Posted:
#1
First post here on the Covers football forum. Generally, most of my plays are 2nd half plays but what I feel are 3 great opportunities have presented themselves this week with the KC Royals last night, PSG under on Saturday, and now Miami on Sunday.
I wish I could dazzle you with some awesome stats to back this pick, like Miami is 18-2 ATS when they are coming off 3 straight losses and playing a team east of the Mississippi when the weather is between 50-60 degrees against a team whose starting QB's last name begins with a letter in the first half of the alphabet, but I can't. The Dolphins have been absolutely awful the first quarter of the season. They didn't even look good in their opening week win at the Skins.
Before I get to Marcus Mariota, let me say this. As human beings when it comes to gambling, we get way too high or way too low on someone or some team based on a single game and not the season as a whole. I am a fan of Marcus. I really enjoyed watching him at Oregon. I think he is going to be an excellent QB in this league for a long time. From all accounts, he is an even better person and quite frankly the NFL needs more people like him to be the faces of their respective franchises. But I am adamant in the fact that both the general public and Vegas are still tunnel-visioned about what Mariota did in the first 30 minutes of his first NFL game at Tampa Bay.
This kid is still a rookie making rookie mistakes, and although he has not been bad by any stretch of the imagination in his past 3 games he hasn't been a world beater either. I am focusing so much on Marcus because of this. Be completely honest with yourself for a minute and go back to before the season started and think about where you would rank the Titans in an NFL power poll. Any higher than 25th? Absolutely not. If you were to write up one sentence on the Titans it would go something like this: A team with not much talent on either side of the ball that has been lousy the past several years pinning their hopes on a rookie QB.
The fact of the matter is that this is a football team that is not very good but if you are a Tennessee fan your future is bright because you seem to have found someone to build your team around at the most important position in all of sports.
Now be honest with yourself once again and think about where you would have placed the Dolphins before the season started. Probably somewhere between 10th and 15th? For some people, even higher than that. Why? Because there is simply more talent on the Miami Dolphins than there is on the Tennessee Titans. Is there one person who can honestly say to me that if before the season started and these two teams were playing on a neutral field you would actually take Tennessee?
Every year in the NFL there are always teams that are a lot worse than people thought they would be going into the season and vice versa. Miami has definitely been one of those disappointing teams. And by all accounts Joe Philbin was a nice guy, but he needed to go. He had totally lost this football team and things were not going to get any better. I absolutely love this coaching change, at least for the short term. Now it may turn out that in a couple months from now or couple seasons from now things get too intense for the Fins, i.e. Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers, and he is fired because of that feeling around
the team. But in the short term this is exactly what Miami needs to light a fire under their butt and start playing like they are capable of.
Have you looked at the standings today in the AFC? Are the Dolphins going to catch New England and capture the AFC East? No. But the two wild card teams if the season ended today would be the Jets at 3-1 and Buffalo at 3-2 (better conf. record than Pittsburgh also at 3-2). Point is this awful start by Miami has not made it impossible to still make the playoffs at all if they can get their act together.
So what do I get by taking Miami in this game. Let's make a short list:
1. I get 2 points with the more talented football team. Home field in this game means nothing to me, as the Titans only win came on the road.
2. I get the more talented team coming off a bye, being as healthy as they will be for the rest of the season, and 3 straight embarrassing losses with 2 weeks to prepare for a rookie QB who they now have 4 full games of film on to watch.
3. I get to go against a bad football team who has won only once this year, and that was against one of the few teams in the NFL as bad as they are.
4. Lastly, I will no doubt get a team that will play their most inspired football game of the year led by a fiery coach who will instill some much needed life into this team.
Normally, I only play 2nd halves in the NFL because you simply scratch your head at what happens from week to week in this league. That is why the NFL stands for the No Freakin' Logic league. But in this situation, I will gladly take the Dolphins before kickoff. Good luck everyone.
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