very much room to run. Ladell Betts exposed what the Saints have in Thomas while he was out with a suspension by repeatedly running up the middle for big gains. There won’t be very much room there now, but if the Eagles’ offensive line can get to the edge before the Saints’ slower linebackers, they will have success running the ball.
In the end, I don’t think the spread in this game matters all that much. If Philadelphia is able to run the ball effectively and keep the Saints offense off the field, then that means they probably have the lead. If they are not running, then they are probably behind, and the saints really click when they are able to get the other team into the cycle of throwing the ball all over the field with them. The Saints offense is one of the best in the league at playing with a lead because they can do whatever they need to do to take advantage of what the defense is giving them. Be it two backs over 100 yards at NYG or Brees with 5 TD passes at Dallas, the Saints simply have more horses than Philly. The entire key is the number of possessions they have.
If the Saints are no worse than -1 in the turnover battle, they win and cover the spread. If that is not the case, then Philly wins outright. If you like Philly in this game, then an Eagles ML bet at +210 is the way to go. If you like the Saints, lay the points.
New Orleans (-5); Total Under 48
3. Seattle (+9.5/-113) @ Chicago (-9.5/+105); Total 37 (Over -107/Under -103)
I’ve been saying for two months that I can’t wait to bet against the bears in the playoffs. With Chicago’s performances over the final weeks of the season, though, I thought that everyone else might finally catch on to the fact that the Bears are probably not even the second best team in the NFC, much less top of the heap. Fortunately, everyone is still in love with that “great” defense that somehow managed to surrender 31 points to Tampa and 27 points to St. Louis. I won’t go into their Quarterback issues, which everyone is already overly familiar with.
To me, the key factor in this game is to look at how Chicago has won this season, which will rehash the foundation of why I think Chicago is a mediocre team. They beat Arizona on the road 24-23 and the offense scored 3 points. They beat Minnesota at home 23-13 and the offense scored only 7 points. They beat St. Louis on the road 42-27 and got two return touchdowns from Devin Hester. The point behind these three games is that Chicago not only relies on its defense to stop the other team, but also to score points for it. When the playoffs come around, you’re no longer playing Arizona, St. Louis and Minnesota. While Seattle may not be substantially better than those teams, they do have a pro bowl quarterback and the league’s 2005 MVP running the ball, so I would not necessarily want to bank on a slew of turnovers. The reason why teams that win games this way during the season turn around and lose during the playoffs is because good teams do not turn the ball over and do not allow big special teams plays. Maybe because they nearly lost their wild-card game because of a kick return they’ll work extra on that this week.
The most compelling argument against the Bears, though, is that they never actually rested their starters at the end of the season. In their finally three games, they were actively competing to win the games. These ended up being a 34-31 overtime win against Tampa Bay, a 26-21 come-from-behind victory on the road at Detroit and a 26-7 whipping at home against the Packers. The defense is having issues stopping the other team and we all know what kinds of issues Grossman is having throwing the ball to the other team. After his Blutarski-like QB rating against the Packers (0.0), he’s spending the past two weeks reading and hearing about whether the team should go to Brian Griese and this is supposed to be good for his state of mind?
It would be an error to overlook the banged up nature of the seahawks defense, with the three cornerbacks in their nickel package having aggregated a total of 2 starts this season among them. They played reasonably well against the Cowboys on Saturday night, but were simply solid and did nothing outstanding nor detrimental to the team on defense. Whether this was a product of their solid play or the Cowboys inconsistency on offense, I’m not sure, but I’m fairly confident thinking that the Bears will not be significantly better than Dallas in this department. This is probably as even a matchup as the Bears could hope for.
What this game comes down to, in my opinion, is Hasselbeck’s ability to move the ball against the chicago secondary. Tim Rattay, Jon Kitna and Brett Favre have been able to accomplish this in the past few weeks, so I think Hasselbeck will have a fair amount of success against them.
The line opened at Chicago (-7.5) and shot up to Chicago (-9.5). Evidently nobody really agrees with my analysis of the game or something very fishy is going on with the line movement. This is a ton of points to be laying in a playoff game on a team that has not performed well. Following the reasoning that Chicago will not get their turnovers or return scores and that their offense plays horribly, I like the total to go under. The price on the over is creeping up, leaving the possibility that you might be able to get 37.5 or 38 later in the week. I bought the "10" at -126 last night.
Seattle (+10); Total Under 37
4. New England (+5/-103) @ San Diego (-5/-105); Total 46.5 (Over +100/Under -110)
Falling under the same heading of “Do you really want your money on this guy in the playoffs?” I’m not sure I can muster the courage to lay this many points on Marty Schottenheimer and Philip Rivers against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. The Chargers are probably the best team in the NFL and most certainly in the top 2, depending on what you think of Baltimore by comparison. But, several factors with this team concern me.
First, their quarterback could probably be said to be “rookie-lite” in his experience. This is his first year as a starter, but he got a nice apprenticeship for two seasons sitting behind Drew Brees. Lost in the shuffle of “what are the Bears going to do about their quarterback situation” has been Rivers playing inconsistently over the last half of the season. He alternately has good games and bad games. In his last six games, three games saw him with a combined 32/84 (38%), 411 yds and 3 TD, while the other three games in that span he went a very good 51/76 (67.1%), 670 yds and 5 TD. Fortunately, he is not asked to carry the team and has Tomlinson and Gates to fall back on in tight situations.
I think everyone is familiar with what San Diego can do on offense, but I think the publicity their defense receives is a little out of line and overblown. While their defense is very good, I don’t believe it is at the level everyone believes it to be. Merriman rightfully gets a lot of publicity for his sack numbers, but I’ve seen teams move the ball far too often on the Chargers to be left with the opinion that they can rely on their defense if the offense has an off day. They were 10th in total defense, 7th in scoring defense and 16th in passing defense, while New England ranked ahead of them in every category. This has somewhat to do with New England’s weak schedule this season, but it cannot be totally dismissed.
On the other side, New England sure does seem to be peaking at the right time with an unbelievable cast of characters on offense. The defense is the main area I’m concerned about with the Patriots. Having Tedy Bruschi running around trying to contain Leon Washington was a failure at best and their secondary did not seem to have an answer for Chad Pennington until the point where he was forced to throw it up field and their defensive backs could drop ten yards off the line of scrimmage. Prior to this, though, the Jets seemed to move the ball at will until the pats would stop them at around the 15 yard line. Perhaps this was Belichick’s plan, but I definitely doesn’t inspire confidence in his defense as they travel to play an infinitely better offensive team than the Jets.
In the end, the line is just too big for me to lay the points on San Diego. While 5 points is not all that different than 4.5, I don’t think San Diego’s combination of Marty and Rivers against Belichick and Brady will cover that. If Belichick can negate Rivers, then he will be freed up to be more creative in trying to stop Tomlinson. His overall team seems to get worse and worse every year, but he still manages to stop better teams when it comes down to it.
San Diego may win, but they will have to pull the game out with a late FG or TD to win by 3 or 4.
New England (+5); Total Under 46.5
