R U Ready 4 Some Football (NFL)

[newmedman]

I have Philly straight up, probably means they are going to lose but I put all the dough from betting against my bears all season into it. I want my little booger to be happy, safe and well fed. It's 3 large and if I win, he and his parents are going to get a huge spike.

I know I shouldn't be gambling anymore but it's fun while I'm ahead. I haven't told them yet but it will be a huge super bowl when Philly wins.

Like 5k in their pocket.. I'm really excited, but I'm fighting my mind thinking I should just give them the 3k and call it.

Life decisions are very hard.

[BullNBear52]

The Super Bowl Betting Line Flipped Overnight. What Happened?
After Kansas City and its injured stars were installed as a slim favorite, the early money poured in on Philadelphia.
Victor Mather
By Victor Mather
Jan. 30, 2023

As soon as the N.F.L.’s conference championship games ended on Sunday night, bookmakers around the world announced their Super Bowl lines. Most installed the Kansas City Chiefs as the favorite over the Philadelphia Eagles, by about a point.

Gamblers disagreed. They thought the sports books had it wrong, and they pounced. Almost immediately, money began pouring in on Philadelphia, and pretty soon the line was on the move. Within an hour, the Eagles were the Super Bowl favorites. By Monday they were favored by 2 to 2.5 points.

What happened? And why did so many early bettors like Philadelphia?

The initial line should not have been a huge surprise. Most computer rankings have Kansas City a point or two better than Philadelphia. Oddsmakers who offered so-called look-ahead lines last week had suggested Kansas City — if it advanced — would be the Super Bowl favorite, by as much as 2.5 points.

But “the market flat-out disagreed,” said Brandon DuBreuil, the head of content at Covers, a sports betting information site.

The gamblers who bet early tend to be well respected, and are known as “sharp money.” When they all seem to like one team, bookmakers scramble to change the line.

And why did these sharp bettors all like Philadelphia? One key reason was injuries. Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been dealing with an ankle sprain, and one of his favorite targets, tight end Travis Kelce, had been listed as questionable for the conference championship with back spasms. And even as the Chiefs won the game, 23-20, over the Cincinnati Bengals, they lost several wide receivers.

All those injuries will mean some uncertainty about the Kansas City offense before the Super Bowl, which will be played Feb. 12 in Glendale, Ariz. Another, perhaps more important, factor is how good Philadelphia looked.

While it is necessary to qualify the Eagles’ 31-7 win because the San Francisco 49ers were effectively left without a quarterback for most of the game, and while 2.5 points doesn’t sound like a huge spread in a title game, the revised line translates into a perceived advantage for the Eagles.

To bet on the money line — a straightforward wager on who will win the game — Philadelphia backers must bet $130 to win $100, while Kansas City supporters bet $100 to win $110. This translates into Philadelphia being given a 54 percent chance of winning the game against Kansas City’s 46 percent chance.

No opinion on the point spread? There are a lot of other ways to bet.

Depending on where you look, the over-under on the game is around 49.5, so bookmakers are looking for more scoring than in the A.F.C. (43 points) or N.F.C. (38 points) championship games, or indeed more than in any of the divisional round games (which produced a combined 31, 37, 45 and 47 points).

If you are impatient, you can bet over-under for the first half (24) or even the first quarter (10).

What’s next for the betting line? While there might be a little more movement, the major action is probably over. “I doubt the line will flip again, but it could creep down,” DuBreuil said, perhaps settling at something closer to Philadelphia by 1 or 1.5 points. The biggest moves of any line, he said, happen early.

Unless there is disastrous news, that is. If, say, it were announced that Mahomes would miss the game, a 7-point swing would not be a surprise, DuBreuil said. In that case, the Eagles might enter the game as much as a 10-point favorite.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/sports/football/super-bowl-odds-line.html

[BullNBear52]

Tom Brady Says He’s Retiring, for Good This Time
Brady, whose career spanned 23 seasons and seven Super Bowl wins, announced his retirement in a social media post.
4m ago
By EMMANUEL MORGAN
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/sports/football/tom-brady-retires.html

I'm surprised SF didn't try and sign him.

[BullNBear52]

That almost became the Aon Tower and it would have been lit up in red.

[newmedman]

That would be like lighting up the Willis green and yellow.... I bet there are no happy campers.

[BullNBear52]

The Empire State Building Lit Up in Eagles Green. Giants Fans Weren’t Thrilled.
One week after Philadelphia knocked New York out of the playoffs, the building paid tribute to the Giants’ rivals as they advanced to the Super Bowl. Many were in no mood to see it

By Daniel Victor
Jan. 30, 2023
Updated 9:28 a.m. ET

In a nauseating hometown sight for Giants fans, the lights atop the Empire State Building turned green and white on Sunday night — and it was definitely not in honor of the Jets.

Instead, it was for the Giants’ hated rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, who won the N.F.C. championship on Sunday and advanced to the Super Bowl, just a week after knocking the Giants out of the playoffs in a humiliating blowout.

The light display really did not go over well.

The New York City Sanitation Department called it “treacherous, traitorous, and unforgivable.” Keith Powers, a City Council member who represents an area of Manhattan that includes the Empire State Building, deemed it “absolutely ridiculous.” The New York Post considered the news front-page-worthy, calling it an “off-color” mistake. The Daily News asked, “Where’s yer loyalty?!?”

“What on Earth… Let me close these blinds,” Julian Love, a player for the Giants, said on Twitter.

And there were thousands more responses from Giants fans, as well as from other N.F.L. rubberneckers, who were aghast at the betrayal.

To many, seeing Philadelphia’s triumph smashed into the faces of New Yorkers, on their own turf, violated a cardinal rule of sports fandom: If you can’t be happy about your own team, you can at least root for the misfortune of your rivals. An Eagles win is a Giants loss, even if they’re not playing.

Giants fans were in no mood to see reminders that Philadelphia sports fans would experience a rare moment of joy. Now, every Giants fan who works with that jabroni from Fishtown is going to have to listen to him go on and on for the next two weeks, and he’ll probably wear a Dawkins jersey to work, that monster. The less said about it, the better.

Though this wasn’t the Empire State Building’s most popular moment, it frequently changes the colors of its tower lights to reflect national and world events, and to recognize sporting triumphs. Just this month, the lights turned red, black and green for Martin Luther King’s Birthday; glowed red for Lunar New Year; and turned yellow to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

The lights even turned blue to honor the Giants on Jan. 13, when they clinched a spot in the N.F.L. playoffs after a season that exceeded expectations. In past years the building has honored Super Bowl champions, including in 2018 when a similar backlash formed after the Eagles won.

After about four hours of comments piling up on social media on Sunday, the building tweeted shortly after 10 p.m. that it was switching to red in honor of the Kansas City Chiefs, who had just won the A.F.C. championship. At long last, the nightmare was over.

“That hurt us more than it hurt you,” the building’s Twitter account said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/nyregion/empire-state-eagles-giants.html

[BullNBear52]

AFC Championship: Referee Ron Torbert explains why Chiefs were given a do-over in fourth quarter vs. Bengals
The officials left everyone scratching their heads during the AFC title game
Tyler Sullivan
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/afc-championship-referee-ron-torbert-explains-why-chiefs-were-given-a-do-over-in-fourth-quarter-vs-bengals/

The refs gave that game to the Chiefs. and the unnecessary roughness call was a joke.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/afc-championship-making-sense-of-chiefs-bengals-wild-fourth-quarter-that-ended-with-k-c-making-super-bowl/

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1619893298017046529?

[BullNBear52]

That was sad to watch for SF and Purdy. What a freak injury and then to have to come back in after the other QB got hurt and he couldn't throw the ball.

They should have been able to bring in another QB from the taxi squad to at least make it a game. The 3rd QB previously would not count to a game day roster then they changed the rule.

Purdy and Johnson were the only two quarterbacks on the 49ers' active roster Sunday, and they definitely could have used a third. An old rule would have helped them out, and given San Francisco a better chance at a Super Bowl bid. We of course are talking about the third-quarterback rule.

Per NFL.com, the third-quarterback rule was introduced in 1991, and gave teams an emergency signal-caller available who was not on the 45-man game-day roster. In 2011, owners and players agreed to expand game-day rosters from 45 to 46 players, and the third quarterback would not count toward the game-day roster. Basically if an NFL team wants to carry a third quarterback on Sundays, it would count toward game-day roster spots.

There's a bit more to the rule, as it stated that if a third quarterback was inserted before the fourth quarter of a game, the first two quarterbacks could not be used again. That clause likely would not have affected the 49ers on Sunday if the rule were still in effect, but it's likely they would have used a third quarterback if they had one dressed. This former rule may be something the league revisits.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfc-championship-game-49ers-qb-problems-vs-eagles-has-us-revisiting-the-nfls-third-quarterback-rule/#:~:text=Purdy%20and%20Johnson%20were%20the,about%20the%20third%2Dquarterback%20rule.

[blackcat]

At the rate they're going they'll be playing extra innings..........

[newmedman]

lol, I picked them so they were probably cursed from the start. You should see my Bears and the QB constantly running for his life.

It's not pretty but sometimes it works. Looks like KC is getting the heck beat out of them too but we need to watch.

[BullNBear52]

Well that sucked. But Purdy had a great season.

[BullNBear52]

LOL. That was a freak injury taking a stinger to the elbow. I doubt a curse was involved. Just poor luck. It's the SF defense costing them the game.

[blackcat]

Well- someone, somewhere has clearly placed an active,destructive curse on SF QBs. No one's going to want that job.

[BullNBear52]

Go SF and Burrows.

[BullNBear52]

N.F.L. Playoff Predictions: Our Conference Championship Picks
In two evenly matched games, Jalen Hurts and the Eagles will try to outwit the 49ers’ dizzying defense before Patrick Mahomes attempts to reverse his losing streak against the Bengals.

The matchups in this season’s conference championships are not just close, they are historically so, at least from a market perspective. The teams in both games are so evenly matched that the point spreads for the A.F.C. and N.F.C. championship games are each less than a field goal.

The Super Bowl-winning odds of the Eagles (+230), Bengals (+240), Chiefs (+280) and 49ers (+320) leave barely a glint of daylight between them, the first time in the recorded history of the N.F.L. betting markets that all four teams in the conference championships were this close. By comparison, the odds for last year’s final four were spread out between +125 and +900 going into championship weekend.

The relative parity in the A.F.C. championship forecasts owes almost entirely to Patrick Mahomes’s high ankle sprain, sustained in last week’s divisional-round win over the Jaguars. Fears that Mahomes may not be able to play on Sunday, or will be so hobbled by the sprain that he can’t play effectively, have sent Kansas City’s stock plummeting: The team entered the playoffs as Super Bowl favorites and dropped to the third choice after the injury.

But probability and possibility aren’t the same thing. Last year, Kansas City was the +125 favorite to win it all while the Bengals were the +900 longshots, and the Bengals sent a healthy Mahomes packing. Cincinnati has won the last three meetings and has only lost to a Mahomes-led Kansas City team once.

Could Mahomes play hurt and still turn the tables on the Bengals? It’s not impossible. Could this weekend’s conference championships be boring? Improbable.

N.F.C. Championship Game
San Francisco 49ers at Philadelphia Eagles, Sunday, 3 p.m., Fox

Line: Eagles -2.5 | Total: 46

Jalen Hurts seemed to address questions about the health of his sprained throwing shoulder early in last week’s divisional-round win, when he completed a 40-yard pass on his second play against the Giants. But the Eagles got out to a quick four-score lead, and Hurts didn’t need to do much to come away with the win. He finished with only 154 passing yards, his second-lowest total of the season.

That’s probably not going to work against the 49ers, who have the best linebacker trio in the N.F.L. in Azeez Al-Shaair, Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw. They’re fast enough to keep up with receivers and tough enough to stop running backs in their tracks. Coupled with a staunch defensive line featuring Nick Bosa, the prospective defensive player of the year, San Francisco holds opponents to a league-low 3.4 yards per rushing attempt this season and put the clamps on the Cowboy’s top-3 offense last week. They’ll need another tightfisted game against the Eagles, the N.F.L.’s No. 2-rated offense, which has kept defenses off-kilter by choosing wisely between the pass and run game.

The rookie quarterback Brock Purdy has won seven straight as the 49ers’ starter, with each successive game looking like the one in which his inexperience would be the team’s undoing. In the divisional round against the Cowboys, Purdy finally looked shaky and was held without a touchdown for the first time. He still managed to power a win over a tremendous defense.

Against the Eagles, on the road, the task becomes even more difficult. Philadelphia finished the season two sacks shy of the N.F.L. record set by the Bears in the 1984 season (72), and got five sacks last week against the Giants. Purdy will be aided by an offense that thrives on short and intermediate passing — the better to get the ball out of his hands quickly — and teammates’ “everybody blocks” mentality, in which hybrid-skill position players get physical.

The Eagles have attracted over 90 percent of the money bet on this game, but every time this point spread touched 3 at sports books around the world, money came in on the 49ers and brought the spread back to 2.5. It’s a tight number in what will most likely be a tight game. All season long, we’ve leaned toward the underdog in games that felt this close, and we’re sticking with that strategy again this week. Pick: 49ers +2.5

A.F.C. Championship Game

Cincinnati Bengals at Kansas City, Sunday, 6:30 p.m., CBS

Line: Kansas City +1 | Total: 47

Patrick Mahomes plans to play through his high ankle sprain this week, but because of the injury Kansas City is home underdog for only the second time this season. Bengals defensive coordinator, Lou Anarumo, has thwarted the quarterback with second-half adjustments in each of their past three meetings, and if Mahomes is going to reverse the losing streak against Cincinnati, he will have to depend on his playmakers to keep the offense moving. That’s especially true given that the forecast calls for below-freezing temperatures and snow that could inhibit big-play gambles.

Mahomes leaned on running back Jerick McKinnon as a passing option this season, where McKinnon averaged a team-high 9.7 yards after catch per reception (usually Travis Kelce’s annual honor). With the quarterback hobbled last week against the Jaguars, McKinnon saw fewer targets, a trend that’s likely to continue if Kansas City needs him as a blocker. That leaves Kelce as the primary safety-valve option, but when these teams met in Week 13, the Bengals defense held Kelce to four receptions and 56 yards, and linebacker Germaine Pratt forced a game-shifting Kelce fumble in the fourth quarter that allowed Cincinnati to seal the win.

The Bengals are steam-rolling teams as they did in the run up to its Super Bowl appearance last year, in no small part because Joe Burrow is taking fewer sacks than he did last season (41 vs. 51 in the regular season). The Kansas City defensive line should generate more pressure than Buffalo did last week without Von Miller, which could pose a problem for a Cincinnati offensive line that has three starters listed as questionable for Sunday. But the Bengals’ late-season win streak coincides with a rebuilt run game, and Joe Mixon’s big day (20 carries for 105 yards) last week was a big reason Buffalo couldn’t key in on Burrow.

The Bengals enter this game with a 13-5 record against the spread, but they’ve been a mixed bag on the road. Including the bye week, the top-seeded Kansas City will have spent three straight weeks at home. Last week, we pointed out that Kansas City has had a hard time covering because it faced too-large point spreads at home that were inflated by an adoring public. This week, that isn’t the case.

The Bengals have been great at covering the spread largely because they haven’t had much market respect. This time they’re getting 73 percent of the money as road favorites. They’re finally getting the respect they deserve, but is it too late? It really all depends on that ankle. Pick: Kansas City +1
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/sports/football/nfl-super-bowl-championship-picks.html

[BullNBear52]

The line was the Bills by 5.
No. 3 Cincinnati Bengals at No. 2 Buffalo Bills, 3 p.m., CBS

Line: Bills -5 | Total: 48

I was surprised the Bills didn't keep it close and they should have been able to win in Buffalo.

I went 2 for 4 this weekend. Giants don't count as I was betting with my heart.

Go Bengals and go SF and go home Cowboys.

[newmedman]

well it went the way we thought, of course not for me.. Thought Purdy would be ripe for a couple of picks too but Dak did not disappoint. lol note to self, never draft this guy for your fantasy team again...

The bills game was a little messy as well but the weather can be a problem. Just like here, why they don't have a dome is a mystery. What a sloppy mess that was.

[newmedman]

I think they just suited up George Santos to kick for Dallas in the second half.

[BullNBear52]

Giants used to own the Cowboys then we started sucking. And I don't like Jerry Jones.

Keep an eye on Bryce Young next year.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/_/id/4685720/bryce-young

[newmedman]

LOL, glad you still had a good time. I have no dog in this hunt so I'm just watching and taking it all in.

Frisco would be a great story for this season if they can pull it off. I'm disappointed with the Cowboys only because I drafted Dak as my number one and he did nothing but disappoint me all year, even when he was healthy.

It should be a good game. I called for the over on a prop bet of 4 total interceptions. Easy money lol.

[BullNBear52]

Well that was ugly.

Hurts, Eagles pound Giants early, coast to NFC title game
https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401438004

Alabama knows how to build QBs. Had a small game watch party. The food and beverages and company were the best part of the game.

Ended up turning the sound down and playing old rock and roll records.

Go Buffalo and SF. At least hopefully the Cowboys lose.

[newmedman]

go go go!!! I'm rooting for you and that's usually a bad sign but I might get lucky today.

oops, not a good start.

[BullNBear52]

My heart is with the Gmen.

[newmedman]

Philly and the GMen are about to hit it. Hopefully it will be fun.

I picked the Bears to win. lol