NFL Sunday Night Football Betting: New England Patriots at Arizona Cardinals
The first Sunday night NFL football game of the season features the Tom Brady-less New England Patriots against the Arizona Cardinals in the desert:
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS AT ARIZONA CARDINALS:
The sports betting world has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. The influence of Las Vegas declined (more appropriately, they decided they didn’t want to compete) while the industry exploded on the Internet and around the world. The abundance of information available to anyone with the initiative to look for it has on balance made the betting public more aware of handicapping concepts once known only to ‘sharps’. Thanks to the Internet and off shore betting (and no thanks to the meddlesome US government) no longer does a serious sports bettor have to move to Las Vegas. In fact, there’s no inherent advantage of doing so. Don’t get me wrong–Las Vegas is a great place to live for countless other reasons but you’re not at a huge advantage as a sports bettor from being there.
On the other hand….while the general public is ‘sharper’ in many ways than they’ve ever been the more things change the more they say the same. A square is a square and will always be a square. And nothing characterizes the ‘square’ NFL bettor than overreacting to injuries and overvaluing a starting quarterback. This was the case when I was first ‘coming up’ in the sports betting game and it’s the same today. 15 years ago Drew Bledsoe went down in the preseason and the New England Patriots had to turn to second year quarterback out of Michigan…Tom Brady. The know-nothings in the mainstream sports media and ‘square’ NFL bettors sounded like a bunch of clucking hens in a hen house as they pronounced the Patriots’ season ‘DOA’. Never mind that New England was coming off a 5-11 season in Bill Belichick’s first year on the job as head coach. Without Bledsoe the zeitgeist opined that the Patriots had no hope.
Spoiler alert–things worked out for Brady and Belichick in New England. That 5-11 season in 2000 was to date Belichick’s only losing season as coach of the Patriots. The six Super Bowl rings he’s won–all with Brady at quarterback–are pretty good too. But to listen to the ‘square’ bettors none of that matters. With Tom Brady suspended for the first four games of the season the apocalypse is upon Gillette Stadium. And now that tight end Rob Gronkowski is also out for the opener the Patriots have suffered a setback greater than any team in the history of organized sport and the likes of which has never been seen in the NFL since the league was founded in 1920.
Guess again. Good teams deal with injuries all the time. Furthermore, good teams–and particularly good coaches–deal with the short term or long term loss of the starting quarterback fairly well. At any rate, the starting quarterback is *never* worth as much to his team’s success as the ‘square’ NFL bettor thinks. As a result, the absence of a starting quarterback or other injured superstar is *always* overpriced in the betting line. There’s an emotional component to this as well. Even good teams can fall apart if they witness a catastrophic injury to their starting quarterback. It requires a certain level of mental toughness to shake that off. It’s much easier when the team and players know what they’re dealing with. Brady is not out ‘indefinitely’–he’s out four games after which he’ll return a bit rusty but completely healthy. That’s a lot easier for teams to deal with from a psychological/emotional perspective than a serious injury that will keep a superstar out for an indeterminate length of time. In other words, almost by definition playing *on* a team without their starting quarterback will yield good line value.
Arizona is a very good team–and more about them shortly–but it’s important to put the line on this game in perspective. In the past 10 years the Patriots have been an underdog of more than 6 points exactly *once*–and that game technically shouldn’t count. In the final game of the 2009 season New England had already clinched their playoff spot and played at Houston against the Texans. The Texans were in a position to make their first trip to the playoffs with a win over New England and a loss by the New York Jets on Sunday night. As it worked out, the Texans won 34-27 but the Patriots covered as +7.5 road underdogs. The Jets would win their Sunday night game and there would be no playoffs for Houston that year.
That was the *only* time the Patriots were an underdog of more than 6 points in the past decade. They’re +7 underdogs here. In the aforementioned 2009 game they were +7.5 dogs in a game where they had no motivation whatsoever with their playoff fortune already decided. The Patriots may be without Brady here but the Cardinals are having trouble game planning for backup Jimmy Garropollo simply because the only tape they have on him is from the preseason. And you certainly don’t think that the craftiest head coach in the history of the league would show opponents what he’s *really* capable of.
Arizona finished 13-3 this year and could be just as good this season. They’re not perfect, however, and their liabilities are significant here–poor play along both the offensive and defensive lines, poor quarterback protection, a weak pass rush and no real depth at cornerback after Patrick Peterson. In other words, they lack the weapons to (theoretically at least) exploit Brady’s absence. The pass rush should be better with the addition of Chandler Jones and rookie Robert Nkemdiche but at best the Cardinals don’t have an overbearing defense. To be sure, they’re loaded on offense and Garroppolo will have to make plays but the price on Arizona is just too high. Bill Belichick has had all the time in the world to gameplan for this matchup and the Patriots are 43-22-1 ATS as an underdog during his tenure. I’ll gladly take +7 with a coach that is hitting 66.1% for his run with this team as an underdog.
We’ll conclude by underscoring what might be the biggest difference between ‘sharps’ and ‘squares’. The average recreational player doesn’t appreciate the significance of the pointspread. They’ll try to ‘pick a winner’ and ‘hope’ they cover the number. One of the most brilliant sports betting minds on the planet once told me that “Squares bet teams, sharps bet prices”. You’ll do much better as a sports bettor if you become an expert on team valuation and linesmaking than you will by becoming an expert on the sports and the players.
BET NEW ENGLAND +7 OVER ARIZONA