Atlanta travels back to the dirty south to take on a young and gritty St. Louis team coached by highly respected Jeff Fisher. Stephen Jackson faces his old team and looks for an opportunity to make the team that deemed him as old and expendable pay. They may have been right as Jackson only managed to gain a pedestrian 77 yards, 50 of those yards were on a single carry which meant that Jackson only gained 27 yards on his remaining 10 carries against a New Orleans team that last year:
Ranked 31 out of 32 in total team defense
Ranked Dead Last in Defensive rush yards/carry @ 5.2 yds
Ranked Dead Last in Defensive Rush yds giving up almost 150 yards / gm
Did the Saints improve that dramatically or does Jackson suck that badly?
Roddy White is expected to be a go for Sunday but apparently Julio Jones missed practice on Wednesday due to a knee injury. His status for Sunday’s tilt remains a question mark.
During the offseason St. Louis added Pro-Bowl tackle Jake Long to their team to protect Bradford’s blindside and improve their run blocking.
Last year St. Louis defense ranked a very respectable 14th out of 32 teams.
We all know about the Falcons impressive home record during the regular season but how exactly do they shore up ATS. The biggest knock on Atlanta the past few years is their inability to blow teams away. They would always let their opponents hang around in games and they lack that killer instinct to put teams away. That killer instinct is evident in their playoff records and during last years NFC conference game where they led 17-0 at one point and 24-14 at the half. They failed to go any point in the second half of that game and let SF take that game from them in their own house.
Looking deeper into the Falcons ATS numbers we see that in 2012:
Atl was 4-4 ATS @ home
Atl was 0-3 ATS when the spread was -6 or more
Over the past few seasons, when Atlanta was a favourite of 6 or more, they were 3-8 ATS.
In 2012:
St. Louis was 7-1 ATS on the Road
St. Louis was 5-2 ATS when they were underdogs of +6 or more.
St. Louis was 3-1 ATS when they were underdogs of +6 or more on the road.
In a nutshell, gimme St. Louis +7 all day long for the MAX bet. Atlanta with their injury problems and lack of a run game and their inability to put teams away and their poor numbers against spreads of -6 or more will have issues closing this game out.
Who here likes money?
Go Get It!!!
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