CollegeKingRex
CTG Regular
Sup fellas. GL to everyone this weekend. I'll post the two Saturday games now, and get to the Sunday games when I get a bit more time.
It might be the first game of the weekend, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a game this weekend that more football diehards get into than Baltimore's trip to New England to face the top-seeded Patriots.
New England hasn't won a Super Bowl in 10 years, and new-found nemesis Baltimore has beaten New England twice in the last three playoff meetings between the squads over the last five seasons. The third time could well come Saturday afternoon in Foxborough.
The Ravens are the sixth-seed and earned this trip by beating Pittsburgh at Heinz Field in convincing fashion, 30-17. The Ravens continued to show that road playoff pedigree, having gone 7-4 SU and 8-3 ATS away from home in the postseason since John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco simultaneously arrived to town in 2008.
Included in that are two double-digit wins in three playoff trips as an underdog to Foxborough during the last five seasons. The loss was a last-second defeat that required a dropped pass (Lee Evans was pressured, but still could have caught the game-winning pass) in the end zone and a missed 32-yard chip shot field goal to allow the Pats their only trip to the Super Bowl since the 16-0 regular season.
Baltimore has won five straight playoff games overall, including three in a row on the road. In that stretch, Flacco has 13 touchdowns and no interceptions; he's thrown 166 straight passes without an interception in the postseason. That's the fourth-longest streak in history. In this current run, Flacco has gotten the best of three Super Bowl champion quarterbacks, a No. 1 overall draft choice and a $100 million quarterback.
In fact, Baltimore has won 10 road playoff games since the franchise started playing games in 1996, which is tied with Green Bay for the most in league history. The latest meeting was the 2012 AFC Championship game, where the Ravens prevailed, 28-13. They didn't sack Tom Brady that night, but hit him six times, hurried him 15 and forced two interceptions.
Brady has seven interceptions in his three playoff games against the Ravens, and seven interceptions in his other last 12 playoff games combined. Obviously, this team has given him fits in the past.
That said, this series has been hardly one-sided. In the regular season, New England has won three of the last four meetings since 2009, including a 41-7 thrashing in week 16 last year that put the kibosh on Baltimore's dream of repeating as Super Bowl champs.
Key contributors of those two playoff upsets - Ray Rice, Anquan Boldin and Ray Lewis - are all gone. In the 2012 game, Cary Williams and Dannell Ellerbe were the two guys who intercepted Brady. They are gone. Bernard Pollard forced a fumble that Arthur Jones recovered. They are both gone. Dennis Pitta caught a touchdown pass; he is out with an injury. Legendary safety Ed Reed is out of the league.
Meanwhile, Brady's leading receivers were Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez. Welker now plies his trade in Denver, while Aaron Hernandez is in prison as a convicted murderer. And the ''other '' New England tight end, Rob Gronkowski, was out with an injury.
From October through Thanksgiving, the Patriots' offense tore through opponents. During a seven-game win streak, New England averaged just shy of 40 points per game. The Pats won 10 of 11 before resting most of their regulars in a Week 17 home loss to Buffalo, the only defeat the Pats suffered in friendly Gillette Stadium this season. And the Patriots have allowed a total of 12 points after halftime in their past six games (zero touchdowns). Only two other defenses have ended a regular season that stout since 1960: the 1976 Steelers (nine points) and 1989 Redskins (10 points).
Let's look at this one a bit closer. The Patriots are coming off two subpar offensive efforts coming into the playoffs and haven't scored more than 23 points in four of their last five games. The 3-11 Jets held New England to 17 points in a win at the Meadowlands on Dec. 21, the lowest output for the Pats with a healthy Brady and Gronkowski together all season.
The Ravens are similar to the Jets in that they have a strong front seven. Winning up front and players getting off their blocks and making sure tackles are the key to slowing down the New England running game. This serves two purposes: It keeps Baltimore from putting another man in the box and giving the Pats single-high safety looks and man-to-man on the outside and it also makes it tough on the Patriots’ play-action passing game, which is a huge part of their offense. New England led the league in play-action passing yards and can throw it to Gronkowski and the slot receiver off play-action, which not all teams can do with ruthless efficiency.
Haloti Ngata earned a four-game suspension for substance abuse at the end of the regular season; all that did was give him requisite rest to be a monster at Pittsburgh. He's obviously fresher than his teammates and the New England line and he demands attention - that helps everyone else up front for the Ravens. Baltimore's interior depth was aided by the suspension as well, as there are at least four other useful interior linemen the Ravens can use.
Ravens' defensive coordinator Dean Pees served as linebackers coach, then as defensive coordinator in New England from 2004-2009. So he watched Brady in practice daily and knows that offense as good as or better than Rex Ryan and the former Jets' defensive staff.
In the three playoff games against Baltimore, Brady has completed only 50.2% of his passes, with all seven of the interceptions against a four-man rush. Obviously they will want to try to get to him without blitzing very often. Last week in dispatching of Pittsburgh, Baltimore blasted Steeler QB Ben Roethlisberger, sacking him five times, hitting him five more and hounding him into a late injury that aided in the game-clinching interception.
On the other side, Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco turns into a different quarterback in the postseason. He's now thrown 166 straight passes without being intercepted, with 13 touchdowns in that span. Baltimore is looking for its sixth straight playoff win.
Flacco could well be a big benefactor of the new point-of-emphasis penalties (illegal contact, pass interference and defensive holding); there were 749 of them called this year, up from 557 in the 2013 season. Yet the Ravens have been the best in the league at drawing those fouls even before the crackdown. Flacco has drawn 85 defensive pass interference penalties since coming into the league in 2008.
Where is Belichick going to put Brandon Browner? His mix of strength and size has made New England’s secondary much better in 2014. Yet Steve Smith is six inches shorter and should be able to muscle his way into routes, so that’sa bad matchup. And Torrey Smith is a bus-wreck in waiting. He drew 11 flags for 229 yards during the season for defensive interference, almost more than twice that of anyone else in the league. Browner has 15 penalties (including five pass interference calls) in just nine games as a Patriot. I think we could all logically deduce what would happen in that matchup.
Yet the Ravens don't need the Patriots to "get caught cheatin'" to succeed in their vertical passing game. Flacco has completed 26 passes downfield of at least 20 or more yards in his playoff career. Aaron Rodgers is second in that statistic, with just 14.
The Ravens are catching a full seven points here. Four of the Ravens' six losses this season were by 7 points or less. Hard to see the ''playoff'' Ravens not showing up in this spot. l'll call for the Baltimore outright upset. Score it 27-23, Baltimore.
The play: Baltimore +7 -115 medium 2u
Saturday Night.....
It seems easy enough to predict a Seattle win on Saturday night when they host the Carolina Panthers in an NFC divisional playoff game. After all, the Seahawks have been rolling as of late. They've won six in a row, covering and winning by double digits in each of those games, and have held the opponents to just 39 (!) points in those games.
That said, no defending Super Bowl champion has even won a single playoff game in the ensuing year for the past eight seasons. You have to go back to the 2005 season, when the Pats beat Jacksonville in the wild card round the year after they beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX. New England lost in the divisional round at Denver, and no reigning Super Bowl champ has won a playoff game since... yet Seattle is a double-digit favorite to do so Saturday night against suddenly-hot Carolina.
So immovable object appears to meet a double-digit pointspread. Obviously the experts in Costa Rica and (to a lesser extent) Las Vegas don't think much of this so-called "streak", but before it gets dismissed, failure of the top seeds as of late in the NFC also bears worth watching.
NFC home teams are just 10-10 straight up in playoff games since 2010. Going back a bit, NFC top seeds are just 1-7 ATS in this round the past eight seasons, with four outright losses.
While I expect the Seahawks to win, just as they have in each of the last three close meetings (16-12, 12-7, 13-9) against Cam Newton and the Panthers, it won't be easy. And they sure shouldn't be laying double digits.
It's hard to imagine a team that was 3-8-1 at one point and going 65 days between victories actually playing for a shot at the NFC Championship game. The Panthers are unquestionably entering unchartered territory, but after allowing 17 or less to each of the last five beaten foes, their defense will enter this game with loads of confidence.
For starters, the Seattle offense begins and ends with quarterback Russell Wilson. Sure, the Seahawks are first in the league in rushing and will try to pound Lynch through all inside holes for 60 minutes. This is a tough matchup for the Seahawks because of Carolina's defense not allowing mobile quarterbacks to beat them very often.
Seattle ran 26 times for 119 yards in the 13-9 win earlier this season in Charlotte, but two Wilson scrambles padded the stats there; the Seahawks had just 22 yards on six rushes before halftime. He was unable to get much going with the option, gaining 35 yards on six carries in October. Last year, he ran for just seven yards on five carries in another narrow win in Charlotte.
The Panthers have also stymied San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick twice. When he was a "running quarterback" in 2013, they held him to 16 yards on four carries in the regular season and then 15 yards on eight carries in a playoff loss to the 49ers last season.
Carolina missed Greg Hardy in the first half of the season. But the Panther defense rung up 17 sacks in their final five games and four more against the Cardinals in the playoffs. While there's no doubt those teams they beat up on are not to Seattle's caliber, there's also no doubt that Carolina is built to stop what Seattle does best. The Seahawks' passing game is dearth of playmakers and not designed to exploit the lack of depth and experience in the Panther secondary.
Wilson thrives on breaking the pocket and making a play with his legs when things aren't going his way on a pass play, but no linebackers in the league have better lateral quickness than Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis. Their sideline-to-sideline range will continue to wreak havoc on Seattle's offense, and they anticipate misdirection better than any duo as well, making them doubly tough. Kuechly led all MLB/ILB this season in tackles, tackles for no gain or loss, pass breakups and disrupted dropbacks.
Because of its defense's success, the Seattle offense won't change their game plan from week to week. It's "Here it is, come stop it time after time until our defense breaks your spirit, then we wear you down."
Good strategy as of late: these Seahawks appear to be playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers at this point. The uptick in the Seattle defense roughly coincided with the return of a few key cogs. Middle linebacker Bobby Wagner missed five games and physical safety Kam Chancellor missed two full games to injury. The Seahawks had some early-season struggles, likely a result of that Super Bowl hangover that afflicts most champions the following summer and fall.
Newton has only led Carolina to 28 points in the three meetings against the Seahawks, but he's only thrown one interception. If he can limit mistakes and hope for the defense to come up with a couple of big plays then his chances to help the offense succeed go up greatly.
It doesn't say much for your offensive weapons when your second-string tight end is your third-best receiving weapon on offense, yet Newton tossed several sideline wheel-route throws to Ed Dickson last week. With Greg Olsen and Kelvin Benjamin figuring to find the sledding tough, Dickson could emerge again.
The more likely outcome is a large dosage of Jonathan Stewart. The former Oregon Duck returns to the Pacific Northwest full of confidence after racking up 609 yards on the ground in the last six games. Easier said than done to pound the rock against a rushing defense as rock-ribbed as Seattle's, but patience is the key for the Panther offense. Hang around as long as you can, and then find a way to win it in the fourth quarter. That's what Seattle did in two of the last three seasons (trailing at half in each game).
The Panthers have hosted Seattle in each of the last three years, coming up on the short end all three times by a total of 13 points. Seattle won in Charlotte 16-12 in 2012, 12-7 in 2013 and 13-9 in Week Eight of this season. In that game Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson threw a 23-yard touchdown pass with 47 seconds left to give Seattle its first and only lead of the game.
The Seahawks averaged only 13.6 points in those three games and are laying more than 10. While this game is in the more hostile CenturyLink Field, it would be a mistake to think that the Panthers are coming in to lay down. As one of their players said this week, they might not be going to the prom with the prettiest girl, but they're still dancing and having fun. There is virtually no one outside of their locker room expecting them to win. But it will be a tall task for Carolina to overcome "the 12th Man" and Pete Carroll's 15-1 record in prime-time games. Seattle is 24-2 SU in its last 26 home games, covering in 18 of those in the last three years.
This is by far the lowest posted total of the four games this weekend. With points at a premium, it's an easy recommendation. There will have to be two defensive/special teams touchdowns scored to threaten 40 points, so I'll be betting against that. Score it Seattle 16-10.
The plays:
UNDER 40 medium to big 2.5u
Carolina +11 -105 medium 2u
Good luck fellas!
:shake:
It might be the first game of the weekend, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a game this weekend that more football diehards get into than Baltimore's trip to New England to face the top-seeded Patriots.
New England hasn't won a Super Bowl in 10 years, and new-found nemesis Baltimore has beaten New England twice in the last three playoff meetings between the squads over the last five seasons. The third time could well come Saturday afternoon in Foxborough.
The Ravens are the sixth-seed and earned this trip by beating Pittsburgh at Heinz Field in convincing fashion, 30-17. The Ravens continued to show that road playoff pedigree, having gone 7-4 SU and 8-3 ATS away from home in the postseason since John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco simultaneously arrived to town in 2008.
Included in that are two double-digit wins in three playoff trips as an underdog to Foxborough during the last five seasons. The loss was a last-second defeat that required a dropped pass (Lee Evans was pressured, but still could have caught the game-winning pass) in the end zone and a missed 32-yard chip shot field goal to allow the Pats their only trip to the Super Bowl since the 16-0 regular season.
Baltimore has won five straight playoff games overall, including three in a row on the road. In that stretch, Flacco has 13 touchdowns and no interceptions; he's thrown 166 straight passes without an interception in the postseason. That's the fourth-longest streak in history. In this current run, Flacco has gotten the best of three Super Bowl champion quarterbacks, a No. 1 overall draft choice and a $100 million quarterback.
In fact, Baltimore has won 10 road playoff games since the franchise started playing games in 1996, which is tied with Green Bay for the most in league history. The latest meeting was the 2012 AFC Championship game, where the Ravens prevailed, 28-13. They didn't sack Tom Brady that night, but hit him six times, hurried him 15 and forced two interceptions.
Brady has seven interceptions in his three playoff games against the Ravens, and seven interceptions in his other last 12 playoff games combined. Obviously, this team has given him fits in the past.
That said, this series has been hardly one-sided. In the regular season, New England has won three of the last four meetings since 2009, including a 41-7 thrashing in week 16 last year that put the kibosh on Baltimore's dream of repeating as Super Bowl champs.
Key contributors of those two playoff upsets - Ray Rice, Anquan Boldin and Ray Lewis - are all gone. In the 2012 game, Cary Williams and Dannell Ellerbe were the two guys who intercepted Brady. They are gone. Bernard Pollard forced a fumble that Arthur Jones recovered. They are both gone. Dennis Pitta caught a touchdown pass; he is out with an injury. Legendary safety Ed Reed is out of the league.
Meanwhile, Brady's leading receivers were Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez. Welker now plies his trade in Denver, while Aaron Hernandez is in prison as a convicted murderer. And the ''other '' New England tight end, Rob Gronkowski, was out with an injury.
From October through Thanksgiving, the Patriots' offense tore through opponents. During a seven-game win streak, New England averaged just shy of 40 points per game. The Pats won 10 of 11 before resting most of their regulars in a Week 17 home loss to Buffalo, the only defeat the Pats suffered in friendly Gillette Stadium this season. And the Patriots have allowed a total of 12 points after halftime in their past six games (zero touchdowns). Only two other defenses have ended a regular season that stout since 1960: the 1976 Steelers (nine points) and 1989 Redskins (10 points).
Let's look at this one a bit closer. The Patriots are coming off two subpar offensive efforts coming into the playoffs and haven't scored more than 23 points in four of their last five games. The 3-11 Jets held New England to 17 points in a win at the Meadowlands on Dec. 21, the lowest output for the Pats with a healthy Brady and Gronkowski together all season.
The Ravens are similar to the Jets in that they have a strong front seven. Winning up front and players getting off their blocks and making sure tackles are the key to slowing down the New England running game. This serves two purposes: It keeps Baltimore from putting another man in the box and giving the Pats single-high safety looks and man-to-man on the outside and it also makes it tough on the Patriots’ play-action passing game, which is a huge part of their offense. New England led the league in play-action passing yards and can throw it to Gronkowski and the slot receiver off play-action, which not all teams can do with ruthless efficiency.
Haloti Ngata earned a four-game suspension for substance abuse at the end of the regular season; all that did was give him requisite rest to be a monster at Pittsburgh. He's obviously fresher than his teammates and the New England line and he demands attention - that helps everyone else up front for the Ravens. Baltimore's interior depth was aided by the suspension as well, as there are at least four other useful interior linemen the Ravens can use.
Ravens' defensive coordinator Dean Pees served as linebackers coach, then as defensive coordinator in New England from 2004-2009. So he watched Brady in practice daily and knows that offense as good as or better than Rex Ryan and the former Jets' defensive staff.
In the three playoff games against Baltimore, Brady has completed only 50.2% of his passes, with all seven of the interceptions against a four-man rush. Obviously they will want to try to get to him without blitzing very often. Last week in dispatching of Pittsburgh, Baltimore blasted Steeler QB Ben Roethlisberger, sacking him five times, hitting him five more and hounding him into a late injury that aided in the game-clinching interception.
On the other side, Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco turns into a different quarterback in the postseason. He's now thrown 166 straight passes without being intercepted, with 13 touchdowns in that span. Baltimore is looking for its sixth straight playoff win.
Flacco could well be a big benefactor of the new point-of-emphasis penalties (illegal contact, pass interference and defensive holding); there were 749 of them called this year, up from 557 in the 2013 season. Yet the Ravens have been the best in the league at drawing those fouls even before the crackdown. Flacco has drawn 85 defensive pass interference penalties since coming into the league in 2008.
Where is Belichick going to put Brandon Browner? His mix of strength and size has made New England’s secondary much better in 2014. Yet Steve Smith is six inches shorter and should be able to muscle his way into routes, so that’sa bad matchup. And Torrey Smith is a bus-wreck in waiting. He drew 11 flags for 229 yards during the season for defensive interference, almost more than twice that of anyone else in the league. Browner has 15 penalties (including five pass interference calls) in just nine games as a Patriot. I think we could all logically deduce what would happen in that matchup.
Yet the Ravens don't need the Patriots to "get caught cheatin'" to succeed in their vertical passing game. Flacco has completed 26 passes downfield of at least 20 or more yards in his playoff career. Aaron Rodgers is second in that statistic, with just 14.
The Ravens are catching a full seven points here. Four of the Ravens' six losses this season were by 7 points or less. Hard to see the ''playoff'' Ravens not showing up in this spot. l'll call for the Baltimore outright upset. Score it 27-23, Baltimore.
The play: Baltimore +7 -115 medium 2u
Saturday Night.....
It seems easy enough to predict a Seattle win on Saturday night when they host the Carolina Panthers in an NFC divisional playoff game. After all, the Seahawks have been rolling as of late. They've won six in a row, covering and winning by double digits in each of those games, and have held the opponents to just 39 (!) points in those games.
That said, no defending Super Bowl champion has even won a single playoff game in the ensuing year for the past eight seasons. You have to go back to the 2005 season, when the Pats beat Jacksonville in the wild card round the year after they beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX. New England lost in the divisional round at Denver, and no reigning Super Bowl champ has won a playoff game since... yet Seattle is a double-digit favorite to do so Saturday night against suddenly-hot Carolina.
So immovable object appears to meet a double-digit pointspread. Obviously the experts in Costa Rica and (to a lesser extent) Las Vegas don't think much of this so-called "streak", but before it gets dismissed, failure of the top seeds as of late in the NFC also bears worth watching.
NFC home teams are just 10-10 straight up in playoff games since 2010. Going back a bit, NFC top seeds are just 1-7 ATS in this round the past eight seasons, with four outright losses.
While I expect the Seahawks to win, just as they have in each of the last three close meetings (16-12, 12-7, 13-9) against Cam Newton and the Panthers, it won't be easy. And they sure shouldn't be laying double digits.
It's hard to imagine a team that was 3-8-1 at one point and going 65 days between victories actually playing for a shot at the NFC Championship game. The Panthers are unquestionably entering unchartered territory, but after allowing 17 or less to each of the last five beaten foes, their defense will enter this game with loads of confidence.
For starters, the Seattle offense begins and ends with quarterback Russell Wilson. Sure, the Seahawks are first in the league in rushing and will try to pound Lynch through all inside holes for 60 minutes. This is a tough matchup for the Seahawks because of Carolina's defense not allowing mobile quarterbacks to beat them very often.
Seattle ran 26 times for 119 yards in the 13-9 win earlier this season in Charlotte, but two Wilson scrambles padded the stats there; the Seahawks had just 22 yards on six rushes before halftime. He was unable to get much going with the option, gaining 35 yards on six carries in October. Last year, he ran for just seven yards on five carries in another narrow win in Charlotte.
The Panthers have also stymied San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick twice. When he was a "running quarterback" in 2013, they held him to 16 yards on four carries in the regular season and then 15 yards on eight carries in a playoff loss to the 49ers last season.
Carolina missed Greg Hardy in the first half of the season. But the Panther defense rung up 17 sacks in their final five games and four more against the Cardinals in the playoffs. While there's no doubt those teams they beat up on are not to Seattle's caliber, there's also no doubt that Carolina is built to stop what Seattle does best. The Seahawks' passing game is dearth of playmakers and not designed to exploit the lack of depth and experience in the Panther secondary.
Wilson thrives on breaking the pocket and making a play with his legs when things aren't going his way on a pass play, but no linebackers in the league have better lateral quickness than Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis. Their sideline-to-sideline range will continue to wreak havoc on Seattle's offense, and they anticipate misdirection better than any duo as well, making them doubly tough. Kuechly led all MLB/ILB this season in tackles, tackles for no gain or loss, pass breakups and disrupted dropbacks.
Because of its defense's success, the Seattle offense won't change their game plan from week to week. It's "Here it is, come stop it time after time until our defense breaks your spirit, then we wear you down."
Good strategy as of late: these Seahawks appear to be playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers at this point. The uptick in the Seattle defense roughly coincided with the return of a few key cogs. Middle linebacker Bobby Wagner missed five games and physical safety Kam Chancellor missed two full games to injury. The Seahawks had some early-season struggles, likely a result of that Super Bowl hangover that afflicts most champions the following summer and fall.
Newton has only led Carolina to 28 points in the three meetings against the Seahawks, but he's only thrown one interception. If he can limit mistakes and hope for the defense to come up with a couple of big plays then his chances to help the offense succeed go up greatly.
It doesn't say much for your offensive weapons when your second-string tight end is your third-best receiving weapon on offense, yet Newton tossed several sideline wheel-route throws to Ed Dickson last week. With Greg Olsen and Kelvin Benjamin figuring to find the sledding tough, Dickson could emerge again.
The more likely outcome is a large dosage of Jonathan Stewart. The former Oregon Duck returns to the Pacific Northwest full of confidence after racking up 609 yards on the ground in the last six games. Easier said than done to pound the rock against a rushing defense as rock-ribbed as Seattle's, but patience is the key for the Panther offense. Hang around as long as you can, and then find a way to win it in the fourth quarter. That's what Seattle did in two of the last three seasons (trailing at half in each game).
The Panthers have hosted Seattle in each of the last three years, coming up on the short end all three times by a total of 13 points. Seattle won in Charlotte 16-12 in 2012, 12-7 in 2013 and 13-9 in Week Eight of this season. In that game Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson threw a 23-yard touchdown pass with 47 seconds left to give Seattle its first and only lead of the game.
The Seahawks averaged only 13.6 points in those three games and are laying more than 10. While this game is in the more hostile CenturyLink Field, it would be a mistake to think that the Panthers are coming in to lay down. As one of their players said this week, they might not be going to the prom with the prettiest girl, but they're still dancing and having fun. There is virtually no one outside of their locker room expecting them to win. But it will be a tall task for Carolina to overcome "the 12th Man" and Pete Carroll's 15-1 record in prime-time games. Seattle is 24-2 SU in its last 26 home games, covering in 18 of those in the last three years.
This is by far the lowest posted total of the four games this weekend. With points at a premium, it's an easy recommendation. There will have to be two defensive/special teams touchdowns scored to threaten 40 points, so I'll be betting against that. Score it Seattle 16-10.
The plays:
UNDER 40 medium to big 2.5u
Carolina +11 -105 medium 2u
Good luck fellas!
:shake:
Bet Labs Software 
