Seattle Seahawks (4-2) at San Francisco 49ers (4-2)
On Thursday Night, the rule of thumb is to always take a home favorite. It makes sense. Favorites tend to be proven, veteran teams, or at least in comparison to the road team. Meanwhile, the road team has to travel on a short week, which is an obvious disadvantage, especially for a less proven, less veteran team. Road favorites cover at about a 50% clip because the advantage of being a proven, veteran team on a short week normally cancels out the disadvantage of being a road team on a short week.
This week we have a home favorite and the 49ers are the more, proven veteran team here, even just a year and a half into the Jim Harbaugh era. Home favorites are 45-24 ATS on Thursday Night since 1989, including 18-9 ATS as favorites of a touchdown or more. The issue is that both of these trends seem to cancel out when it’s a divisional game. We saw it when Cleveland went to Baltimore (but not when Chicago went to Green Bay). Home divisional favorites are just 17-15 ATS on Thursday Night in the division, including just 8-8 ATS as a favorite of 7 or more. However, because this is an NFC West game, I don’t think that will be as big of a factor.
A rule of thumb in NFC West games is to always pick the home team. NFC West home teams are 38-23 ATS in a divisional game since 2007. Even the 49ers, as good as they were last year, were just 1-2 ATS on the road. This makes sense. NFC West teams tend to be better home teams than road teams in general. In that same time period, no division is better in general at home than the NFC West, which is 103-73 ATS at home.
Even though NFC West games also tend to be lower scoring, home favorites of a touchdown or more also have no problem covering within the division, going 12-3 ATS since 2007. NFC West divisional games also tend to go under the total as the under is 38-23 in divisional games in that same time period. Thursday Night games tend to go under more often than not anyway as the under is 69-51 on Thursday Nights since 1989. When one team is favored by a touchdown or more, it goes under even more frequently, 28-13, so I’m once again putting 1 unit on the under on Thursday night.
It helps San Francisco’s case to cover that their opponent is the Seahawks. They’re the perfect example of this division, great at home, poor on the road. Since 2007, they are 15-29 ATS on the road, 30-14 ATS at home. As road dogs of more than a touchdown, they’re 4-12 ATS. I’ve correctly predicted 5 of their 6 games this year, all for big plays, using pretty much solely that fact, including hits on 3 money line plays as home dogs to Dallas, Green Bay, and New England.
Speaking of that win over New England last week, because it was so “surprising,” it makes them a little overrated right now. Really, that win was not surprising at all, if you know anything about what type of team they are at home, especially as dogs of 3 or more. In those situations, they’re 15-4 ATS since 2007. They’re not a better team than New England. Not only is that win causing them to be slightly overrated right now, it also puts them in a bad spot this week. Road dogs of 7+ are 22-42 ATS off of a home win as dogs. Furthermore, teams are 7-14 ATS on Thursday Night off a win as home dogs, 3-9 ATS off a win as home dogs of 3+.
San Francisco, meanwhile, is in a good spot coming off an upset loss to the New York Giants, although not as good of a spot as the Seahawks’ spot is bad. There’s no real trend that says teams bounce back off of losses, but good, well coached teams always seem to do so. Bill Belichick is 35-19 ATS in that spot since 2000. Mike McCarthy is 21-13 ATS in that spot since 2006. Mike Tomlin is 16-10 ATS in that spot since 2007. Sean Payton is 20-12 ATS in that spot since 2006. Of the current NFL Head Coaches who have won a Super Bowl with their current team, only Tom Coughlin (26-23 ATS) doesn’t have a very impressive ATS record off a loss.
Jim Harbaugh doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring yet, but everything he’s done so far suggests he’ll be in that group someday. He’s already got a fairly impressive resume off a loss, going 5-0 ATS and 5-0 SU. Those 5 straight up wins came by an average of 19.2 points per game. Looking forward to the future, the 49ers are also in a nice spot as home divisional favorites before being road divisional favorites (they go to Arizona next week). Teams are 109-81 ATS in that spot since 1989.
Finally, we’re getting line value with the 49ers. People who read this frequently know I love to go on and on about yards per play differential. Well, I have another metric that I think works well with yards per play differential, which I’ll go to in a second. First, the 49ers still rank 1st in the league in yards per play differential. If you take the difference between Seattle’s yards per play differential (not too shabby at 12th) and San Francisco’s, divide by .15 and add 3 points to San Francisco’s side for home field advantage, you get a line of 11.5, which suggests 4.5 points of line value with the 49ers.
One issue I noticed with using solely this metric, which a lot of bettors do, is it puts too much value on teams that get a lot of big plays, but can’t sustain drives (or conversely, teams that don’t allow a lot of big plays, but can’t get off the field defensively). Think about it. You pass for 30 yards and then gain no yards on your next 3 plays and have to punt. That’s 7.5 yards per play, which is incredibly impressive, but you didn’t sustain a drive. So I’ve essentially created a new statistic called, rate of sustaining drives, not to replace the traditional metric, but to see if any teams are much better in one than the other.
Basically, how I created it is I took first downs and divided it by first downs + turnovers + punts + failed 4th downs. Basically, what it essentially measures is, on any given 1st and 10, how often does a team get another 1st down or sustain the drive. Turnovers (whether traditional or on downs) and punts are obviously failures to achieve 1st and 10. This measures first downs divided by chances at a first down (first downs + failures to achieve 1st and 10).
You can also do this for the defense, how often they can get the opposing team off the field on any given 1st and 10. The statistic is in the form of a percentage and you can subtract the offensive one from the defensive one to get the differential. For example, San Francisco is at +9.9%, while Seattle is at -0.1%. The difference between the percents is 10, divide by 1.5 this time (which conveniently works very well with the numbers) and add 3 points either way for home field and you get a line of San Francisco -10. It’s not exactly the same as the yards per play differential true line result, but it’s similar enough that it confirms we are getting line value with the 49ers.
I rarely take favorites for big plays, but that’s what I’m going to do here, even though there is a slight public lean on San Francisco. Everything I can find, every trend, every metric for determining true line suggests that the 49ers should cover here and win with ease. It’s not a 5 unit pick of the week, but it’s 4 units as long as I can get it at -7. If I decide not to do a 5 unit pick of the week (I have a good one in mind), this will be a co-pick of the week. For the record, I am 8-2 on picks I call pick of the week or co-pick of the week. I’m also putting one unit on the under.
Public lean: San Francisco (new thing I’m adding, siding with the odds makers on bets is not a bad thing to do since they make so much money, so I’m listing this here to allow readers to “fade” the public, if they so choose, in this example, the odds makers win if Seattle covers)
San Francisco 49ers 23 Seattle Seahawks 10
Pick against spread: San Francisco -7 (-110) 4 units
Over/under: Under 37 (-110) 1 unit
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