Week 11 — 22 Nov 2004
From: Jeff To: mnf@fat.doobie.com
Subject: It's Monday...
...and with Thanksgiving coming, it's time to dust off your Dallas Sucks shirt.
This is one of those weeks in the NFL that's hard to reasonably write about. Most of the games were between mismatched teams. Amazingly, many of the games turned out to be exciting, though in the end, the favored team generlly won the game.
First, The playoff picture...
AFC:
Essentially in: New England, Pittsburgh
Probably in: Indianapolis, Denver, San Diego
Fighting to get in: NY Jets, Baltimore, Jacksonville
Eight teams, Six spots, six games to go.
NFC:
Essentially in: Philadelphia, Atlanta
Probably in: Green Bay, Minnesota
Very much in the running: Seattle, NY Giants, St. Louis
Not out of the picture entirely: Chicago, New Orleans
Fading fast, but still clinging to hope: Tampa Bay, Detroit, Arizona
As to this week's notable games, we had several.
So, I mentioned these strange mismatches, where the better team had a suprisingly hard time knocking off the underdog. Check this out.
The Vikings beat Detroit yesterday. This shouldn't be suprising, except that Detroit led 19-7 at the end of the third quarter. In an exceptional comeback, the vikings put together a huge fourth quarter, and won the game 22-19, to end their three-game losing streak.
Later in the day, Green Bay beat Houston by a field goal late in the game, after being completely dominated by the Texans throughout at least the entire first half (which is when I stopped watching the game and went on about other things).
At this point, those two teams are battling for the lead of the NFC North. One of them will earn a playoff berth by wining the division, the other's in good shape for a wild card... still the battle between these two is heating up better than any other rivalry in the league.
The Seahawks narrowly beat out the Dolphins (!), when Michael Boulware returned an interception for a touchdown, breaking a tie with less than a minute to go. Jerry Rice caught a touchdown pass, too.
The still-best-in-the-NFL Steelers had quite a time with the Bengals. The Steelers' rookie quarterback/golden boy Ben Roethlisberger looked terrible out there, getting sacked repeatedly, and getting called for intentional grounding from the endzone. The steelers running backs and defense saved the game, and they squeaked by 19-14.
And then there was the suprising game of the week: The (really, pretty terrible) Tenessee Titans beat the (possibly no longer playoff-bound) Jacksonville Jaguars, 18-15.
Alltogether, the week was a week of mismatches, that produced some suprisingly good matchups. Perhaps tonight's game will be more of the same. We've at least got the mismatch part right...
The Game:
Tonight the 8-1 New England Patriots go to Kansas City, Missouri to take on the 3-6 Chiefs, on the natural grass of Arrowhead Stadium (the Astroturf was removed there in 1994 and replaced with a mixture of Ryegrass and Bermuda Grass. Seeds are available from Royal Seed Company.)
The Chiefs have been disappointing this year. They're a better team than their record indicates, but they're still not a very good team. The Patriots are among the league's best. You'd think this one should be a cakewalk. But apparently this week, all bets are off. I see no reason for tonight to be any different.
The Line:
The Patriots are favored by 3.5. The over/under is 54.
The smart money won in last week's shootout. It's now 5-6, and hoping to reach .500 tonight, by taking the under... despite the fact that neither team has much of a defense.
The under is frequently a bad choice on monday, but this week the line has moved at least twice, so the masses seem to have spoken.
When too many people end up on one side of a bet, the sportsbooks move the line, to encourage betting on the other side (ideally, the house wants one sides losses to pay off the other side's wins). By moving the line, they're essentially offering a discount on bets on one side of it. The smart money is all about those discounts. (Sometimes the line changes based on injury reports or other news... that's different than what I'm talking about here).
Because who looks smarter most of the time? The sportsbook, with all of its resources, its back room full of pros, and its obvious incentive to stay afloat... or masses of typical sports bettors, many of whom go to Nevada for the weekend to drop a bet on their home team?
I certainly know who's got the nicer TV.
The Bar:
Esta noche, vamos a ir al districo mission, en donde visitaremos un barradeportes irlandeso.
The place for the (drinking) Irish to go to watch the (fighting) Irish[1].
The Phoenix 811 Valencia Street @ 19th Steps from the 26 Valencia Within two blocks of the 33, 49 Mission/Van Ness, and 14 Mission busses.
Kickoff is at 6:00. See you there?
-Jeff
[1] That'd be the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Fights between Irishmen in the mission, drunken or otherwise, are exceptionally rare.