Atlanta Falcons (6-0) at Philadelphia Eagles (3-3)
The Falcons are 6-0 and they’re underdogs. Easy money right? That seems to be what the public thinks as most of the action is on the undefeated dog. However, that’s not necessarily always the case with undefeated dogs. Believe it or not, there’s no trend associated with undefeated teams as dogs this late in the season. Undefeated dogs after week 7 are 3-2 ATS, after week 6 are 3-3 ATS, and after week 5 are 7-7 ATS. The odds makers don’t make it that easy on you.
The reason that Atlanta is a dog this week is because in all his years as Head Coach of the Eagles, Andy Reid has never lost off a regular season bye. He’s a perfect 14-0 straight up, including 11-3 ATS. If we expand that to the playoffs, he’s 14-4 ATS and 17-1 SU with that one loss coming in the Super Bowl to the Patriots. Last year, when they finished 8-8, they blew out the Cowboys 34-7 after their bye, despite having a 2-4 record coming in. That was their biggest victory of the season. I don’t know what the hell Andy Reid does during a bye, but whatever it is, it works. Whether you like the Eagles or not, you have to agree if they ever can get their act together and play like their talent level, they’d be a dangerous team. Well, this week, that should be the case.
Besides, while the Falcons are 6-0, they aren’t exactly playing well of late. They’ve won their last 3 games by a combined 12 points against teams that are a combined 6-13 on the year and they could have lost each of them had one or two things gone a different way. Against Carolina, the Panthers led into the late 4th quarter, but botched their end game badly. Against Washington, the Redskins were even with the Falcons until Robert Griffin got hurt. He was replaced by 4th round rookie Kirk Cousins, who promptly throw 2 interceptions. The Redskins also missed a very makeable field goal in that game. Against Oakland, Carson Palmer threw an unnecessary late pick six in a 3 point Falcons win.
Besides, it’s not like they’ve played a tough schedule or anything. They have the league’s worst strength of schedule. The two toughest teams they’ve faced are Denver and San Diego and the Denver game was in Atlanta. Philadelphia is probably the toughest road team they’ve faced thus far this year, even not off a bye. Besides, it’s supposed to be wet and rainy in Philadelphia this weekend and the Falcons have never proven to be a good team outside in the elements in the Matt Ryan era. I don’t expect that to change now that they’re become a more pass reliant team.
Easy schedule aside, Atlanta is still not playing as well as their record. They rank just 6th in the league in rate of sustaining drives differential at 7.5% and 21st in the league in yards per play differential with a -0.3. The reason for this, aside from some close games, has been their reliance on turnovers. They rank 3rd in the league with a +10 turnover differential. However, historically, turnover differentials average out to be the same on a weekly basis regardless of what your previous turnover differential was. It’s not something you can rely on week in and week out to win you games. They almost lost at home to Oakland because they lost the turnover battle. For more on that, click here.
Philadelphia is in the opposite situation. Because of their -9 turnover differential, tied for 2nd worst in the league, they actually rank better in yards per play differential and rate of sustaining drives than their record would suggest, ranking 13th in yards per play differential and 11th in rate of sustaining drives differential, despite a .500 record.
We can use these two stats to calculate a real line. The real line with the points per play differential method is Philadelphia -6.5, while the rate of sustaining drives method suggests this should be a pick em. I like to use both because one overestimates teams that get a lot of big plays (or allow a lot of big plays) and the other underestimates those teams, but using those methods, at the very least, this line doesn’t seem so ridiculous, not even taking Andy Reid’s record off a bye into account. At the most, we may actually have some line value with the Eagles so long as the line remains below 3.
Each team has a prominent trend working for them. Teams off a close home loss (1-3 points) as favorites are 84-64 ATS the following week since 2002. That works for Philadelphia and it’s even stronger off a bye, 17-5 ATS since 1989. The Falcons, meanwhile, are dogs before being favorites, a situation teams are 84-46 ATS in since 2011. Teams tend to be extra focused in that situation, but the Eagles will also be extra focused off a bye.
Besides, I think it would be reckless to pick a publicly backed underdog this week. Dogs are 63-39 ATS on the season. You might think, that’s a reason to take the dog, but eventually that’s going to even out. Dating back over the last decade, dogs or favorites have not finished more than 10 games over .500 over the course of an entire year. It’s smart to ride the correction going forward and take more favorites than dogs, particularly favorites that are not publicly backed because those teams covering would have a double benefit for odds makers. It would allow the dogs/favorites disparity to even out and also they’d make money. I think you’d have to be crazy this week to take a public dog (with one possible exception, which I’ll get into later this week).
I tried to pick as many favorites as I could last week. I just didn’t like a lot of them. This week, I do like a lot more, so I’ll pick more favorites this week. Last week, favorites were 7-6 ATS, which looks like the start of a correction. It might not look like it totally, but remember, favorites were 12-1 SU. 5 of those covers were backdoor, including two ridiculous ones: Jim Harbaugh declining a safety on Thursday Night and the Lions driving for a backdoor cover with 30 seconds left on Monday Night against a 6.5 point spread when they hadn’t scored all night (both went against me on two instances I actually did pick favorites).
You can follow the odds makers’ thought process here. They want favorites to cover, but know the public generally bets favorites and they still want to make money. However, they know if they make a 6-0 team like the Falcons a dog, people are going to go for that because “they’re undefeated and all they have to do is win,” but the odds makers also know how good Reid is off a bye so they’re confident they can get their money while a favorite still simultaneously wins. It’s a trap line. I love the Eagles this week. As long as this line is lower than 3, it’s a pick of the week. It might be a close game, but I’m very confident they will win. For the record, I’m 10-3-1 ATS on picks of the week and co-picks of the week this year.
Public lean: Atlanta (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 Philadelphia covers)
Sharps lean: PHI 29 ATL 5
Final update: In total agreement here. Always a good sign. In general, my big plays have matched up with the sharps.
Philadelphia Eagles 31 Atlanta Falcons 24
Pick against spread: Philadelphia -2 (-110) 5 units
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