Point Blank – December 16, 2016
When it’s Holiday Time on the NCAA Hoops Courts…But still better to be inside than out in some cities this weekend, and yes, that includes Sam Bradford…Some lovely sentiment for the season from Eric Idle...When your most productive runner is your punter you have issues to solve…
It is going to be a Christmas stocking Friday, one filled with some quick takes across various sporting fronts, degrees of normalcy on the NCAA betting boards now gone as the bowl season begins, and also the Holiday basketball cycles. It will take some broadening of the handicapping approaches to stay ahead of the rest of the marketplace on those boards, but scrambling things up does bring opportunity to the table.
To ease you along your path it will be a jukebox Friday, and while doing the proper sorting through some of the particular issues the next two weeks create, we do need something appropriate for the season. Christmas brings a truly special time to celebrate with friends and family, but there are also the realities of what it means to those that are forced to travel and play sporting events, and have it relegated to business as usual. So it is only fitting to go to the brilliance of Eric Idle, and a lovely and dignified sentiment for the ages -
That brings a nice warm glow to the season, but one does have to be careful with it – the closing is something that can stay with you, and I have caught myself a few times through the years, while making my way through a shopping mall with my mother, begin to murmur “Go tell the elves…”, and then catching myself in realizing that is not the sort of thing to be doing aloud.
Now back to sports.
Item: Adjusting your NCAA Home Court advantages…
Now that finals week has passed the schedule picks up on the NCAA hardwoods, and naturally there is a bit of trepidation involved as teams return from so much down time. You can use tonight’s Florida Atlantic/Miami game as a prime example, neither side having played in 10 days. Making adjustments for rust comes front-and-center in the handicapping approach, as does something else – the home court advantages require some tweaking.
The students are gone now, which not only means smaller crowds, but far less vocal ones by an even greater factoring. But this is not something that you can automatically adjust across the board because it does vary significantly, one of the keys being whether or not the school is in a major population center.
There will be some quiet buildings on Saturday. When Washington State hosts Santa Clara note that Pullman only has a population of a little over 30,000, and when the students aren’t around the locals won’t show all that much interest in a moribund basketball program anyway. The population of Laramie is almost the same, and when the Wyoming students are gone that does not leave a lot of locals to fill out an arena that holds 15,028. The Cornell players and coaches will represent a significant percentage of those in attendance.
Yet note that some programs use this cycle to advantage. Wichita State will be playing downtown at the Intrust Bank Arena for the seventh consecutive year, a place that seats 15,004, and it gives folks in a passionate basketball city a chance to get tickets that are not available when they are playing in their 10,506 on-campus facility, the students occupying many of the seats. Saturday’s matchup vs. Oklahoma State has already been announced as a sell-out, and note that the Shockers are 6-0 SU and 4-2 ATS in their annual game in this arena, though one of them was held a few weeks before the Christmas cycle.
If you take the time to sort through some of these settings you are likely to find a few that do bring an advantage, all the while the marketplace does their usual generic allotments for the court values.
And being inside watching college basketball may be a far better thing than for some NFL fans come Sunday…
Item: Outdoors it’s going to be damn cold
NFL weather will be a big part of the discussions between now and kickoff, with the strong prospect that it could be below zero when Packers/Bears face off in Chicago, and close to that for Titans/Chiefs in Kansas City. The forecasts will get narrowed down in the follow-up thread as we get closer to game time, including following a wind chill in Chicago that could reach -20, but it isn’t too early to begin thinking the practical aspects of the matchups through.
It is often noted here that wind tends to be the key in terms of impacting game flows when it is cold, but this is going to be a different kind of cold at a couple of the venues. The passing games will suffer because of the difficulty of both the QBs and WRs keeping their hands warm, while teams that can run with power inside do not have their flows disrupted. That creates some intrigue at the two coldest weather sites, with Tennessee’s offense built to handle the conditions pretty well, and Chicago’s Jordan Howard becoming a real force as a power back for this late-season games.
The most interesting weather situation may not have anything to do with cold, but instead the likelihood for rain in Lions/Giants. There was a take here in the Tuesday NFL review about the impact that Matthew Stafford’s finger injury had last week, his accuracy dropping considerably while wearing a glove, and attempts to find a comfort zone in practice this week are not reported to have gone all that well. That has included wearing a one-finger glove. As awkward as this game might have been for him under good conditions, what happens to his ability to grip and throw the ball if it is going to be wet? There may be a lot to sort through on that front.
Because of some of those weather issues there may be a chance to steal something on the fantasy QB board…
NFL Fantasy QB – Sam Bradford
You almost assuredly weren’t expecting this call, but it makes a lot of sense. Bradford may have had his best game of the season at Jacksonville last week, going 24-34 for 292 yards, with a TD and no interceptions. The Vikings opened things up and let him take some shots down the field, and he connected with three different players on completions of 40 yards or more.
Now while other QBs face various issues across the weekend landscape, Bradford has the ideal passing conditions not only of a dome stadium, but also an Indianapolis defense that rates #26 against the pass on the Football Outsiders adjusted ratings. Yet where does Bradford sit on the draft boards? How about #24 at DraftKings and #22 at FanDuel. That makes him a sneaky value opportunity for this setting.
Item: The goings on at Minnesota
Time to update the Holiday Bowl front, with the Minnesota/Washington State matchup in jeopardy as the Golden Gopher players in unison are boycotting all football activities, pending a review of 10 teamates that have been suspended. You can read the full details on that from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
I am not sure when a decision will be made but the Holiday Bowl folks may force it to be soon from their end – if Minnesota does not participate the game will go on, with Northern Illinois stepping in as the replacement. But note that even if the situation does get worked out and the Golden Gophers head to San Diego (they are not scheduled to leave until next Friday), the loss of practice time will be a significant handicapping factor, especially given a matchup against Mike Leach’s offensive playbook, something they did not see much at all of this season.
About Last Night, NFL…
I have not gone deeply enough into the post mortem phase to find out if the late fake punt by the Seahawks was a planned play from the sidelines or an audible by John Ryan; regardless it was an extremely awkward call for that particular game setting at this time of the season, especially if it may mean Ryan missing time. What is important is to segregate the play in the database, with that 26-yard scamper not telling us anything about the ability of Seattle to run the ball, or Los Angeles to defend it.
Remove that from the proceedings, plus the end-game kneel-downs from Russell Wilson, and it was an ugly night for the Seahawks running the ball – just 43 yards on 26 attempts, for a minuscule 1.7 per try. Thomas Rawls had one carry for 12 yards, his other 20 attempts netting just 22. They have been trying to get that patchwork OL to develop some push up front before the playoffs come around and it just hasn’t happened, especially when you sort the stats properly – that jet-sweep that went for a 75-yard TD vs. the Panthers two weeks ago is also of dubious statistical merit as a running play.
The Seahawks don’t have much develop time left. Saturday’s game vs. Arizona is a good challenge, but a trip to San Francisco to close out the regular season bodes as not much more than a scrimmage.
In the Sights, Sunday NFL…
Time to get into the marketplace with #327 Oakland (4:25 Eastern), since a good shopper can find -2.5 (Pinnacle now setting that plateau to help drive the rest of the market), and at worst -3 at even money or plus vigorish. There are some culminations at play here, first one of the weakest home field advantage settings across the NFL perhaps now reduced to a new low, and also the exhausting injury count taking the Chargers from a rubber band that had been stretched to an extreme to one that may now have snapped.
San Diego has not had any real home field boost at all vs. the Raiders in recent years, a 3-4 SU and 1-6 ATS tally over the last seven meetings, and you should take the time to note how misleading the 37-29 beat-down by Oakland was here LY, the Raiders leading 37-6 at the end of the third quarter before backing off. What have appeared to be close to 50-50 crowds in terms of noise in the past might even show an edge to Oakland this time, playoff contention making the Raider fans in the area even louder, while things have gotten very subdued for the home team.
As bad as the San Diego injury load has been this season, arguably the worst I can recall for any NFL team, it gets even worse now without Melvin Gordon, who was having a Pro Bowl season. It isn’t just losing his talent, but the fact that on top of Danny Woodhead, Branden Oliver and Dexter McCluster already lost to injury, they are left with undrafted rookie Kenneth Farrow as the lead guy. His skill set may not be good enough to play in the NFL, and in particular note that his lack of experience showed in missing a pass block last week that led to Philip Rivers fumbling. The Rivers story may define the state of affairs better than anything, a solid veteran almost alone against the world at this stage…
Rivers has been sacked 11 times and has thrown 10 interceptions over the last four games. That is what happens when there isn’t much support, and while some have blamed him for forcing plays, that is also what happens when you are truly competing – he knows better than anyone how limited the supporting cast is, and that if he doesn’t take a few gambles they are not good enough to win. This was put into a rather succinct form by guard Matt Slauson –
“We aren’t doing our job, and it forces him into bad spots. I don’t blame him for any of this. We have to do a better job as his supporting cast to help him out, and we’re not. It’s putting him in a position where he has to do things he wouldn’t normally do or he gets hit as he throws or the ball gets stripped out his hands. We can’t do it.”
This doesn’t get any better with Gordon missing, which allows the Oakland pass rush to tee off even more on Rivers. And when the Raiders have the ball they can spread the field and exploit a weakened San Diego CB corps that has already lost Jason Verrett and Brandon Flowers for the season, and will likely be without Craig Mager, who did not practice on Wednesday or Thursday. While Casey Heyward has been solid, the others in the rotation are Caraun Reid, Trevor Williams and Robert McClain, who all lack experience in this system, and we’ll see next summer if they have enough talent to be on NFL rosters.
Oakland comes in as the fresher and more focused team, and in this spread range the Raiders aren’t being asked to dominate. That makes this a more than fair value to get in play.
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