Atlanta Falcons (2-6) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-7)

The Falcons are coming off of a bye in this game. One of the more powerful trends says that road favorites dominant off of a bye, going 50-21 ATS since 2002, including 24-6 ATS in divisional matchups, like this one here. It makes sense as road favorites tend to be significantly superior teams and it’s logical that significantly superior teams would be able to play really well off of a bye. The Falcons haven’t played well at all this season, but they’re still significantly better than the lowly Buccaneers. The Falcons rank 21^st, moving the chains at a 74.02% rate, as opposed to 75.76% for their opponents, a differential of -1.74%, while the Buccaneers rank 30^th, moving the chains at a 69.74% rate, as opposed to 76.51% for their opponents, a differential of -6.78%. The Buccaneers will be even worse this week with Alterraun Verner out with injury.

The issue here is that the Falcons are only 2.5 point favorites. When you break down those aforementioned trends even more, you see that teams are 40-12 ATS off of a bye as road favorites of 3 or more and just 10-9 ATS as favorites of less than 3, including 21-4 ATS and 3-2 ATS respectively in divisional matchups. However, the logic still does hold that the Falcons would be better prepared for this game as a significantly better team on the road off a bye. The Falcons are even 3 point favorites in some places. I don’t think that trend can be completely discounted just because the Falcons aren’t 3 point favorites everywhere.

On top of that, they generally do well off a loss in the Mike Smith/Matt Ryan era, going 24-13 ATS in that situation since 2008. On top of that, teams on long losing streaks like the Falcons are on right now do well off a bye, as teams on 5+ game losing streaks are 22-9 ATS off a bye. The bye tends to give teams like that a chance to collect themselves and come back stronger after the bye. I like the Falcons’ bounce back chances here against a terrible Tampa Bay team. Tampa Bay has been especially bad at home over the past few years, going 13-30 ATS at home since 2009.

Atlanta Falcons 27 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20

Pick against the spread: Atlanta -2.5

Confidence: Medium

[switch_ad_hub]

[switch_ad_hub]

[switch_ad_hub]