Sacks, Penalties, Turnovers and Heartburn!
Why is San Francisco the worst team against the spread (25%)?
The Niners have allowed 34 sacks and they are -10 in their turnover differential. No matter what they do, those two fundamental anchors will always drag them down. In fact, the Niners are actually one of the better teams in the NFC on third down conversions (6th best), and they are 6 of 9 on 4th down conversions! On top of this, San Fran is one of the least penalized teams in the league!
Did you know that the Niners are actually in the top 5, in the entire NFL, in yards per rush? Turnovers create a deficit on the scoreboard, and sacks lead to passing downs, so San Fran is always forced to move away from their strength (Running the ball), and have to pass the ball. All of this is caused by sacks and turnovers. All other faults become pronounced from these two seeds of discord!
We can treat the Giants as our microcosm and expand our seach to find a few hidden gems today. We need to find NEGATIVE YARDAGE TEAM that is catching a low line, and we need to exploit this fundamental offensive disease.
Is this one of those teams?
Houston is a Dangerous team to wager on: They've allowed 20 sacks so far, and that's a moderately bad number, but the negativity increases when you see their -8 turnover differential. If we use the Niner paradigm from the top of the page, then we SHOULD be very wary of backing Houston against a team like Baltimore.
What's worse is that.........
Houston is UNLIKE the Niners in one key area. I stated that the Niners are actually disciplined with their penalties, but when you look at Houston the numbers become ugly. The Texans are the third worst team in the entire NFL in terms of penalties. If I loosely calculate the average penalty yardage for the Texans and tack on about 30 yards in negative sacks, then the Texans GIVE their opponents an average of about 152 yards per game.
You have to make those yards up in other areas, but how can you do that if you're coughing the ball up more than anyone in the AFC (aside from Denver).
This is another reason why Baltimore is a STRONG Rush Dominance Play.......
Good Luck today!