New Orleans Saints (8-8) at Atlanta Falcons (7-9)

The Falcons don’t have a terrible record at 7-9, but all of their wins have come by one score or fewer against teams with a record of .500 or worse, while their losses have come by an average of 18.78 points per game, giving them a -136 point differential that ranks 6th worst in the NFL. In terms of schedule adjusted efficiency, the Falcons rank 21st, 25th, and 25th on offense, defense, and special teams respectively and 28th in schedule adjusted mixed efficiency, even worse than their point differential suggests.

The Saints only have one more win than the Falcons, but their 15th ranked schedule adjusted mixed efficiency and their +19 point differential suggests they have been the much better team this season and that is despite the fact that they have been as affected by absences as much as arguably any team in the league. They still remain without top wide receiver Michael Thomas, who has missed the whole season, starting quarterback Jameis Winston, who went down for the season week 8, starting left guard Andrus Peat, who went down for the season week 7, and talented left tackle Terron Armstead, who has played in just eight games this season, but they are also as healthy as they have been in a while. 

Their defense will have the dominant defensive line trio of David Onyemata, Marcus Davenport, and Cameron Jordan together for just the seventh time this season and the previous two games were games missed by stud linebacker Demario Davis and stud safety Marcus Williams respectively, who have both since returned. Meanwhile, their offense got wide receiver Deonte Harris, who leads the team in receiving yards per game, back from a 3-game absence last week, a few weeks after getting feature back Alvin Kamara back from a 4-game absence, while talented offensive linemen Ryan Ramczyk and Erik McCoy are expected to return after missing 7 games and 5 games respectively this season.

As healthy as they have been in weeks, I have the Saints 3 points above average in my roster rankings, while the frequently blown out Falcons are 4.5 points below average, giving us a calculated line of New Orleans -6. That suggests we are getting significant line value with the Saints as 3.5-point favorites and that they may be bettable at that number, though I want to make sure Ramczyk is actually returning before locking this one in. If he does not play, I would need this line to drop to three.

New Orleans Saints 23 Atlanta Falcons 17

Pick against the spread: New Orleans -3.5

Confidence: Low