NFL Preview by BookieButchers Instead of going team-by-team, and division by division, I’m going to focus on week 1 matchups and preview each team in the context of that. There are plenty of good sources on the web with an overview of the league and each team, breaking down each team’s offense, defense, and special-teams. I will touch up on those things in my preview but within the contest of the betting odds. Keep in mind that I’ve worked on this over a period of a few weeks, so some lines/totals might be stale a bit as well as some recent info might be missing.Let’s get to it! SD @ ARZ -3.5 O/U: 44.5 Season Totals: Arizona Cardinals O 7.5 San Diego Chargers O 8 Well, this is interesting, are the bookmakers telling us that the Chargers are the BETTER team of the two based on the O/U season totals and juice? (both have the OVER juiced up heavily). Or maybe the teams are similar in terms of quality, and the difference in 0.5 of a game for the Chargers is due to them having a projected 19th hardest schedule, while Arizona’s is 6th hardest? Regardless of what it is, if we have similarly ranked teams, anything over a FG provides value and Chargers at +3.5 seems to be the right side here. Let’s break down these teams to see if that’s truly the case. Arizona finished 10-6 last year in the hardest division in the NFL, and of course they failed to make the postseason. They had the 5th best SRS rating of +6.4 in the NFC and the 7th best in the NFL, yet still weren’t able to get into the post-season. So why are the bookmakers only expecting about 7-8 wins for this squad? Well, the #2 ranked defense is expected to regress a great deal. Karlos Dansby left via free-agency, Daryl Washington is suspended for a full year, Tyrann Mathieu is trying to come back from a torn ACL suffered in week 14, John Abraham (who is 36 years old by the way) reported to training camp 3-weeks late after spending time in a rehab facility following his DUI arrest in June, and of course Darnell Dockett, who is coming off his best season in 5 years, was lost for the year with a torn ACL in training camp. That’s a lot of key players that either will not contribute this year or are coming in with major question marks. And to make matters worse, Arizona has the 2nd oldest defense in the league, so the replacement players taking over some of these positions aren’t “spring chickens” so to say. I just don’t see Arizona’s D being as good as last season when they carried the team. At the same time, the offense should improve. Fitz, Floyd, and B&B (Brown and Brown…their two rookies) provide a great group of receivers, the O-line should get better with the return of 1st round pick Cooper (missed all of last year with a broken leg), and of course Ellington has the potential to be a star at the RB position. Carson Palmer is going to be 35 this year though, and hard to see him be one of those QB’s that gets ‘better’ with age. Arizona plays a very tough schedule so it’s not a surprise that the bookmakers expect this team to take a step back. The Chargers on the other hand are pretty much the opposite of the Cardinals, as San Diego had a great offense (#2 overall) and the worst defense in the league. You can expect the offense to continue being terrific as they’re returning pretty much every starter and key backups like Green and Woodhead. And the defense, well you can’t get much worse than 32nd so clearly they’re expected to improve. Freeney will play more (he only appeared in 4 games last year) providing a much needed pass-rush, Manti Te’o will get better in his 2nd year in the league (unless he falls in LOVE again), and to improve their secondary, the Chargers drafted Verrett in the first round while most importantly signing Brandon Flower, one of KC’s better CB’s over the last few years. With this be a dominant defense? Of course not, but they could approach league-average, especially given the fact that San Diego plays 19th toughest schedule this year. I think overall this Chargers team improved more and will be the ‘better’ team this year than ‘Zona. Arizona will take a big step back on the defensive side of the ball, and I’m not sure how much better they’ll be offensively due to Palmer’s stagnant performance over the last few seasons. In the last few years, San Diego is 6-1 ATS when listed as an underdog in the 3.5 to 9.5 range and they’re 3-1 ATS on MNF. I expect the Chargers to take advantage of this Arizona defense that is going through some major changes and which most likely have a lot of rust early in the year. Grabbing the Chargers at anything over a FG provides pure value from my perspective. Lean: SD +3.5 and OVER 44.5
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 08:02:56 +0000
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