(I dunno...y'like the alliterative misspelling in the title or not? Let us know...)
Welcome home to Following Football 2.0, and our regular Wednesday feature where we share the outcomes of games this weekend without the benefit of having actually experienced those games yet!
We'll start with the AFL this week, and there are at least a pair of games that are very difficult to call - the Aussie oddsmakers have Fremantle @ North Melbourne as a dead heat - no spread at all, very unusual for them. Even more unusual - bettors haven't moved that line either direction! We're going with the Freo Dockers from pedigree (they've played these big games and won them; the Kangaroos are as up and down a team as you'll ever find), but North prob needs the game more than Freo does...
The other difficult pick involves the Gold Coast Suns, as talented a team as you'll ever see but with more injuries than the Spartan army in 300, hosting the Essendon Bombers, who just strongly suggested to their coach that his presence would be better off done without for the foreseeable future. The Dons are another talented team, finalists last year, suffering from the shadow of the drug scandal that's haunted them for three years now. That's as may be, says I, but it doesn't defend the lack of professionalism when you show that you simply don't want to play, that you allow middling teams like Adelaide and Saint Kilda to run over you like tackling dummies. THAT part was coaching. I don't know the interim coach from my butcher, but I'll bet that changing to ANYONE else is going to restore enough pride into that team to defeat a squad of second teamers, which is all Gold Coast can muster at this point in the season, three weeks from vacation. Taking Essendon at 2.80, sixteen point spread be hanged.
The other games are all over the board - Hawthorn's favored by 46 over Port, but I suspect the Power will show up enough to keep it respectable... Richmond, on the other hand, should have no trouble whomping Collingwood...Hard to call the Opera House Haggle (not its name, but I like it) - Sydney's fighting for a top four spot; Greater Western Sydney's fighting to make the top eight and keep playing, and it's at GWS. Oddsmakers have it fifteen points Sydney's way; AFL.com's predictor is going with GWS, and so's my heart. Unfortunately, my brain says the same thing it did for the first game - pedigree picks the Swans to beat the Giants once more, though it'll be tight. If either team solves its ruckman issues by Saturday, they'll win...Geelong should walk all over St. Kilda and Adelaide won't have any trouble with Brisbane...If Melbourne doesn't have "one of those games", they should defeat Carlton and keep the Blues at the bottom with two games left...Finally, the most exciting game of the round (maybe the season) is the one in Perth between the surprising high speed West Coast Eagles and the surprising high speed Western Bulldogs - this could be 150 apiece, or the defenses could annihilate each other and it'd be 50 apiece! Home field to the Eagles, and that's how I'm betting, too.
Our current record is 126-44, and we went 7-2 last week (missed on GWS losing to Port Adelaide and West Coast beating Fremantle). Against the spreads, we're 99-71.
Time to look at the CFL, where a very strange thing happened last weekend: all four games went according to predictions. That's right, even though Following Football, the CFL.ca prognosticator Jamie Nye, and the professional oddsmakers all picked Edmonton, Toronto, Hamilton, and Calgary to win...they somehow all DID win! Edmonton had to come from 12-0 behind to kick a field goal as time expired (so to speak - in the CFL, there's one play AFTER 0:00 every half), but Toronto handled Winnipeg more easily than a 27-20 score indicates, while Hamilton and Calgary each annihilated their oppositions (combined score of 100-25). So those four teams now have a little separation from the pack: each sits at 5-2 and looking strong, with Ottawa at 4-3 and the other four below .500 at this moment.
Well, this week, Calgary and Toronto should be heavy favorites against Saskatchewan and Ottawa respectively - a touchdown or so - but Hamilton has to play at Edmonton, which should be a dogfight! The TigerCats have the highest rating in the Following Football elo system at 40.4, but with the home field advantage, Edmonton actually balances that out to a net draw. We're still going with Hamilton, impressed with the full-team supremacy they've exhibited the last three weeks. Finally, while Winnipeg gets the week off, Montreal has the unenviable task of flying to Vancouver to play the BC Lions, who should be able to hold off the Alouettes with their home field advantage, although the FF ratings have this match as a draw as well! Nevertheless, we're going with BC.
We are now at 17-15 for the year with our Canadian picks, good for the top 20% in the CFL pick-em, and on a streak of seven in a row correct. Against the spread, we're 16-15-1.
Finally, we look and laugh at the NFL oddsmakers, not because they don't know what they're doing, but they probably don't know why they're doing it! As we often discuss here, football coaches have many, MANY higher priorities that WINNING, or even the scoreboard, in a preseason game. What is you're betting on when you bet a pre-season game, especially in the NFL? How serious a coach is about winning? Whose third teamers are better? Which team leaves their starters in slightly longer?
Sigh.
Any way, the odds that caught my attention are listed below, and here's why I picked these: imagine Vegas setting ANY of these lines in a "REAL" game between the teams listed!
Washington -3 over Detroit?
Cleveland -3 over Buffalo?
KC -2 over Seattle?
New Orleans -1 over New England?
Houston -3 over Denver?
Pittsburgh -3 over Green Bay?
San Francisco -3 1/2 over Dallas?
Somehow, that last one really floors me! (And yes, our record is still 0-0 this year...)
Tomorrow, in Thursday Thoughts, we'll discuss the forecast for the winners of the American football scene in 2015-16 - both the NFL and the division 1A NCAA.
No comments:
Post a Comment