The suspense is beginning to build at an increasing rate with Super Bowl Sunday approaching in a few days. Sports analysts all over the world have been busy making predictions and clawing for story lines to cover since the last seconds ticked off the clock in the conference championships. Sports fans have been glued to their TV’s and social devices to follow along with the vast abundance of news spewing from every media outlet imaginable. The market for this game will only expand from here. The New England Patriots opened as a three point favorite over the Atlanta Falcons with the total points over/under set at 58 points which is the highest total ever set in Super Bowl history.
My pick to win Super Bowl LI is the Atlanta Falcons. Dan Quinn and Kyle Shanahan have started to click at the perfect time. With the Super Bowl approaching, Kyle Shanahan’s offense is firing on all cylinders and Dan Quinn has put an influence on this defense that makes them believe that they can accomplish anything. Though this defense is young, they are playing some great football right now and have looked much more experienced than what their age tells us. Many people are doubting this Falcons team as they are the underdog and are facing one of the most experienced teams when it comes to the postseason. However, there are many things about this Falcons team that I consider to be winning formulas in this Super Bowl which I will explain in this article.
It’s all about perspective. That’s really the kicker when people are analyzing a match up and making inferences on what will come of the game. It really depends on whether you are biased toward certain teams and players or if you roll with the popular opinion that you hear spewing from the mouths of TV personalities on sports networks every day. Yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I think a lot of it is just a bunch of garbage. This probably won’t be the last time that I criticize the popular media or media outlets in general. It really does play a big part in the perception of the viewers leading up to a notable sporting event. The story lines encompassing this Super Bowl are centered around the Patriots. This was expected as the Patriots have been pretty much the best team in the NFL during the last decade or so. Other headlines regarding the Patriots include the legendary Brady/Belichick combo and their quest for revenge against Goodell as well as achieving NFL history by getting their fifth ring. That would be the most Super Bowl rings won by a quarterback and the most rings won by a head coach. The media discussing Brady and Belichick in terms of being in the greatest of all time conversation is certainly driving the betting tickets through the roof in their favor. However, I would like to say as a disclaimer that I do respect the Patriots, Belichick, and Brady so anything that I say against them is not in hatred. The Patriots deserve a ton of respect for their successes in the postseason but that may not be enough to combat this loaded Falcons team. It is not working in their favor that the media is hyping them up and not the Falcons. Though I will say that the Falcons have been getting more talk as of late. This is probably due to the fact that they couldn’t possibly conceal the Falcons’ arsenal of strengths for that long. Another big topic of discussion has been the success of the Patriots’ defense this season. Since the Broncos won with the #1 scoring defense last season everyone is flipping out about how the #1 defense wins championships against #1 offenses which makes them think that the Pats are even more of a lock to cruise to victory. That statistic would be true as top defenses have had a track record of being successful in Super Bowls in the past but I would like for everyone to pause for a minute and recognize that nobody said a word about their defense before the playoffs. Yes, they were successful but I still don’t think that they’re anywhere near as impressive as what the stat sheet displays. The Pats are eighth overall in total defense and are near the middle of the pack in passing defense in terms of yards per game. That differs greatly from the Broncos’ Super Bowl winning defense of last season that was the top total defense in the league and gave up the least amount of passing yards. The Patriots’ defense is really nothing too special other than their schemes put their players in good position to make plays at key points. What they do have is a good red zone defense which has been the key to their success in limiting their opponent’s points per game. I am not sold on that alone being enough for the Patriots to win this game. The topics of interest concerning the Falcons include people saying that Matt Ryan will fold because he hasn’t been successful in the playoffs, the defense will get shredded by Brady because it has too many rookies, and Julio Jones will get taken away which will cause the offense to fail. I find all of these reasons to be absolutely ridiculous and downright ignorant. Matt Ryan has been lights out in the playoffs so far and hasn’t shown a hint of slowing down. He is laser focused and is not letting anything get to him. I expect him to play the same way on Sunday. The rookies on this defense aren’t just any rookies. Keanu Neal and Deion Jones are in contention for the defensive rookie of the year award. They developed pretty quickly as the season went on and are now playing their best ball leading up to this game. This defense plays fast and hits hard. If anyone stuck around and watched the whole NFC Championship game (during the blowout), then they would have seen the replays of Aaron Rodgers getting annihilated. They run down hill and tackle through the ball carrier. Deion Jones intercepted Russell Wilson in the divisional round. There has been much improvement as they have shown up when the games have counted the most. The Patriots have had a knack for shutting down the opposing team’s best offensive player. This has worked well for them and a recent example of this would be in the AFC Championship when they shut down Antonio Brown. This defense works well against teams that don’t have a variety of talent to compliment their best offensive player. Unfortunately for the Patriots, the Falcons have like eight different talented offensive players. Julio Jones is clearly the best of the bunch but there isn’t a huge drop off between him and the players around him. In order to shut down Julio, it would take at least two defensive players covering him at any given time. If the Patriots were to try and double team Julio, then there would be a major price to pay as Matt Ryan would just check to the open receiver for a big gain. Mohamed Sanu, Taylor Gabriel, Devonta Freeman, Tevin Coleman, and others are all great players. The Patriots will have their hands full on Sunday and shutting down Julio Jones will be the least of their worries.
This game feels similar to the NCAA National Championship game and the NBA Finals. This kind of plays into what I was saying about media perspective. Alabama and the Warriors were viewed as two unstoppable forces when they reached those games. In the NCAA Championship game, all they talked about was Alabama’s history of being good, Saban, and that defense. They seemed to mostly neglect the fact that Alabama was playing a 19 year old freshman quarterback in national championship game. Clemson clearly had the better offense and their defense was solid too. The talk was about how Deshaun Watson was interception prone and couldn’t hold up against the Alabama defense. Yes, Watson threw interceptions against Ohio State but the Bucks also had one of the most turnover aggressive defenses in the NCAA. Watson was a senior quarterback who had star receiver Mike Williams who will be one of the best receivers in this year’s draft class and a solid defense. The game played out exactly the way I expected it to. The Alabama running game got the job done and scored on a couple of big plays, freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts didn’t play very well and missed on a couple of key long balls, and the Clemson offense/defense came through. It was the simple factors in this game that people who backed Alabama seemed to gloss right over. As for comparing that game to the Super Bowl game, the Falcons offense compares well with the Clemson offense and Alabama’s coach Saban commands the same respect that Belichick does on their respective levels. This game reminds me of the NBA Finals because the Warriors were an unstoppable force coming in with the record breaking 73-9 record, unanimous MVP, and a 3-1 lead. The Cavaliers had received all kinds of criticism and was getting no support at all from any popular media personality. Pretty much all of them picked the Warriors to win the series when it was time to pick a champion. The Cavaliers went down 3-1 and it was pretty much confirmed that they had lost. However, the Cavaliers defied all odds by storming back to tie up the series and bring it to game seven where they won on the Warriors’ home floor. The odds for this Super Bowl are not near as far as the Cavs’ were in areas of their NBA Finals run but the point is that the Falcons are being doubted in the Super Bowl. This will fire up the Falcons and give them what it takes to stick it to the people who didn’t believe in them.
I am not exactly sure why people are taking so much away from the Falcons’ victories in the playoffs leading up to this game. I understand that the Seahawks were missing Earl Thomas and the Packers had plenty of injuries but it’s not like everybody was giving those excuses a ton of weight before the Falcons whipped them. The Seahawks had looked very impressive in the win over the Lions in the Wild Card and the vast majority of people were still backing the Packers to make it a close game in Atlanta because they were still a pretty good team despite the injuries. It seems like people will find any reason in the world to doubt the Falcons no matter how good they play. So much so that there’s probably going to be a group of people trying to downplay the Falcons even if they win by the same margin in the Super Bowl. I would also like to point out that the Falcons had a much more difficult road to the Super Bowl than the Patriots did. The Falcons had to play Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers who are both top ten quarterbacks or better. The Seahawks and the Packers are both great organizations who are almost always competitive no matter who they play. The Falcons capturing easy double digit victories over those teams was impressive but somehow overlooked. The Patriots got to play the pitiful Houston Texans and a Steelers team that struggles on the road. The quarterbacks they played against were Brock Osweiler and Ben Roethlisberger. Brock Osweiler can’t hit the side of a barn and was benched halfway through the regular season. Ben Roethlisberger has struggled on the road and was missing Le’veon Bell. The Steelers’ offense as a whole was overrated because Martavis Bryant was gone so they really didn’t have anyone else other than Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell. During the regular season, the Falcons played a solid game against the Broncos in Denver. Matt Ryan was efficient and had his way for the most part. The Broncos had the fourth best total defense and the best passing defense. The Falcons also went to Seattle and was just about a play away from beating them on their home field. The Seahawks had only lost at home once all season. Seattle had the fifth best total defense and the eighth best passing defense. Matt Ryan was once again successful as he threw for 335 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception. The Falcons have been well tested this season and have proven that they can take on any team that stands in their way. After going into Denver/Seattle and playing well, I am sure that they won’t be phased much when they meet the Patriots’ defense on Sunday.
One thing that stands out to me regarding this season’s playoffs is the success of teams with good quarterback play and efficient passing offenses. As I observed the playoff slate getting smaller with teams getting eliminated each week, I began to pick up on a pattern. The team with the better passing offense always won. I also mixed this observation with stats like third down efficiency, pass yards per attempt, and turnover margin. The team with the advantage in the majority of those stats always won the game. That explains why the final four quarterbacks remaining were Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, and Ben Roethlisberger. The Falcons and the Patriots turned out to be the final teams remaining which corresponded to those statistics as both of these offenses rank near the top in each of those categories. With that in mind, the forecast for this game is basically a wash as neither team has a clear advantage. The Patriots have a better third down conversion percentage, the Falcons are better in team yards per pass attempt, and they are even when it comes to turnover margin. If the Falcons end up winning the Super Bowl, I think that this will be a clear turning point in how great offense is going to be the face of football’s future.
Betting: I don’t even feel like the spread is necessary in this game because I believe that the Falcons will win outright. The Patriots being the three point favorite in the Super Bowl was what I expected when looking at this match up. I think Vegas made them three point favorites solely because of the brand name. Patriots, Tom Brady, and Bill Belichick are powerful names to mention considering their history of dominance in the NFL. I mean they did just win the Super Bowl two years ago, reached the AFC Championship for the sixth straight season, went 14-2 with Brady suspended for the first four games as well as playing without Gronk the whole season, and went 13-3 against the spread. Being that great against the spread as the opening favorite to win the Super Bowl is a tough task. The odds makers had to have been trying to make it more difficult for them to cover the spread as the season went on but the Patriots just kept covering. That’s also a prime example of why betting against the Patriots isn’t something you should try at home. Though the Pats have burnt Vegas against the spread all season as the public favorites, Vegas will finally get revenge and cash in big time on this trap line. This spread line just looks way too suspicious to coincide with a Patriots victory. It just looks like it is too good to be true. There is no way that Vegas would put up such a cheap price on Patriots winning against a team like the Falcons. They knew for sure that they’d get the majority of the public bets on the Patriots in this one by setting a line like that and would rack up some easy cash. It’s either that or they’re just pulling my leg. If Vegas really thought that the Patriots were going to win this game then they would have made them AT LEAST a 4.5 point favorite or more. That way they would surely get some good action on the Falcons’ point spread and money line. As for right now, the Falcons’ money line isn’t paying out very much at +125 which means that there is something fishy going on. Vegas is fishing in the Patriots bettors’ pockets for that cold hard cash. This is especially true considering that they took historic losses in the NCAA Football National Championship game when Clemson pulled off the upset over Alabama. The spread in that game is somewhat similar to the one in this one. Alabama was going to draw plenty of money regardless because it’s Alabama. The Crimson Tide opened as seven point favorites over the Tigers. That did seem pretty odd from the beginning though regardless of what you think about Bama. Clemson was a great team as well and that opening spread was just disrespectful. However, in some ways it did make sense considering Alabama was good against the spread during the season with a 10-5 against the spread record and Clemson wasn’t very good with their against the spread record being 8-7. The opening spread number of seven is significant because it is a key number in football due to a touchdown and extra point equaling seven points so it made sense that they would choose that number instead of a five or six. That is why the Patriots opened as a three point favorite instead of a two or four. It’s a good starting point. This NCAA Championship game was different than this Super Bowl game though due to the public consensus favorite difference and line movement. Although Alabama opened as the heavy favorite in this game, the public consensus did not follow suit. This was quite unexpected because the public historically loves to bet favorites but that was not the case in this one. Clemson was a public favorite and accumulated a good number of their dollars. This caused the spread to start moving toward Clemson and Vegas realized that they made a big mistake. The sharp bettors (bettors who place very large wagers and are known for being on the correct side of the bet) hammered the Tigers as well which caused the spread to drop as low as six points before the game started. Clemson ended up winning the game outright and Vegas got cleaned out. I would also like to say that I benefited from this game as I cashed out a three figure bet on the Clemson Tigers. At least it wasn’t the Super Bowl that they screwed up on. Since I expected the public to immediately jump on the Patriots’ side and the sharps to likely take the Falcons’ side (as they did in the Falcons’ last two games), I expected to see some line movement. I did notice some early movement indicators at the start of last week when the spread began moving in the Patriots’ favor. This was expected because it was predictable that the early public money was going to come in on them so the sports books took the opportunity to tax them with expensive lines. At one of its highest points, the Patriots were receiving over 70% of the bets. The total amount of money bet on the Patriots was over 60% of the dollars as well. With the betting so lopsided in the Patriots’ favor I expected the line to move off of three for at least just a little bit but it didn’t budge. This lopsided betting went on for pretty much the whole first week and into the second. The Patriots remained the three point favorite the whole time. That is when I began to become even more confident in my original theory that the sharps were going to be on the Falcons. Even though the sharps may not have thrown down the big money yet, it definitely seemed as though Vegas knew it was coming or something was going on to keep that number at three. Sure enough, the spread price has started to move in the Falcons’ favor. Just as expected. Though the Patriots have accumulated the vast majority of total bets and still have the lead in total dollars, the line has remained at three. I believe it is like this because of the amount of dollars that are being spent in each Falcons bet and the types of respectable bettors that are doing it. Speaking of kinds of bettors, Floyd Mayweather may be known for throwing down big bucks when he bets on sports games but that doesn’t mean the sports books will move the spread lines because of it. It’s not always about the money being bet, sometimes it’s about the gambler who is betting it. The sports books don’t respect Mayweather as a great mind when it comes to gambling so he they won’t move the spread accordingly. Mayweather might flash his winning tickets but he definitely loses some along the way. Maybe more than just a few. The line movement on last seasons Super Bowl was incredibly telling. The Panthers opened as a five point favorite (there were a lot of deferring spread lines among sports books so five may not be consistent with the others). This was well earned as the Panthers steamrolled their way to the Super Bowl. However, this seemed pretty off considering the Broncos had just taken down the New England Patriots. The Panthers’ near undefeated season and impressive playoff play mixed with the photogenic and outgoing MVP quarterback Cam Newton was enough to draw the public’s attention by storm. Since the Patriots had already been eliminated, everyone assumed the road was clear as the Broncos featured a rundown Peyton Manning and an unspectacular offense. Apparently people were quick to forget the defense wins championships. With the immediate waterfall of money coming in on the Panthers, the sports books reacted quickly and moved the line back as far as making the Panthers a six point favorite at one time. As Super Bowl Sunday drew closer the spread began creeping toward the Broncos at an increasing rate. This was the sharp money moving in. They sharps were placing huge bets on the spread and most importantly the money line. The sports books had to react quickly in order to try and save themselves leading up to the game. The Broncos ended up winning the game outright. The lack of major line movement in this game is a bit concerning but in these circumstances I am still feeling good about where it’s at.
Breaking Down Why I Give the Advantage to the Falcons:
- The spread line looks suspicious.
- This game feels similar to when the Cavaliers beat the Warriors in the NBA finals and when Clemson beat Alabama.
- The Falcons’ defense will be much better than expected.
- The Falcons’ offense is truly superior over the Patriots’ offense.
- The Falcons’ lack of mistakes on offense will starve the Patriots of taking advantage of short field opportunities that weaker teams gave them in the past.
- The disrespect that the Falcons are receiving from the media as an underdog is fuel to the fire.
- The Falcons have been tested in the regular season.
- Matt Ryan will show up.
- The Falcons’ running game is underrated.
- The Patriots’ defense is overrated.
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