Looking Ahead in Rearview Mirror in the NFL

If you were one of the sports bettors who had Carolina at -7 at home against Buffalo last Sunday, you were robbed. No it wasn’t by the oddsmaker and it wasn’t by Jake Delhomme (though he played a strong supporting role), it was the Carolina kicker John Kasay.

As advanced steps have been taken to analyze sports, one not given nearly enough credit is lost opportunities and how they relate to future results. My guess as to why this has never taken a strong foothold is because a lot can sound like whining depending on the story-teller and today’s world tends to be more results oriented, leaving less room for conjecture.

The Carolina Panthers were moving the ball up and down the field but stalling when they needed to punch the ball in the end zone. Kasay had two field goal opportunities in the first half against the Bills from very makeable distances of 43 and 39 yards respectively and he missed both. Where his misses altered the course game was in the last five minutes of the third quarter. Another Carolina drive was stalling at the 16-yard line of Buffalo, with the Bills ahead 7-2. Despite Kasay’s long history of success, coach John Fox was displeased with his accuracy on this day and decided to pass on 33-yard attempt and went on fourth down and about four feet. Carolina was stuffed at the point of attack and lost the ball on downs, trailing by the same score, in spite of 16-4 first down dominance.

That was essentially the game as the Bills took advantage of Delhomme interceptions and scored the next 10 points to build commanding 17-2 lead.

Kasay’s two misses changed everything. If he makes both field goals, the Panthers lead 8-7 and assuredly a normally conservative coach Fox kicks the field goal, giving Carolina an 11-7 lead and Buffalo now needs a touchdown from backup Ryan Fitzgerald, which based on final tally of total yards (425-167 Panthers) seems unlikely. Of course there is no way to know, but based on the pace of the game, Carolina at worst would have kicked another field goal (for a push) or possibly would have tallied a touchdown for the winner. A kicker’s inability to put the ball between the uprights cost his team and Carolina backers a victory.

Cross off New Orleans as a team that can’t overcome serious adversity. Whatever was possible for undefeated team playing a flat game against rested opponent on the road to go wrong did for the Saints. Drew Brees was sacked, hurried and intercepted, as New Orleans fell behind 24-3, but they never gave up and for the third time already this season, the Miami defense faltered in the second half and lost for a second time in three attempts. The Saints aren’t going 16-0, but with each passing week it looks like the road thru the NFC to the Super Bowl goes thru New Orleans.

If you have Direct TV, you saw a month’s worth of bad football this past week on the NFL package. The average winning margin for week seven was just over 20 points per game which has to approach some record. What is going to be really hard on NFL bettors is when these awful teams start meeting each other with nothing to play for, whom to you choose.

Know your Numbers- The current disparity in the NFL is shown by the fact teams with winning records playing teams with losing records are 14-7 ATS since week 4. –A couple of years ago the StatFox Edge Football Annual ran an article about Yards Per Points Scored. The basic premise was to Play On the Top 5 teams and Play Against the bottom five teams on a weekly basis. Thus far the Top 5 is 8-5-1 ATS and the bottom five is 6-12 ATS. (Teams in same group playing each other are not counted) If a matchup has a crossover from each group, the better team is 3-0 ATS thus far.—Favorites ended up 9-3-1 ATS last week, giving them 56-46-1 ATS record on the season. A sportsbook operator on the Vegas Strip I spoke to said the bean-counters were not going to be happy, as teams like Indianapolis, Green Bay, New England and the New York Jets not only were heavily bet straight up, but were in various parlay and teasers that won, making it a one of the worst Sunday’s in the NFL in recent memory for Las Vegas sportsbooks.