Every Week is Like A Playoff? Are you excited about this Saturday’s college football?   What’s to be excited about?   See all those big pointspreads set by Vegas and online sportsbooks?  Lots of hefty lines as there is not a single game between teams ranked in the Coaches poll or the AP poll this week.  Not a single Top 25 vs. Top 25 matchup according to the two major polls?  What kind of weekend is this?  So much for the argument that college football doesn’t need a playoff because every week is like a playoff.  And good luck finding drama in the top three teams playing pinatas at home. Alabama will not have a line against 1-AA Chattanooga,  Florida is 44-point chalk against Sun Belt weakling Florida International, and Texas is laying 28 into reeling Kansas.

Winding Down: Already?  It seemed odd to start working on the college football card Sunday afternoon and see Ohio State/Michigan staring back on the schedule.  While it’s a rivalry game, you got to wonder where UM’s head is at right now.  Rich Rodriguez is the controversial figure, but he’s an offensive guy and implenting more his system, the Wolverine offense has really improved this season.  The problem is a defense that’s the worst in the Big Ten.  In conference play they allow 6.2 yards per play and 444 yards per game, stunning numbers as you know that Michigan’s defensive personnel has got to be better than that.  Assuming Rich Rod survives, defensive coordinator Greg Robinson is likely to fall on his sword.  You have to wonder what Rodriguez saw in Robinson when he made the hire.  He must have forgotten that in 2006 and 2007 his Mountaineers scored 41 and 55 points against Syracuse in the last two meetings between the two as head coaches. 

Fort Worth Futility: TCU fans should be rightly proud of their Horned Frogs and speculation that they are the best team in the country is not unfounded.   55-28 over Utah doesn’t tell the true story of the domination, which was 549-284 in yards and 32-11 in first downs against a team that had won 21 of their previous 22 games.   But TCU did suffer a blow on Saturday night when Texas A&M got their heads handed to them by Oklahoma to the tune of 640-228 in yards and 32-13 in first downs in addition to the 65-10 final score.   TCU needs those same Aggies to miraculously knock off the Longhorns.  Anyone see that happening?

Automatic Non-Qualifiers: The other club attempting to crash the BCS had an odd win, as Boise crushed Idaho 63-25.  Or did they crush Idaho?  Yardage was actually in favor of Idaho 514-458, but the Vandals were unable to overcome a 7-0 turnover disadvantage.  Fortunately for the Broncos most voters don’t look into boxscores.  Unfortunately for Boise State despite Idaho’s improving fortunes, BSU’s strenght of schedule gets weaker with each game they play.

East Carolina scored 4th quarter TD’s on two interception returns and a fumble return to turn a 23-17 tight one into a 44-17 rout at Tulsa, and the 4-1 turnover disadvantage Tulsa suffered was meaningful.  But ECU also outgained the Golden Hurricane 517-266, including 242-30 on the ground, so the result was pretty legit.

Bad Team Blues: College football is hard when you win, and even harder when you lose.  It’s simply an enormous commitment for the players and they get just a few weeks off after the season and a few weeks between spring practice and “voluntary” offseason workouts as a respite.   And, of course, if they’re not killing it in the weight room during those times they hear about it from their coaches. 

That’s why it’s tough when you see struggling teams like North Texas and Syracuse lose games as they lost them Saturday.  Poor North Texas led by 14 at the half but lost when Florida International scored a TD on an interception return, and set up two others on a blocked punt and a UNT fumble to steal the win 35-28.   3.5-point road dog North Texas failed to cover despite a 513-258 yardage edge.  Syracuse’s D played a great game but their offense continued to be a turnover machine and the Orangemen lost to Louisville on a late TD despite holding the Cardinals to 152 yards of offense.   Both of these teams are playing better than their final scores indicate. Doug Marrone’s clean up this season will bear fruit in the future and if North Texas gives Todd Dodge another year, they’ll reap the benefits of the foundation that he’s laid.

USC=Unusually Stinky Cesspool: Something’s rotten in the house of Troy. Stanford only led USC by 7 entering the 4th quarter before a 4-touchdown final stanza turned it into a 55-21 runaway.  And yes, turnovers were a factor.   But when you brutalize your opponent to the tune of 325-138 in the running game, it is no fluke at all.   One interesting decision by Coach Harbaugh was going for 2 when up 48-21.  No chart suggests that, and that effort to get to the round number of 50 is something the Trojans will remember when they have better teams in the next couple of years.  That’s assuming they have better teams, of course. Stanford senior Richard Sherman said of the Trojans, “They don’t play as hard.  They don’t run as hard.” 

It’s hard for people to get their arms around how far USC has fallen so quickly.   When I went against USC on my late phone service three weeks ago with Oregon and last Saturday with Stanford I received impassioned pleas telling me how wrong I was in my analysis both times.  USC failed to cover those two games by a combined 74.5 points.  The Trojans are 2-8 against the spread, and have pointspread failures this season of 23, 24.5, 15, 30, and 44.5. 

The Only Excitement is from the Refs: Can you recall the SEC being this boring?   Other than the two conference champs it’s just a sea of mediocrity, as even the third best team (LSU) is pretty dull.   You could make a case that Ole’ Miss and Tennessee are at least borderline compelling and they met on Saturday.  Tennessee didn’t react well to the loss of three freshman (armed robbery) and lost to Ole’ Miss by a count of 42-17 (yardage of 492-275), despite not committing a turnover, allowing only a single sack, and having only two penalties enforced against them.  That tells you how sharp the Rebels were.  Ole’ Miss players spoke of being motivated by the presence of their former coach Ed Orgeron, the Tennessee assistant who is apparently hated by most of his former players.   Where was Dexter McCluster earlier this season?  The Rebel blazer had his number called for only 38 carries for 164 yards in his first 6 games.  But the curious lack of use went out the window in his last 3 contests, and McCluster has totaled 69 carries for 591 yards in that trio of SEC affairs.  He didn’t in Ole’ Miss’ titanic matchup with 1-AA Northern Arizona.

If winning at sports betting is something that you’d like to be able to do, some valuable complimentary reports are just a click away.

Hope something in here helps you out.   Good luck this weekend. 

Underdogs went 10-3 last weekend in the NFL, with a miracle dog cover by the Chiefs and popular favorites Saints and Patriots failing to cover by a point each.  Only the Steelers, Falcons, and Seahawks (barely) covered as favorites, and 7 underdogs won outright.  It was a big underdog week.

So can we finally, once-and-for-all dismiss the whining of the Las Vegas bookmakers about the surge of favorites two weeks ago?   Yes, I know favorites went 9-3-1 that weekend.  Yes, I know a lot of people hit parlay cards.   But in the other three weekends in the past month the favorites have combined to go 13-27. 

By one count, favorites are now 64-63-1 on the season, meaning a $110/$100 bet on every favorite would have a bettor down $530.  So much for the “Year of the Favorite”.

Monday night’s game was pretty strange. Denver dominated the first half from the line of scrimmage, but they trailed 7-3.   The Steelers had the one big play of the half with an interception return for a TD from midfield.  The Broncos had a 183-54 yardage edge at halftime.  Steelers won yardage in the second half, 321-59, winning in blowout fashion.   How can two solid, well-coached team each throw in such a clunker of a half at the same exact time that the opponent is performing so well?   

In the two prime time games this week, Kyle Orton and Jay Cutler, the two principals in the most celebrated QB trade of the summer, combined to throw 0 TD passes and 8 interceptions.  Since their bye week the Bears are 1-4 and Cutler as 6 TD passes and 12 interceptions. 

A lot of people will tell you that yards per play is the most important stat in football.  No real disagreement here.  So tell me how the ascendant Bengals are permitting opponents to outgain them on a yards per play basis (gaining 5.5 yards per play and allowing 5.6) while the disappointing Packers are outgaining opponents by almost a yard-and-a-half per play (6.3-4.9)? 

The Packers are one bizarre team, you would think that outgaining opponents by almost a yard-and-a-half per play while being #2 in the league in turnover margin would have them sitting at 7-1 or 6-2.  Nope, they’re 4-4 straight up and against the spread.

If you like to bet good teams as big underdogs, the 6-2 Bengals are a 7-point dog at Pittsburgh.

If you like to fade bad teams as big favorites, the 2-6 Titans are a 7-point favorite hosting the Bills.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be annoyed by the hype for the Patriots/Colts Sunday night game, but the only other contest between likely playoff teams is the Bengals/Steelers game.   The loser of the Chargers/Eagles game will be 5-4 and the playoffs may be difficult to make.

Good luck this weekend.

Thad Lewis of Duke has been an underappreciated player for a few years now.  And NFL types are interested in the senior QB.   But for all his fine work over the past four years, he’s also really capable of a clunker or two.   Last week UNC’s speedy defense held him to 16 of 33 for 113 yards, right around 3.5 yards per pass attempt, which is terrible.   Back in September against a less athletic opponent in Army, Lewis was 5 for 16 for 60 yards before being benched.   But Lewis gets very little support from his teammates.  Duke has been held under 100 yards by every 1-A opponent they’ve faced, and against 1-A opposition Duke rushes for a putrid 1.7 yards per attempt,  While that includes sack yardage Lewis is at least being better protected this season.  He’s been sacked 22 times this season, which isn’t bad when you consider that he was sacked 82 times combined in his freshman and sophomore seasons.   How effective would Lewis be with a running game supporting him?

Has there ever been a coach that can just plug in a backup quarterback with no ill effects like Brian Kelly of Cincinnati?  UC was outstanding last season despite playing musical quarterbacks, and they’re doing it again this season. Tony Pike (15 TD’s, 3 interceptions) goes down with an injury and backup Zach Calleros steps in without the Bearcats missing a beat.  Calleros now has 10 TD’s, a single interception, and a ridiculous 13.3 yards per pass attempt on the season.   Unlike the Dookies, the Cinti QB’s have a ton of support from their running game, averaging 5.1 yards per rush.  The balanced Bearcats are top 10 in the country both yards per pass attempt and yards per rush attempt. 

Surprisingly, as good as Cincinnati is, and as under the radar as they are, they haven’t been a productive pointspread outfit.  Bettors are breaking even with the Bearcats since the start of last season, with an 11-10 record against the spread.  Kelly’s heroes are 5-3 this year after going 6-7 against the number last year.

A lot of offshore sports books and Vegas bookies are smiling, as the top teams continue their middling performance to the pointspread. Texas is 3-5-1 against the spread.  Florida is 3-4-1 to the number.   Bama is 6-3 spreadwise.  So the top 3 BCS teams are dead even .500 to the number.  The smaller undefeated schools know that they need their style points.  Boise State and TCU are each 6-2 against the spread. 

The Horned Frogs are just pounding people, beating their last four opponents, all Mountain West conference foes, by a combined 178-25.  The football betting market has noticed, as TCU is favored by 17 or so over a Utah team that is 21-1 since the start of last season.   And when you look into the numbers, the spread is justifiable.  If Texas were to slip up, TCU would be a worthy championship game participant, but TCU closes with New Mexico and Wyoming, which doesn’t do a whole lot for the old strength of schedule

Texas is an interesting case study.  They gain only 5.8 yards per play, which is a middling 41st in the NCAA when judging how teams do against 1-A opponents.  But they are very efficient, scoring a point for every 10.5 yards of offense, which is best in the land.   That kind of offensive efficiency is often fueled by your defense making scores and giving you short fields.  Texas’ D is the top yardage D in the land, allowing opponents a mere 3.5 yards per play.

I hope you learned something that’ll help you win a few bucks at some point. Good luck this weekend, and be careful. 

Yesterday we talked about how scoring was up in the NBA, which some are crediting to new, more forgiving rims.   Shooting is improved, yet games continue to careen under the total.   All 9 games were under in regulation last night, with the Lakers and Thunder going over in the overtime period.

Unders are now 36-23 (61%) on the season, despite increased scoring.  Look for lines to be adjusted downward and for overs to start hitting.

NBA teams are scoring an average of 99.96 points per game, vs. 95.17 points per game last season, which ESPN’s Marc Stein attributes to the new, more forgiving rims in use by the Association.  The rims which instituted as a safety measure, as they collapse from both the back and the front.

Shooting is up just a smidge over 1%, and three-point shooting has improved dramatically, from 33.4% to 36.3%.  

Surprisingly, NBA bettors have not been scoring with their over bets.  In fact, over the season’s first 50 games, unders actually have the advantage, with 28 games going under the marketplace projection, and only 22 games going over.   So scoring is up, yet unders are cashing at a 56% rate.

Reason for the disparity?   Teams can shoot lights out in a game, send it way over the total, yet it only counts as a single over.  For instance, in Sunday’s 133-123 Denver win over Memphis, the teams obliterated the total of 207 by 49 points.  Each team shot over 55% from the field and the Grizzlies and Nuggets combined to shoot 17-35 from outside the arc.  The 168 shots in the game is a healthy number, as well. 

So while a game like that can have quite an impact on the overall shooting percentages, it is only a single total.   We’re also looking at a small sample size, only a week of action consisting of 50 games.  In the first four nights unders cashed at a 20-11 rate, but scores have been higher from Saturday through Monday, with overs going 11-8.

The new rims and increased scoring is something to be aware of, but there clearly hasn’t been a lot of profit to be made at this juncture and the sports betting marketplace is sure to adjust quickly.   Chances are very good that by the time the last shot is made next spring, overs and unders will be very close to 50/50.

An edge might be available in early season college basketball for totals players.  Assuming the new rims are not standard in college basketball, knowing what kind of rim is being used could provide a meaningful edge for college hoops bettors.

It was a good weekend for the underdogs in the NFL, meaning a good Sunday for online sportsbooks, as well as Vegas and Delaware.  But favorites are still slightly profitable after juice just betting them blindly.  But it was another bad week for competitive football.  There just haven’t been a lot of close NFL games.  Even when the dogs cover, they’re not dramatic games.   This weekend underdogs like the Vikings won by 12, the Panthers won by 13, and the Eagles cruised by 23.  Only 46 of 116 games this season have been decided by 7 points or less.   With over 60% of the games being decided by more than a TD, there’s far less drama in our lives on Sunday afternoons.

The Bills, called by one headline entering Sunday’s games the “Surging Bills”, had their two-game winning streak broken by the Texans on Sunday.   But the only they had done positively in their previous two games was cause turnovers.  The Bills have now been outgained 1278-667 in their last three games.  They’d been living on borrowed time and it caught up with them against Houston.   The Texans played a price, however.  Tight end Owen Daniels is out for the season with a torn ACL suffered in the second quarter. 

It is conceivable that a team has scored 30 points with only 104 yards of total offense at some point in the history of the NFL, but it’s possible that the Dolphins broke new ground on Sunday.  When a TD put Miami up 30-19 with 8:48 to go, coach Tony Sparano elected to go for 2 to make it a 13-point lead instead of 12.   Putting it at 12 eliminates a TD, two point conversion, and field goal tying you up.   Instead of admitting a boneheaded mistake, Sparano offered a non-explanation explanation that didn’t make an ounce of sense.   You have to figure that Bill Parcells, a master of in-game strategy, has a little talk about the issue with his underling this week.

This week’s Monday Night game between the Steelers and Broncos in Denver had an opening total of 38.5.   Every other game opened with a total in the 40’s or 50’s.   Looking at different metrics involving scoring, there’s not a huge explosion in scoring this season, with the exception of the Saints pushing 40 points per game.  There just aren’t any low scoring vs. low scoring matchups this week.

Nearly 68% of the offensive production in one game this weekend took place on the ground. The Jaguars/Titans game had 770 yards of total offense with 522 of those yards earned on running plays.    Maurice Jones-Drew had 80 and 79 yard TD runs for the Jags before Chris Johnson responded with 52 and 89 yard TD runs.   The 89 yard TD run was a backbreaker, breaking open the game on the first play of the fourth quarter.  It’s amazing how many of these long runs occur after a tackle is missed in the backfield.  The natural inclination of the defender is to ease up when they see a play being made and that is frequently their downfall. 

It’s valuable to know what bad teams will be trying down the stretch.   If the coaching staff looks on the way out things can get dicey, so keep an eye on the Raiders, Browns, and Bucs.  Other bad teams are building for the future with potentially good coaches, like the Lions and Rams, and effort is more likely.  Other teams you just don’t know.   Jim Mora doesn’t appear to trust his 2-5 team down the stretch, and is letting his charges know that positions are up for grabs.   Mora, the ultimate player’s coach (read: enabler) in Atlanta, lost his jobs after the Falcons went 2-7 both straight up and against the spread to close the 2006 season.

There’s a lot of talk about the dominance of favorites and the damage being done to the (poor) sportsbooks.  We’ll take a hard look at that later this week.   Thanks for reading this today.

Under the Radar Upset Weekend:   The only team inside of the Top 20 that was upset by a non-Top 10 team was formerly #14 Virignia Tech’s loss on Thursday night to North Carolina.  But get into the mediocre middle and there was a surge of upsets on Saturday.   15 favorites lost this weekend, including 8 laying 6.5 points or more.   But since the top teams were winning, it wasn’t terrible dramatic.   Vegas and online sportsbooks, as well as local bookmakers, likely took some losses on some of the more higher profile games while doing well on the rest of the board.

Betting Drama in Big 10: Indiana led Iowa 21-7 with 9:35 left in the third quarter.  First and goal for the Hoosiers on the Iowa 4 after a Hawkeye turnover.  With Indiana on the verge of going up 28-7 was there even a thought that Iowa -17.5 was a ticket that could be cashed?   But 2 plays later a Hoosier pass turns into a bizarre interception that caroms off of four or five people. The full-field return for a Hawkeye TD completely turns the tide of the game and the Hawkeyes actually cover the spread by a half-point on a 27-yard TD run with just over a minute left.  The TD was scored on 3rd and 2.  Any run of between 2-26 yards would have had Iowa taking a knee on the next play.   Condolences to Indiana bettors. 

That wasn’t the only big favorite to improbably cover in the Big 10 on Saturday.   When I left the house to take my kids trick-or-treating and Northwestern and Penn State were tied after 3 quarters I have to admit I felt pretty good about my Northwestern +17.5 bet.  But Northwestern QB Mike Kafka left the game with a hamstring pull (reported to be OK for this week), the Wildcats could generate little offense under his backup, and the Wildcat defense simply wore down as Penn State won the 4th quarter 21-0 to earn the cover.  

By all reports, Indiana was jobbed by the officials, but both IU and Northwestern didn’t do a thing to help their cause down the stretch.   Indiana turned 8 Iowa turnovers into a grand total of 3 points, while Northwestern’s D allowed one-play TD drives of 53 yards and 69 yards in the final stanza.   Northwestern also fumbled away a cover with 2 minutes left on first and goal from the Penn State 6.   Iowa and Penn State were lucky to cover, but Indiana and Northwestern could have done a lot more to stop them.  It was an ugly week in the Big 10.  Every game involving a Big 10 team was decided by 18 or more with the exception of Minnesota’s 42-34 win over Michigan State, which news reports from both sides indicated was an abominably played game.

Boise Runs it Up: If you had San Jose State +36.5, avert your eyes., as there was some good old-school score padding by Boise State in their effort to secure a BCS berth.  With a 38-7 lead and in a situation where a hell of a lot of coaches would be taking a knee, Boise’s Doug Martin ran for a 26-yard TD with 20 seconds left for the 45-7 final.  Obviously Boise’s conference is dreadful, but that win over Oregon gets better and better all the time.  Oregon’s whipping of USC was no fluke. Duck advantages were 613-327 in yardage and 31-17 in first downs.   They scored every time they touched the ball in the second half.  Yet Oregon’s time of possession advantage was only 31:00 to 29:00?  TOP can be one misleading statistic.  

FSU Pointspread Failures, Seminole Fans Vacate The Reservation: Gutty Christian Ponder played poorly Saturday, but he is not the problem in Tallahassee.  Despite seeing his 254 pass no-INT streak broken, as well as suffering from bruised ribs, Ponder hung in there to pilot his Seminoles to victory over NC State.  It was not an impressive outing by the Seminoles as a whole, as the Wolfpack are shaky.  FSU has little home field advantage this season.  The crowd for the NC State game was the smallest in 16 years, with over 20,000 empty seats creating a dull environment .   With a lessened advantage at home, Florida State is 0-4 against the spread in the Land of the Flaming Spear, and underperformed in their narrow escape in an unlined game against 1-AA Jacksonville State as well.

In the current economic environment the attendance decline has to be something that factors in to the decision on Bobby Bowden’s future, doesn’t it?  And let’s hope that the talk of Bowden going to UAB to let son Tommy run the show is pure rumor.  Granted “the ‘Ham” is his hometown, but that would be one sad, cheap way to stay in contention with Joe Paterno for the career wins record. 

Sunshine State QB Trio: Back to the football field, Ponder, Jacory Harris of Miami, and Tim Tebow (maybe you’ve heard of him?) make up an impressive troika of QB’s in the Sunshine State.   Harris led his Hurricanes back from what looked like sure defeat at Wake Forest.   Wake’s loss to the Hurricanes was their third in a row and it doesn’t get any easier for the Demon Deacons, as they visit a Georgia Tech team that can seemingly score at will with Paul Johnson’s Triple Option offense.   The Jackets gained 597 yards and pulled away in the second half against an outmatched Vanderbilt team.   The defense is vulnerable for Georgia Tech, but the offense just keeps scoring points.

Defending the Spread: The spread option is tougher to defend these days than the pass-based spread passing offense.  Have you noticed that teams just aren’t putting up the same kind of numbers in those as they used to?   Big 12 coaches are recruiting defenders with defending the spread in mind, particularly defensive backs that can play man-to-man well.  Certainly less offensive firepower in that loop.   Oklahoma State leads the Big 12 in yards per pass in conference games, passing for 7.8 yards per attempt.   Last year 7 teams were at least that good, with 5 of them at 8.2 or better in conference games.  

Coaching ‘em Up: Overlooked coaching move has been Frank Cignetti, Jr. taking his offensive coordinating skills to Pitt and turning Bill Stull into a star QB.   Pitt hosts Syracuse this Saturday and remarkably, it is only Syracuse’s 2nd road game of the season.   The Orangemen are well coached and their game plans are keeping them in most games until late, when their lack of talent and depth catches up to them.  The 28-7 loss to Cincinnati Saturday could have been a lot closer had SU not turned the ball over twice on drives inside the 10.  But the Orangemen’s task got more difficult on Monday, when troubled WR Mike Williams, one of ten finalists for the Biletnikoff Award, quit the team.  How much money does a kid cost himself in the draft when he quits the team now instead of sticking around for an extra month?

Sick Boxscore of the Week:  How about North Texas 68 Western Kentucky 49?   Those responsible for the huge line move on North Texas up to -14.5 had to breathe a sigh of relief. It’s not often you can lay two TD’s into a team that scores 7 TD’s in the first 3 quarters and never punts, yet still win your bet.   Of  the 117 points, 115 were scored by the offenses, with no returns for TD’s padding the stats, only a 4th quarter safety for North Texas augmenting things.

Heartbreak for UConn:  Poor UConn has lost a pair of gutbusters since the senseless murder of starting cornerback Jasper Howard.  Saturday was the first home game for the Huskies and after an apparent game-winning TD.  But Rutgers pulled out a miracle with an 81-yard TD pass to Tim Brown with 22 seconds left to pull out the 28-24 upset win.   In a chilling irony, Rutgers’ Brown grew up in Miami two doors down from Jasper Howard.  The two were best friends.  A nice story if it wasn’t so heartbreaking for UConn.

Media Quote of the Week:  Let’s finish on a lighthearted note from Portland Oregonian reporter Paul Buker, the beat writer covering Oregon State football. There’s a lot more openness about sourcing in the media these days, to let people know where original work and research comes from. Buker credits the source of some information for a preview, with a caveat, “Some early-in-the-week game notes for Saturday’s Oregon State-Cal game in Berkeley, courtesy of the tireless crew at the OSU sports information department. Some of this has been condensed, clarified, expanded, and in some cases deleted. For instance, we are NOT going to call OSU’s Wildcat formation the ‘Wild Beaver.” Sorry. We just aren’t.”

by Kevin O’Neill

After a series of blowouts by superior teams on Sunday, favorite bettors are smiling broadly.  By one count, when you discount pushes, the chalk is now 56-44 against the spread (you can figure out that winning percentage yourself, can’t you?) on the season, which is a pretty hefty edge.   Favorites were 9-3-1 this week (though the Texans push became a loss on Sunday at many books that moved from 3 to 3.5).  It’ll be interesting to see the results of Delaware’s parlay card operation from this past week, and what it would have been instead had the Redskins upset the nearby Eagles applecart on Monday night instead.

The Sunday blowouts all involved both superior play and a turnover edge.   The Chargers, Colts, Bengals, Packers, Patriots, and Jets all won by 28 points or more, all outgained their opponent by at least 1.1 yards per play, had a combined 66 more first downs than their opponents, and had a combined 18-2 turnover edge.   The Patriots had the 2 turnovers, no other blowout winner had a single one.  Sometimes superior teams lose due to turnovers and bad breaks, but that wasn’t the case on Sunday. 

Cluster of Favorites Smashes Bookies, Locals Hurt Worse:  Las Vegas bookmakers got popped pretty good Sunday, as when a cluster of favorites cover, bookies get hurt by parlays.  And it’s probably even worse for all the locals that the US has invited back into the pool by hassling offshore and online sportsbooks a couple of years ago.  Offshore sportsbooks, as well as most Vegas shops, get some buyback on inflated lines by big bettors who are looking for extra points.  A lot of locals get no such buyback and are completely dependent on a large public favorite day not happening. 

Games “Were What We Thought They Were”: There’s usually a number of “false result” games in the NFL, but that wasn’t the case in Sunday’s day of dominance.   The Bills gained only 167 yards against the Panthers on a puny 3.1 yards per play, but a 4-0 turnover edge carried the day for them.   The Steelers/Vikings game was a lot lower scoring than the 27-17 final score, as the Steelers 14-7 edge in the final quarter was two long defensive returns by Pittsburgh sandwiched around a Percy Harving kickoff return for the Vikes.   But other than those two, the games pretty much played out as the scores suggested.

NFL Halftime Bettors Take Note:  Two Sunday nights ago, the Falcons scored a TD in the last ten seconds of the first half, and continued that momentum into the second half.   On Sunday the Falcons gave up a TD in the last ten seconds of the half to Dallas (after three different rushers had shots at Tony Romo), setting the stage for a big second half run by the Cowboys.  And the effect of the Saints last second TD in the second quarter at Miami was obvious.  No doubt some second half betting specialists are way ahead on this one, but that last second (not just last minute, but last second) TD in the NFL really seems to carry into the second half, doesn’t it? 

London Calling: Student of all things leadership, Bill Belichick found my favorite London tourist spot on the Patriots working vacation this past weekend.  The most entertaining news item from the trip was the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy reporting on the coverage of Tom Brady in the London press.  The cash-strapped Globe sent their columnist overseas and got a column that could have been done by an intern with a web connection.   

More Coverage, Less In Person: While there is an avalanche of coverage of the NFL from an ever-widening array of sources, less of it is in person.   The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has their columnists in heavy blogging mode, offering a multiple of the content they once did, but they sent only a single staffer, the Falcons beat reporter, to a recent Falcons game in San Francisco.  Fewer on-site reporters, more bloggers.   I spend a lot of time looking for information, and have rarely been burned by major newspaper staffers reporting something inaccurately.   But I’ve found a lot of errors by bloggers and other online types.   Certainly best to double-check the information you uncover for accuracy, particularly when the source isn’t reporting something first hand.

by Kevin O’Neill 

Pitching a shutout, the Patriots were over the total by themselves in the first half of their whipping of 1-AA’s Tennessee-Nashville on Sunday, leading 45-0 after 30 minutes with a total bet down from 41.5 down to 37.5 due to the weather.   Can’t say I can recall a team superseding the full game total in the first half any time recently.  Seems like a long time ago that the Titans came within a sliver of knocking off the mighty Steelers in their opener. The biggest change from last year’s 13-3 Titans outfit to this season’s winless edition is the loss of defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.   Schwartz appears to be building things the right way in Detroit, while his replacement, Chuck Cecil is understandably taking a ton of heat.   You don’t frequently see teams fail to cover consecutive games by 23, 19, and 50, but those are results that the boys from Nashville have taken into their bye week.  The Titans gave up 24 TD’s in 16 games last year.  They’ve given up 24 TD’s in 6 games this year.

Remember how stout Buffalo’s run defense was in New England in their opener?   The Bills held the Pats and Bucs to less than 130 yards combined in those first two games.  In the four games since their opponents have fun all over Buffalo for 961 yards.  Have you ever seen a coach look less joyful and more relieved following a dramatic upset win than Dick Jauron was after the 9.5-point underdog Bills knocked off the Jets on Sunday?   If you let the New York papers make your decisions for you, Rex Ryan has gone from the future of football to an obese blowhard in just three short weeks.  The Jets trip to Oakland suddenly looks winnable for the Raiders, winners as double-digit puppies against the Eagles.  But does Richard Seymour really mean it when he predicts a playoff appearance for Oakland?   The thought here is that Seymour’s looking to further cement his team-first reputation for his appearance on the free agent circuit this offseason.

The Chargers gain 6.0 yards per play, allowing 5.6.  The Chiefs gain 4.3 yards per play and allow 6.1.  Kansas City has been outyarded by over 190 yards 4 times in their 6 games thus far, with games against the sorry Raiders and pathetic Redskins being the exceptions.  And the Chargers really, really, really need to win if they want to be playing meaningful football from here on out.   Yet you can lay as little as 4 with the San Diego?   Not exactly two thumbs up from the marketplace for Mr. Norv Turner. 

Bill Belichick failed in Cleveland because he projected the personality of his mentor Bill Parcells, despite being a first time head coach.   An argument could be made that Belichick proteges have made the same mistake. Charlie Weis has been a failure at Notre Dame and Eric Mangini is failing with his second team, wearing out their welcome in part due to their abrasive personalities.   Lower key Romeo Crennell didn’t fail in Cleveland due to being a jackass, he just failed.   So Belichick has got to be pleased to see Josh McDaniels doing so well in Denver.   McDaniels is an impressive a new coach as you’re going to find, with organization, game planning, in-game strategy, clock managment, etc. all wired.   The Broncos are 6-0 not only straight up, but to the pointspread as well.   Has a rookie coach ever covered his first 6 games before?

The Rams have been more competitive than the final score indicated recently, outgained by only a combined 100 yards in consecutive losses to the Vikings, Niners, and Packers that saw them outscored by a combined 109-27.  Then they turn around and lose a 23-20 squeaker to the Jaguars despite being outgained 492-262.  Go figure.   The Colts run for only 79 yards per game on 3.3 yards per carry, both numbers placing them in the bottom five of the league.  That’ll catch up with them, won’t it?  Actually the way Manning’s playing, maybe it won’t. Who needs a running game when you are averaging 9.0 yards per pass attempt against the sophisticated pass defenses of the NFL?  Indy’s 9.0 yards per pass attempt would put them in the top 10 in college pass passing offense, though you might want to back out the game against 1-AA Tennessee-Nashville for a more accurate number.

To the relief of Vegas and online sportsbooks, the NFL’s ugly puppies finally showed some signs of life last Sunday in the NFL, with dogs of more than +7 going 4-2 against the number, including a pair of straight up upsets of the Bills over Jets and Raiders over Eagles.    All three big favorites this week are on the road, with two-TD lays for the Colts at St. Louis and the Patriots against the Bucs in London.    The Packers opened a shade under a TD but the Cleveland flu news has seen that line rocket upward. 

Thanks for reading this. Good luck with your underdogs, favorites, overs, and unders this weekend. 

David Carruthers has withdrawn his guilty plea. The British sports betting executive was brought into Costa Rican sportsbook conglomerate BetOnSports in 2001 to be CEO.  Carruthers was part of an effort to legitimize the “American facing” company by BetOnSports founder Gary Kaplan.  The effort succeeded, for a while.  The company went public in London and Kaplan took out a total of $96 million out of the public offering and subsequent stock sales.   

The Feds cracked down on the BOS principals in 2006. Carruthers was arrested while changing planes in Dallas on a trip from London to Costa Rica.  Kaplan was found in the Dominican Republic a short while later.  Several other BetOnSports associates were also arrested.

Now that Kaplan has agreed to a plea deal, Carruthers has withdrawn his guilty plea from last April.  Carruthers has been residing in a St. Louis hotel for several years now as this case has drawn on.   Was he led to believe that he would be released for “time served”?  And has time been served here? Although not incarcerated, he has been subject to electronic monitoring, and is not free to come and go as he pleases.

In a case that has been sporadically covered by the St. Louis media, there have been no reports on a court hearing that was scheduled for yesterday.   We’ll nose around a little bit in the upcoming days to find out what’s going on here.