VIS SPRD HME SCOOP ROWDY BONES
cin 03.5 PIT (PIT) (PIT) (PIT)
ind -3.5 JAX ..ind ..JAX (ind)
oak -2.5 HOU (oak) ..oak (oak)
nwe -5.5 BUF ..nwe ..nwe ..nwe
phl -9.5 CHI ..phl ..CHI ..phl
was -2.5 CLE ..CLE (was) ..CLE
nyg 06.5 GNB ..nyg (nyg) ..nyg
atl 03.5 CAR ..atl (CAR) (atl)
nwo -3.5 ARZ ..nwo ..nwo ..ARZ
nyj -5.5 MIA (nyj) (nyj) ..nyj
ten -2.5 SND ..ten ..ten ..SND
den -3.5 TAB ..den (den) ..TAB
stl -3.5 SNF ..SNF ..SNF ..stl
ksc 04.5 BAL ..BAL ..BAL (BAL)
Parentheses indicate best bets.
Season to date:
Overall
Scoop 29-17 .630
Bones 26-20 .565
Rowdy 25-21 .543
Best bets
Bones 7-5 .583
Rowdy 7-8 .467
Scoop 3-6 .333
Rowdy writes: So it's ten home dogs, not nine, now that we find a line for the Tennessee game. McNair will start and even if he didn't, Volek would be fine in his place. Earlier in the week, I asked if anyone thought it would be a good idea to take all the home dogs and hope for the 55% legend says you should expect to get from all home dogs. 55% is a decent showing. It will cover the vigorish and win a lot of pick 'em leagues. Theoretically, the strategy would be sound, but you'd still have to do something with games in which the home teams are favored. Off the top of my head, I'd guess the home team is favored in about two-thirds of all games.
You could save some time by taking all the home dogs in a pick 'em pool. But the 55% is history - if it's true - and it's not a guaranteed rate of return. You could do better or worse. I've been following the NFL long enough to see that the league changes a lot from year to year and, I'd guess, every five or ten years things are remarkably different than they were five or ten years ago. Just because the home dogs have covered 55% over the last three years (have they?), that doesn't mean they'll continue to do so over the next three years.
More important, there's that other two-thirds of the games you'll have to pick. If you blow off a third of the games every week, you blow off a week's worth of news for a third of the teams. Odds are that, in the two-thirds of the games you need to research, about half the teams played in a game you blew off the week before.
That's a recipe for failure. If you are going to catch up on two weeks' worth of news for every team you now have to research after blowing off the week before, then you aren't saving much time by not booking up on the games involving home dogs. If you don't bother to catch up on the old news, then you're unable to understand last week in the context of the unique yet typical unfolding drama, with ups and downs, that is the season each team experiences. And you'll get crushed, I think, because the point spreads are set to trap the casual fan who only remembers what happened last week and only slowly notices the always-ongoing changing of the guard. You have to pay some attention to all the teams every week. Otherwise you'll be hopelessly behind the curve when you evaluate and make picks in games between teams about which you know only hype, history, and superstition.
Forgive me while I indulge in the vain and possibly self-deluded belief that I profit from paying attention. Right now I'm asking myself, for example: why is New Orleans only favored by three and a half over Arizona? Because, I'd guess, Arizona shocked everyone by keeping the Falcons in check last week. But is that really much of an accomplishment? This week's line suggests the Cardinals deserve some respect for that game. Maybe they do. But if you've been looking in at the Falcons every week, you know that the offense was also pretty bad in San Francisco in week 1. And you know that the coach, Jim Mora Jr., has been under steady criticism for installing an offense that doesn't appear to be perfectly suited to maximize the effect of Michael Vick's unusual abilities. You also know that the Rams have been a steady disappointment. Vick's breakout game in week 2, against the Rams, now looks like the anomaly; that's only sinking in now because it has taken a while to realize that the Rams are actually a bad team this year. For Atlanta, weeks 1 and 3 look more like what we can expect going forward. The Cardinals did not suddenly get good last week. I see a con - or at least an opportunity - in the spreads coming out of that game. Both the Cardinals and the Falcons look overrated in this week's lines. The fact that the Cardinals played the Rams tough in week 1 and the Falcons tough in week 3 reflects more on their opponents than it does on them, I think. Right now, none of these teams - not St. Louis, not Atlanta, and not Arizona - look good enough to win eight games this year. Point spreads are set to provoke betting; that's the main rationale behind them. The Falcons at the Panthers, with a three and a half point line, looks like the game of the week. If the spread was seven, people who aren't paying attention might catch up with the fact that the Falcons have been playing poor football against poor teams.
You don't blow off a third of the games without looking at them if you want to stay ahead of the curve and have some success predicting the other two-thirds of the games. And, once you look at every game, there's no way you're going to want to take every single home dog. There's no way, for example, I'd take the Browns, the Bills, or the Texans after even ten minutes' consideration. The Cardinals, the Dolphins, the Bucs, and the Chargers don't appear to be poised for a strong showing, either. The Myth of Parity has a lot of people in denial about the quality of some of these home dogs. Scoop called the lines "skimpy." I definitely agree. I won't be shocked if six home dogs cover this week, but I think, with this batch, four is more likely.
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