STEELERS @ PATRIOTS
Take: STEELERS +6
I don’t have a strong take on this game. The Patriots obviously deserve to be the favorite. But the number is higher than it ought to be on the math, and to be honest, I’m not as sold on New England as I was earlier in the season.
The basis for that opinion is amplified by the stats down the stretch for the Patriots. They weren’t exactly dominating, and this was against an array of mostly lousy opponents. I wasn’t wowed by the showing last week against the Texans, either, in spite of New England finding a way to get the cover while eliminating Houston.
The flip side is that the Steelers did pretty much everything they could to lose a game they probably should have won fairly easily last week at Kansas City. Let’s put it this way. If Pittsburgh has to settle for field goals every time they visit the red zone at Foxboro, their season is going to come to an end today.
I believe this has a chance to be a nail biter. It certainly shapes up that way when doing the statistical comparisons, particularly when only focusing on the latter portion of the season. I happen to give considerably more weight to current form rather than the full season data, and those numbers say that the Steelers are getting too many points here.
I’m only making this a small play for my personal service clients. With all due respect to my own calculations, this is Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, and I really don’t like playing against those two, especially at Foxboro. But I’ve got to trust the digits to some extent and that gets me to the window with the Steelers plus the points.