Week 11 was a bloodbath. Up was down. Down was up. Left was right. Right was left. Omininous as ever, we were trending well at the end of the first half until the ever-punishing witching hour cursed all bets into losing territory.
Can we bounce back in Week 12? You know damn well we’re shooting our shot.
Any opportunity to bet against a double back-up QB feels like a good one, and that’s exactly what we have here: Joe Burrow exited with vicious knee injury last week, and Ryan Finley’s performance in the 2nd half apparently wasn’t strong enough to warrant a start. Insert Brandon Allen.
Brandon Allen provides only one advantage over Ryan Finley: he is familiar with Zac Taylor’s offense going back to his days with the Rams. Nonetheless, both have horrid stats; Finley has completed 45.4 percent of his passes for a 55.5 passer rating, while Allen has completed 46.4 percent of his passes for a still abhorrent 68.3 passer rating. Snooze.
Enter the Giants. Out of no-where, the Giants have surged from +1000 (or deeper) odds to being in-the-hunt to win the division (currently trading around +300), and a win this week would only help strengthen their cause.
The best news of this write up: even before the Burrow injury, the Giants were better both offensively and defensively than the Bengals team.
Downgrade those offensive stats & the NYG look even that much more appealing.
Narrative #1: The Panthers are coming off a smackdown of the Lions and are getting their starting QB back and the Vikings just lost to the 3-8 Cowboys - they’ll easily cover (maybe win) against the Vikings.
Narrative #2: The Vikings will bounce back after a terrible loss to the 3-8 Vikings?
Meh - neither are particularly compelling if you ask me, and bettors across the world seem to agree, as 47% of bets are on the Panthers, with 53% on the Vikings.
So where do we stand?
This week, we stand with the purple and the gold.
Why? Looking at point differential, we don’t find much of an edge here: The Vikings are -14 and the Panthers are -19. Wash.
Looking at ATS trends, we don’t find much of an edge either: the Vikings are 6-4 in their last 10 games, including 3-2 last 5, while the Panthers are exactly the same, 6-4 L10, 3-2 L5. There is a slight edge to the Panthers looking at home/away splits, as the Panthers are 4-1 on the road ATS compared to the Vikings 2-3.
Let’s dive into yards/play and points/play:
Here we see a decisive advantage to MIN offensively with a slight advantage to CAR defensively, but going a touch deeper, we see MIN with an offensive and defensive advantage on two key percentages: 3rd down conversion and red zone scoring.
On offense, the Vikings have a 78.12 RZ scoring % compared to a 59.46 RZ scoring % for Carolina, which is a big delta.
Defensively, the Vikings have a slight edge on opp. RZ scoring %: 55.26 vs. 58.54.
More glaring to me was looking at defensive 3D conversion %: Carolina allows a conversion 51.82% of the time compared to the Vikings 36.21%.
In short: this should be a good game. I’d imagine a high scoring affair with two above average offenses and two middle-of-the-road defenses.
X-factor, truly for me? Dalvin Cook. Minnesota ranks 4th in run efficiency (per Football Outsiders), and Carolina defense ranks 22nd in run-defense efficiency. Jackpot.
I’ll ride the Cook train straight to profits this week with the Vikings -3.
As always, I’ll probably add a few more bets here and there, and sprinkle in some College Basketball. Follow on Twitter to never miss a pick.
All time record: 2329-2121-92, +106.81 units
