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What would the extreme circumstances have to be for a 14+ Super Bowl Spread in today's game?


Bolts223

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4 hours ago, Beavis said:

Wasn't the sprad like 14 pts in 07? 

12.5.

Which is still huge, but even back then the point-spreads of Super Bowl's were generally a lot larger than now.

2003: Patriots were 7-point favorites over the Panthers

2004: Patriots were 7-point favorites over the Eagles

2006: Colts were 7-point favorites over the Bears.

2007: Patriots were 12.5-point favorites over the Giants

2008: Steelers were 7-point favorites over the Cardinals

All those are larger than any spread we've had since 2009.

 

Since 2009 it has been.

2009: Colts were 4.5-point favorites over the Saints

2010: Packers were 3-point favorites over the Steelers

2011: Patriots were 3-point favorites over the Giants

2012: 49ers were 4-point favorites over the Ravens

2013: Broncos were 2-point favorites over the Seahawks

2014: Patriots and Seahawks was a pick'em

2015: Panthers were 5-point favorites over the Broncos

2016: Patriots were 3-point favorites over the Falcons

2017: Patriots were 4.5-point favorites over the Eagles

2018: Patriots were 2.5-point favorites over the Rams

2019: Chiefs were 1.5-point favorites over the 49ers

2020: Chiefs are 3-point favorites over the Bucs

 

Edited by Bolts223
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11 hours ago, Broncofan said:

11.5 - easy money.....

I never really understood why Denver was that big of an underdog that year. They were 12-4 and had knocked off the only team in the AFC with a better record than them (KC at 13-3) on the way to the SB.  And it’s not like they came out of nowhere. They had been a 13-3 one seed the year prior. I get GB was going for back to back and see why they’d be favored, but the spread just felt way too big. Both seemed like heavyweights.

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11 minutes ago, WideRight said:

I never really understood why Denver was that big of an underdog that year. They were 12-4 and had knocked off the only team in the AFC with a better record than them (KC at 13-3) on the way to the SB.  And it’s not like they came out of nowhere. They had been a 13-3 one seed the year prior. I get GB was going for back to back and see why they’d be favored, but the spread just felt way too big. Both seemed like heavyweights.

At the time, history was against them. Elway had been in three superbowls, and lost by a combined 40 to 136. And the NFC was coming off of a streak of winning 13 straight superbowls. No one had confidence in Elway, the Broncos, or the AFC as a whole, at that point. It was borderline an AFL versus NFL kind of perception of the talent gap. Add in that Green Bay was seen as the reigning juggernaut in the league, Favre was on his 3rd straight MVP, and you get that spread.

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On one side you need a wild card team or a weak 4 seed, think a a team that snuck into the playoffs and then scratched their way to the SB. On the other side you need a historically great team. 

Now you might be thinking "we had that in 07 and it was just a 12.5 point spread!" but to that I say you can't underrate the impact their week 16 matchup had on that spread. A little over a month prior, the Patriots only beat the Giants by 3 points... and they still opened as 14 point favorites in several books, but many looked at that week 16 result and that brought the line down. Had the Pats spanked the Giants earlier, that spread is approaching that record 19 points. Even higher if the Pats dominated the AFCC.

 

...so yeah, it would take a very specific circumstance (outside of sudden injury to star QB), but I do think it's possible. Chiefs vs Washington probably approaches a 14 pt spread, as everyone considered the AFC stronger all along, and that's despite '20 Chiefs not quite being in historically great territory just going off their regular season (were not dominating games last half of season). 

Edited by RandyMossIsBoss
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20 hours ago, RandyMossIsBoss said:

On one side you need a wild card team or a weak 4 seed, think a a team that snuck into the playoffs and then scratched their way to the SB. On the other side you need a historically great team. 

Now you might be thinking "we had that in 07 and it was just a 12.5 point spread!" but to that I say you can't underrate the impact their week 16 matchup had on that spread. A little over a month prior, the Patriots only beat the Giants by 3 points... and they still opened as 14 point favorites in several books, but many looked at that week 16 result and that brought the line down. Had the Pats spanked the Giants earlier, that spread is approaching that record 19 points. Even higher if the Pats dominated the AFCC.

 

...so yeah, it would take a very specific circumstance (outside of sudden injury to star QB), but I do think it's possible. Chiefs vs Washington probably approaches a 14 pt spread, as everyone considered the AFC stronger all along, and that's despite '20 Chiefs not quite being in historically great territory just going off their regular season (were not dominating games last half of season). 

I think it would depend on how Washington did it.

If Washington got to the SB by beating teams like Tampa/New Orleans/Green Bay because their defense played elite and Alex Smith/Heinicke was balling out, I think the spread would probably be like 9-10.

I think the scenario where Washington is a 14+ underdog would be:

- Brady gets hurt early on in the game and Washington wins a super ugly Cardinals/Panthers 2014 type wild card game.

- Bears by some miracle beat the Saints and that allows Washington to play the Rams at home with no Aaron Donald and an injured Goff.

- Bears by some miracle beat the Packers and Washington hosts the Bears in the NFC Championship game.

- Trubisky after a few promising games looks like his old self and Washington wins a super ugly game.

 

 

Edited by Bolts223
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On 2/2/2021 at 1:33 PM, SkippyX said:

Remember that the line is not about who will win the game. Its about getting the money bet on the game to be split close to 50/50.

Wrong. The pointspread is absolutely a prediction of the outcome. I worked as sportsbook supervisor in Las Vegas at a joint taking the biggest action in town. There is no such thing as balanced action. The sportsbook always needs one side or the other. In fact, our sportsbook manager would whine and cry in the sporsbook office while sweating out one play and one outcome after another. Our tall filing cabinet had dents all over the place due to the kicks with his hard toed shoes. I really wish I would have taken a secret video of those antics and posted to YouTube, to get rid of the nonsensical garbage that sportsbooks don't care who wins. It was bad enough when that myth entered public dialog to begin with, let alone where it stands now...with so many people repeating it as if it is wise guy gospel.

I got so sick of the myth I asked the chief Nevada oddsmaker about this on the Stardust Line radio program 30 years ago. His name was Michael Roxy Roxborough and he was a straight shooting guy who was great on that show. I described all the basics, that the money line (straight up odds) stems directly from the pointspread, and that the props like the one-team totals are directly related to the spread and total, like a 41 total with a 7 point spread equating to the favorite with a one-team total of 24 and the underdog with a one-team total of 17, so how in the heck can everything be correlated yet the pointspread not be a prediction of the outcome?

To his credit, Roxy didn't hesitate at all:  "Of course it is."  The live audience at the Stardust seemed briefly stunned. Then Roxy expanded on everything I said, that all the numbers are a direct prediction of the outcome.

Keep in mind that Roxy was not a BS artist like so many guys in that town. The sportsbook staffs are loaded with one failed bettor after another. But they want to remain in the realm so they get jobs behind the counter. And once they get those jobs many of them are desperate to pretend that there is some secret inside info. They want the media to seek their info as if there is some type of magic formula. That's why they push the mythology. It is all laughable nonsense. The spreads are based on power ratings. Oddsmakers are totally lost without power ratings. The internet allows them to steal one set of power ratings after another. Then they combine those power ratings to come up with their own consensus power rating. Apply the home field advantage -- if any -- and there's your spread. There is no special knowledge. It is pure math. Rinse and repeat all year in every sport. It takes 30 seconds for the number to be set because all they are doing is looking at the same power ratings. Nobody cares about matchups or series history or any of that malarkey. Sportsbooks don't have time for subjectivity when they are dealing with thousands of outcomes all year. It is numerical plug and play. The power ratings don't do a perfect job of splitting the action, but far superior to any other method. Sportsbooks thrive because the win is almost always higher than the risk, given the juice. For example, if one side covers you win 20,000. If the other side covers you lose $8000. Splits like that all year long. That's why it doesn't have to be balanced action. You take your chances that the distribution will be even enough to grind a profit.

I realize this version will never be accepted. Everyone somehow loves the mysterious version that a spread is not a prediction of the outcome. Meanwhile as soon as an NFL team is a 4 point favorite the aligned money line is put on the board, in the -200/+170 range. And if you track the outcomes all year every year the straight up results will mirror the money line indications almost perfectly. Actually it follows the man to man range, in other words the midsection of the money line, without the juice...like -185 per the above example. 

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