DAVE FOBARE (THE MAXX) (2-3)
Denver (+3 even) over @New England
Selection and Analysis by Dave Fobare
My NFL tech database has gone thru some changes over
the past couple of seasons. Kevin O'Neill has touched on
the fact that in the NFL passing has become much more
important than running of late and I've mentioned it in
passing here in this column. According to my numbers the
game the increased emphasis on the air game started in
2002. The change was quite difficult to see at first in part
because there are so few NFL regular season games. My
own study has also shown that in the early part of the
season the run game still holds some value from a tech
perspective. But we are reaching the stage of the
campaign where the air attack and its defense have
become the dominant handicapping factor over the past 6
seasons. All this is a roundabout way of getting to my
point: I've had to ditch quite a bit of stat-related tech over
the past couple of seasons, and I hold very dear the few
stat-based tech systems that have done well both in the
distant NFL past and more recently. The best of my statbased
systems has a play here against the Patriots. It
derives from New England's poor statistical performance
and the system's teams are just 131-218 ATS, including 4-
8 ATS so far this year. This system has performed at a
27% clip out of sample, and it works on Monday night
games too with a 4-11 ATS mark and a larger losing cover
margin.
While the loss of Tom Brady has received most of national
media's attention, the Pats' bigger problem has been the
decline in its defense. They are giving up 7.5 yards per
pass. The New England organization has been very good at
discarding expensive players who no longer gave the team
value for their dollars, but this past summer they made
some curious moves. They certainly needed to makes
some moves; at the end of last season the defense looked
old and slow. One acquisition in particular struck me: the
signing of cornerback Ferndando Bryant to a one-year
contract. Bryant was let go by my hometown Lions. He was
never really a good fit for Rod Marinelli's Tampa 2 scheme
and his body suffered quite a bit of wear and tear from the
run support the defense demands. So from a stylistic view
the move made sense, but it wasn't like Bryant was doing
a bang up job against opposing receivers either. Now
Bryant didn't make it through training camp with New
England, but if the Pats were desperate enough to give a
Matt Millen castoff a shot they were in bigger trouble than
I realized at the time.
Still I thought Matt Cassel would do a credible job filling in
for an injured Tom Brady. While Brady is a very good QB
his numbers until last season were never really deserving
of all the accolades that came his way. The Patriots are a
team that prepares well for emergencies, and the general
consensus was that New England was still a playoff-caliber
team. After 142 pass attempts I'm not so sure. Cassel has
put up a respectable 6.4 yards per pass but simply doesn't
make the proper decisions quickly enough. He has been
sacked 19 times so far, and many of them have been his
fault. Bottom line, the Broncos are the better team right
now and they probably deserve to be a small favorite in
this game. New England is going to have to fall further
before the betting public makes the proper adjustments.
Denver by 3.