Dallas Cowboys (2-3) at Carolina Panthers (1-4)

Why does it seem like no matter who is coaching the Cowboys, they seem to continue to make the same dumb mistakes? Last week, they dominated throughout essentially, but were frequently penalized, something that’s been an issue for them all year and dating back to last year. They had trouble getting the plays off and had to burn several timeouts. Still, Dez Bryant had a chance for a game tying 2 point conversion, but he dropped it. The Cowboys then recovered the onside kick, but mismanaged the game clock, forcing Dan Bailey to kick from 51 instead of possibly from closer and he predictably missed, giving Baltimore the 2 point victory.

Coming off of that type of loss, it’ll be very interesting to see how they respond to playing the 1-4 Panthers. Most likely, it won’t be positively. Teams are 54-78 ATS as favorites after losing as dogs before being dogs, 17-30 ATS when the next game is divisional. Next week, they play the Giants. That game will be in Dallas, so Dallas will not be dogs, but the logic remains the same. Why would the Cowboys focus on the Panthers with the Giants coming up next? They’ll probably just view this as a chance to get an easy victory and get back on track before they play a real team.

For Carolina, this could be their Super Bowl. They’re coming off a bye, sitting at 1-4, and no one really thinks much of them anymore. Remember, however, this was a popular playoff pick before the season and one of their own players, Ryan Kalil, took out a newspaper ad to promise they would win the Super Bowl. They have an awful lot of pride and won’t just roll over like some other 1-4 teams might.

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, if you take the difference between Dallas’s yards per play differential and Carolina’s, divide by .15 and add 3 points to Carolina’s side for home field advantage, you get a line of Carolina -1, which suggests 3 points of line value with the Panthers.

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. The Panthers are a perfect example of the type of team yards per play differential overrates. They’re 10^th in that statistic, but just 29^th in this new metric.

Basically, how I created it is I took first downs and divided it by first downs + turnovers + punts + failed 4thdowns. 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 1^st 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, Dallas is at +2.7%, while Seattle is at -10.5%. The difference between the percents is 13.2, 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 Dallas -6, so we’re not really getting line value either way. I also wish Carolina wasn’t missing top cornerback Chris Gamble, but this is still a small play on the Panthers.

Public lean: Dallas (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 Carolina covers)

Sharps lean: DAL 16 CAR 8

Final update: No change.

Carolina Panthers 27 Dallas Cowboys 24 Upset Pick +110

Pick against spread: Carolina +2 (-110) 2 units

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