Friday mornings for me are typically very busy. I wake up around 4am, chug down a cup of coffee and drag my feet into the office to start my day. In only a few hours time my wife and i will be packing the car up and racing the kids to their swimming lessons. I was very hesitant to start doing this at first, locking in a weekly date like that can be hard when running a farm. We are often working around the weather which dictates when you can start and finish certain jobs. The other selfish reason i had for it was that the NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football’ starts around 10:20 AM of a Friday morning. But in all seriousness, I now appreciate the value of children learning to swim at such a young age. I’d recommend it to all parents, especially if you get extremely nervous when you’re children are near water like i do.
Anyway, back to why i start my Fridays so early. For about 5 years now i have been handicapping some of the major sports to see if i can pick the winners more consistently. What is handicapping? Its using all available information to assign value to players and teams to decide who will win the game. Its not only for winners, its also useful to determine the ability of a team to cover the spread. This includes factors such as travel, temperature, turf, coaching, rest and obviously assigning a value to each player. For example, The San Francisco 49ers were 2 point favourites (some were at -1.5) to win Superbowl 58 over the Kansas City Chiefs. My system had the 49ers players rated 3 points better than the Chiefs.Taking all other relative factors into account, i came to the conclusion that the Chiefs were 7 points better than the 49ers. The Chiefs won the game 25-22 so it was a successful day for me.
It is unbelievably hard to consistently pick the right side of games. I have slowly been improving my system season after season to the point that i believe i may one day be good at this. It also makes boring games interesting to watch!
This week the Patriots are visiting the Jets. New England has fought hard through two weeks and caused the upset of the year so far in a stunner over the Bengals. They also nearly beat the Seahawks at home this past week. Clearly, the players are playing hard for Jerod Mayo. Their opponent, the Jets, were run all over by the 49ers and battled hard for a road win over the Titans. The spread is set at Jets -6.5. Roughly 60% of people (from what i have seen on tipping sites) are taking the Patriots to cover the spread. Being a divisional rival, it is more likely than not for it to be a close game. I am leaning the other way and will explain why.
The Patriots have two starting offensive lineman out for this game, with two of their better lineman also questionable. History would suggest that the Patriots are going to have serious offensive problems in this week. Even without Jermaine Johnson, Robert Saleh is a good enough coach to take advantage of this weakness which means that Jacoby Brissett is in for a long night. You only had to see how much the Rams struggled last week against the Cardinals to see how an Oline with that many holes can ruin a game. The Browns had the same problem in Week 1 with Dallas.
Taking my ratings and factors into account ill take the Jets to cover the spread in this one.
Cheers,
Pat
You heard it on the Grapevine