While there's been exactly ONE great game in these NFL playoffs, I'm confident the Super Bowl will be entertaining for at least a little while! As always, the numbers I get are from sportsbook.ag.
Record for the playoffs: 6-4
Against the spread: 4-6
Atlanta Falcons vs. New England Patriots, 6:35 p.m. (Spread: Patriots favored by 3.)
The over/under for this game is 58.5, down slightly from 59 but still the highest total in Super Bowl history. And for good reason. These are two elite offenses with suspect defenses. Please, I beg you, don't let the Patriots' No. 1 ranking in points allowed fool you. POINTS ALLOWED? YOU'RE STILL LOOKING AT POINTS ALLOWED? TAKE A DRINK EVERY TIME JOE BUCK AND TROY AIKMAN REMIND YOU THE PATS LED THE LEAGUE IN POINTS ALLOWED. POINTS ALLOWED IS NOT AN ACCURATE STATISTIC FOR EVALUATING DEFENSES. IT'S NOT 1987. ALSO, PLEASE LEARN HOW TO READ. Okay. ALL CAPS rant over.
Real talk: Adjusted for strength of schedule, New England is in the bottom third of the league at stopping the pass according to footballoustiders.com, which also adjusts for other things that make for actual useful statistics. One of the Pats' biggest weaknesses is getting pressure on the quarterback, which will help Atlanta's Matt Ryan, who got hit a lot this year despite everyone thinking Atlanta has a top-10 offensive line. Atlanta's defense, which like New England's has improved drastically during the past few weeks, wasn't good over the course of the season at defending the red zone, hitting the quarterback, stopping the run or being stout on first- and second-down. No bueno.
In fact, the only two true defensive strengths for either of these teams both belong to New England. The Pats have a good run defense and they typically prevent teams from scoring in the red zone, although it should be noted that Atlanta can both run the ball well and score from inside the 20.
I'm talking a lot about defense, and that's because it's truly defense that will separate these teams. Seriously. My thinking is this: You KNOW the offenses will do things. They won't separate themselves from each other. And there's really only one defense I can trust, even if only a little. To illustrate my thinking in this game, let me tell you a story:
Picture it: January 1991, Tampa, Florida, just before Super Bowl XXV. Then-New York Giants defensive coordinator Bill Belichick summoned his proud and stout defense into a room and told them something shocking. I wasn't in the room, because I was 11 years old and not a professional football player, but evidently Belichick said something like, "All y'allz gonna done go on that field this there here and give up more than 100 yards on the ground in the Super Bowl against that hurry-up, quick-strike Buffalo Bills offense we're about to face." Players were puzzled, partially because Belichick doesn't speak like that, but mostly because they had never heard a coach tell them as a motivational tool that they were being set up to get run all over. But Belichick's plan was ingenious. He regularly dropped seven, eight and nine men back into coverage, daring the Bills to run the ball instead of do what they really wanted to do, which was lean on their high-powered passing game. And run the ball the Bills did, for a total of 166 yards and 6.6 yard PER RUSH. But all the while, the Giants' pedestrian offense played ball control, constantly eating up the clock with long drives and keeping Jim Kelly and the Bills on the sidelines. By the end of the game, the Bills - who had scored 51 points in their prior game were stuck on 19 and when Scott Norwood famously missed a 47-yard field goal, the Giants had won their second championship.
My point isn't to find an excuse to talk about the storied history of my beloved New York Giants, although I'll admit it was a nice little aside. The point is that Belichick had two weeks to prepare for Atlanta, and he's going to figure out something to take away. Atlanta is comfortable running the ball, so I don't know that New England is going to just allow the Falcons to run up and down the field. Plus, a strategy like that would neuter the explosive-in-its-own-way Pats' offense, which wouldn't make much sense.
So while I don't know exactly what Belichick will try to take away - maybe Julio Jones - it's going to be something. Do I think the Pats will do it perfectly? No. Atlanta is going to get its points, and I think the game will resemble a good 'ol Texas shootout until the fourth quarter.
But once that final quarter comes, which team do you expect to benefit from the big mistake, to execute on the big play, get the big break, or - perhaps most crucially - make the defensive stop that wrests control of the game away from its opponent? It's Belichick and the Patriots, of course. Who else? That's not to say the Falcons cannot win this game. They definitely can. The final margins of victory (or loss) in the Patriots' six Brady/Belichick era Super Bowls have always been four points or less. Still, why would you ever pick against them? Pick: Pats -3, Score: Pats 38, Falcons 27
