Al's Conference Championship Plays
3-3 in the Divisional Round
Buffalo dropped the ball and the weather seemed to affect what should have been a fun one in Chicago. I mean, I guess it was still pretty fun as it was. You know what I mean.
New England came through though. I hope you were able to decipher the plays there. I had New England -11 with a total of 42.5. They won by 12 and the scores tallied 44 points. While I leaned over, it didn’t qualify as a play at 42.5. So that puts us at 3-3 last week.
Only two games this week, so I’ll go into a little detail on each one.
AFC Championship Game
The New England Patriots head to Denver to play the Bo Nix-less Broncos. My numbers take the full season into account, so I want you to know that my numbers are already factoring in Bo Nix playing for the Broncos, which certainly won’t happen.
I’ve got the Patriots by 14. I’ve also got the total in this one pegged at about 45 points. With the current spread at New England -4.5, there’s tons of value on the Pats at the moment, even before factoring in that Jarrett Stidham will be seeing his first meaningful snaps in about 8 years and his first playoff snaps ever. Against what may be the league’s best defense.
I think the talking heads and the casual fans have been going on about how good Denver’s defense is and how well Stidham played in the preseason as if the Broncos are about to go play against the Raiders. The Patriots are a juggernaut. I hate to be the one to tell you this. If they don’t have the best defense in the league, there’s certainly an argument to be made for the unit. And offensively, you’ve got the NFL MVP frontrunner leading an offense that you could also argue is one of the best in the league.
I think there are a few things keeping this line where it’s at currently:
New England’s offense didn’t look very good against…Houston’s defense. Houston’s D might be the only one you could argue is better than New England’s. The Pats won that heavyweight bout easily.
Denver beat the golden boy, or rather, Josh Allen threw that game away. Not to take anything away from the Broncos, but the Bills’ defense is not good and Josh Allen made a ton of bad decisions with the ball and still had a shot to beat Denver in the Mile High City.
It’s early enough that the volume of bets hasn’t really come in on this game yet. I expect this line to move.
I imagine this line will close closer to 7. It’ll still be off. I suspect Vegas will lose their asses on this one. Unfortunate for them, and unfortunate for Bo Nix.
Play: New England -4.5
NFC Championship Game
The LA Rams travel to Seattle for the second time this season to face the Seahawks in a winner-take-all Game 3 of this three game series.
You’ll hear all week how even this matchup is and it’s true. These two teams have played a couple of the best games of the season, rivaled only by maybe the Chicago/Green Bay games.
But one thing you probably won’t hear about is how much of these two games the Rams led for. The Rams led for 53:38 in the first game. Despite the Seahawks trailing by as much as 9, they still had a FG attempt to win the game as the clock expired. Then, in Seattle, the Rams led for 20:57, leading by as much as 16 in the 4th Quarter.
The Rams only trailed for 22:46 over the two games combined.
The Seahawks trailed for 1:14:35.
So my point is this: what happens if Seattle isn’t playing from behind the entire game?
I trust that will be a point of emphasis in Seattle this week. When we see teams play three times in one season, there’s always some added wrinkles that end up breaking the game open. While on one hand, I can see why everyone expects this game to be close, but on the other, I think it’s quite possible that if Seattle is the one to build the early lead, that the Rams will have a much harder time keeping this one close.
My numbers have this game pegged at Seattle -3.5 and the total at 50.
The actual line is Seattle -2.5 and the total is 46.5.
Play: LAR/SEA o46.5
Good luck and let me know in the comments if you’ve got a play you like this week!