New England (-3) @ Denver
Going into last week’s game against KC, the questions we all
had about the Patriots concerned their health.
Was Edelman really recovered?
Could Gronkowski play? Did Brady
have any lingering effects from the Miami game?
If New England had finally returned to something approaching full
strength, they would probably find a way to beat K.C., but how many working
organs did they really have?
We have our answer.
New England is just fine. With
Brady and Gronkowski and Amendola and Edelman all running and jumping and
playing football, the Pats are (at this moment), the best football team in the
AFC.
As for Denver, I said at the start of the tournament that
they did not deserve to be in it, and I saw nothing in the Pittsburgh game to
change my mind. Manning played OK (no
interceptions!), but did nothing to suggest he is the Peyton of old. Roethlisberger actually had slightly better
numbers. Denver won because of their
defense, which is still very good,
and because Pittsburgh’s coach Mike Tomlin is as savvy about in-game decisions
as a box of rocks. Tomlin is one of
those coaches (and he is far from the only one), who never think about game situations in advance and who, faced with a
critical decision (punt? call a time out? kick a field goal?), with the clock
ticking, simply chooses the first option that pops into his head.
New England’s AYP for the year is 6.8; Denver’s is 4.6. New England outscored its opponents by more
than ten points per game; Denver outscored its opponents by 3 ½. It is true that Denver’s pass defense is
superior, but overall the game lines up as a mere speed bump on New England’s
path to yet another Superbowl. Lay the
points.
(Technology note: every time I use the word “superbowl,” my
spell-checker tries to correct it to “superb owl.”)
Arizona @ Carolina (-3)
I pretty much told you where I was going on this one in
previous posts. Arizona’s AYP for the
season was 7.5, the highest in football.
Carolina’s was 6.0. Arizona’s
point differential was 13.7 per game, which was three points better than the
second-best team (Carolina). I must take
the three points here and bet Arizona.
Having said all that, however, you would have to be a fool
not to notice what Carolina did to Seattle because it is precisely what a
Superbowl champ is supposed to do.
Seattle is a good team. They were
the guys “nobody wanted to play.” The
Panthers, however, forced the Seahawks to disrobe, hoisted the Seattle
pantaloons up the stadium flagpole, said bad things about the Seattle players’
mothers, smacked their bottoms with wooden paddles and then, just when they
were about to sodomize them, got bored and decided to run out the clock
instead. It is true that Carolina took
its foot off the gas pedal once the score was 31 – 0, but it’s hard to blame
them for losing interest when the game is basically over with ten minutes left
in the first half. Despite the Seattle “comeback,”
they were never really in danger of winning the game.
(By the way…. If you
are losing 31 – 0 in the second half, and you score a touchdown, do you calmly
line up to kick an extra point, or do you go for two on the theory that you
need to try for every point you can possibly get? Just sayin’.)
And in the other game?
Well, one has to be concerned about the deer-in-the-headlights look of
Carson Palmer throughout much of the contest, and Arizona’s inability to
dispatch an inferior Packers team until after sixty minutes had elapsed.
A sane man can be forgiven for thinking Carolina, playing in
Carolina, is correctly favored in this game, and that they will roll over the
Cardinals. Well, who are you going to
believe---my numbers or your lying eyes?
Copyright2016MichaelKubacki
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