Analysis:
1* Play on: OVER THE TOTAL
ST LOUIS RAMS @ TENNESSEE TITANS
8:00pm ET - 5:00pm PT / #429
Tonight’s game will carry our minimum rating of just 1 star. But there’s just enough ‘OU ammo’ to warrant a small play. A 1* play won’t kill us either way. And since it’s on NATIONAL TV, we may as well have a little action on it, right? Since we are currently seeing 65% or more of the square action on the UNDER, we have no problem playing 'contrarian' tonight.
SUNDAY’s have been a GREAT day of the week for ‘OVERS’ in NFL pre-season action. We were on the OVER last Sunday in the Week One game between the Eagles and Colts. That one brought home the bacon, so we’ll put another one in the pan to fry up this evening.
NFL pre-season games on a SUNDAY have gone 11-1 O/U since 2009 and a PERFCT 8-0 O/U since 2010 when the Over / Under line is 40 or less points. As tonight’s game is the ONLY one of today’s games in which the line is CLEARLY less than 40, we’ll take a bite and ride that high-scoring pattern of play. Green Bay vs Pittsburgh is currently 41 points. And the Niners / Cowboys game is hovering in the range of 39.5 to 40.5 points. So by default, this TITANS / RAMS game is our choice.
As I wrote about in issue #1 of the Playbook football newsletter, St Louis is one of the BEST ‘Over’ teams in all of pre-season play when they take to the road. The RAMS have gone 12-2 O/U as preseason road underdogs since the 2008 season. Average points scored in those games: 42.4 ppg.
With Tennessee currently favored by 2 points in this game, and the OU line around 38-38.5 points… that means the predicted final score by the oddsmakers is TITANS 20.5 / RAMS 18. That’s by us. Tennessee should pretty easily eclipse the 21-point mark in this game. They scored 24 last week in Game One. They’ve scored 20 or more points in SIX of their last seven pre-season games. If you eliminate their GAME FOURS (in which all teams just go through the motions), the Titans have scored 24, 24, 24, 20, 27, 19, 21, 32, and 30 points in their last nine pre-season games. That’s an average of 24.6 points per game.
Yes, we aware that the Rams only scored THREE points in their first pre-season game last week. That ok. Because: NFL pre-season teams who scored 3 or less points on the ROAD in their last game (RAMS) have gone 13-3 O/U since 1997.
Tennessee come in off a high-scoring Week One loss to the Atlanta Falcons last Friday. The OU line in that game was 37 points. Final score was 31 to 24... 11-2 O/U since 2010: All NFL preseason HOME teams off a SU road loss in which they scored 24 or more points (TITANS) when the OU line is < 43 points.
Pick Made: Aug 23 2015 8:17AM PST