Super Bowl XLIV Betting - The All-Telling Defensive Stat
by Tim Furious
I’m not revealing anything staggeringly secret here. In fact, I base a lot of my numbers and handicap picks on one of the more relevant defensive stats in the game: points against per game. It may seem trite, but while many NFL football free picks experts focus on passing games and rushing defenses, what matters more to me is a team’s tendency to allow points on the board. Isn’t that ultimately how spreads and TOTALS are won or lost?
Like many football junkies, I scramble to fantasy news boards to try and get hints on who to sit and start and the reports usually sound the same. “Player X is playing against a pretty mediocre pass defense, and his quarterback is great so he’ll get 100+ yards and a touchdown. Definite start this week!” Sounds familiar, right?
The truth is that I ultimately don’t care how many passing yards a team can allow or how many rushing yards a team can rack up. Look at the Ravens, who averaged a whopping 139.4 yards per game on the ground. Cross reference it with Ray Rice’s longest run of each game and you’ll see that Rice averaged at least one 23.2 yard run per game meaning the Ravens didn’t really grind out rush defenses. Rice would bust out for big rushing plays. What does that tell me about a team’s likelihood to win a game? Not much.
Now look at the most relevant stat that I know, points against per game, and tell me I’m not focusing on the right stat. These are the Super Bowl winners of the past seven NFL betting seasons, and their defensive rank and points allowed during the regular season:
Year |
Team |
Defensive Rank |
Points Allowed |
2008 |
Steelers |
1st |
13.9 |
2007 |
Giants |
17th |
21.9 |
2006 |
Colts |
23rd |
22.0 |
2005 |
Steelers |
3rd |
16.1 |
2004 |
Patriots |
2 |
16.3 |
2003 |
Patriots |
1st |
14.9 |
2002 |
Bucs |
1st |
12.3 |
There are obviously two anomalies in this list, which include the 2006 Colts and the 2007 Giants. The issue for the colts in 2006 was very simple: Bob Sanders wasn’t fully healthy during the regular season. In the playoffs, Sanders was a force of nature and led the Colts to an average of 15.5 points allowed during the playoffs. That would’ve ranked them 3rd in the NFL overall.
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The Giants are simply proof that there is no perfect formula. It does strike me however, that if you adjust for Sanders in 2006, that the winner of the Super Bowl was a top-3 defensive team in the regular season 6 out of 7 times
Now look at how the points against averages from the 2009 season and the Super Bowl XLIV future betting odds play out.
Team |
Pts. Allowed |
Def. Rank |
Super Bowl Odds |
New York Jets |
14.8 |
1st |
+1800 |
Dallas Cowboys |
15.6 |
2nd |
+650 |
Baltimore Ravens |
16.3 |
3rd |
+1200 |
Indianapolis Colts |
19.2 |
8th |
+275 |
Minnesota Vikings |
19.5 |
10th |
+600 |
San Diego Chargers |
20.0 |
11th |
+350 |
Arizona Cardinals |
20.3 |
14th |
+1400 |
New Orleans Saints |
21.3 |
20th |
+350 |
What’s even nuttier to think is that Dallas, the New York Jets and Ravens all allowed 14 points in Wild Card Weekend against their opponents. It seems that the oddsmakers are refusing to give them love, but how many times have we seen great defenses carry bad offenses? It happened with the 2002 Bucs and the 2005 Steelers so why can’t it happen to the 2009 Jets?
It seems strange to me that the lowest ranking defense in the playoffs would get the second-best odds to win Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. Yet there are those Saints, with the league’s “best offense” and the 20th ranked defense. It’s been a catch phrase of football for countless generations that defense wins championships. For our oddsmakers, however, that doesn’t seem to be the mantra that matters most.
Whichever mantra you follow on the road to Super Bowl XLIV, remember that Super Bowl expert picks are always opinion. The NFL playoff odds are often determined by defense, defense and defense and though you can have doubts about the Dirty Sanchez, a Romosexual and Ordinary Joe Flacco, you can’t doubt how stable their defenses can be.
Defensive rankings in the regular season don’t tell the whole story, but they are a very telling stat. Before you start throwing the Jets and Ravens under the betting bandwagon, take a moment to consider all the angles first.
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