Washington Redskins (3-3) at New York Giants (4-2)
When I first saw this line, I instantly thought, trap line. The Giants were coming off a huge win in San Francisco and yet this line was suspiciously only at -7. My belief was furthered when the line started to actually fall even more and now it’s down to -5.5. The issue: this case was missing the critical element of a trap line, a heavy public lean on the side where the line action was moving away from. The public is actually pretty split here, even with the falling line.
It’s possible it’s just a trap line that’s not doing its job, which wouldn’t make it any less of a trap line, but that argument is hurt by that fact. Fortunately, that’s not the only reason why I like Washington this week. If it was, it’d probably be a small play. Instead, this is going to be a big play on the Redskins, for several reasons.
For one, the Giants are coming off a big upset win in San Francisco and are now dogs before being favorites as they head to Dallas next week. Favorites before and after being dogs are 79-112 ATS since 2008, though it’s worth noting they’re 25-34 ATS off a win as dogs, which isn’t as strong. However, going off of that, the Giants are divisional home favorites before being divisional road dogs. Teams are a ridiculous 14-46 ATS in that spot since 2002, meaning they cover just 23% of the time. Furthermore, it just makes sense that they would overlook Washington this week. They did that twice last year and are coming off a huge win with a big divisional revenge game on the schedule next.
Washington, meanwhile, is a little underrated. They do sit at 3-3, but all 3 of their losses have come by a touchdown or fewer and all 3 involved some sort of injury to a key player who is now healthy that could have easily changed the outcome of that game. Against St. Louis, they lost top cornerback Josh Wilson. Against Cincinnati, they lost top offensive lineman Trent Williams. Against Atlanta, they lost their starting quarterback Robert Griffin and saw his replacement throw 2 picks. All 3 of those teams are quality opponents as well.
Furthermore, we are getting some line value with Washington if we use the traditional yards per play differential metric, which gives us a “real” line of -2.5 in favor of the Giants. 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 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 1stand 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, the Giants are at +11.8%, while Washington is at +1.4%. The difference between the percents is 10.4, 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 NY Giants -10, so we’re not really getting line value with either side.
It’s definitely worth noting, however, that the Giants do rank 30th against the pass and are likely to be without 2 starting defensive backs, so while Washington doesn’t have a good defense, they should be able to keep this one close in a shootout. They haven’t been blown out yet so even if they lose, there’s a good chance they keep it within the spread. If we were getting a real chance to fade the public or some real line value here, it’d be a 5 unit pick, but I’m making this a 4 unit co-pick of the week. That 14-46 ATS trend is very, very hard to ignore.
Public lean: Washington (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 NY Giants covers)
Sharps lean: WAS 18 NYG 7
Final update: Sharps love the Redskins. Feeling good about this one even though there is now a very slight public lean on Washington.
Washington Redskins 31 New York Giants 27 Upset Pick +210
Pick against spread: Washington +5.5 (-110) 4 units
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