This lounge pantis a favorite every fall, comfy plaid flannel button fly pant with elastic waist and drawstring for comfortable fit. Team logo is embroidered left leg. These pants sell out every season so don't wait. 100% cottonOne mistake I see sports bettors making is they get too deep into stats and information. The best way to approach a matchup is to use the method of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Usually when you look at a matchup the answer is pretty obvious, and that obvious answer is usually the right one. There will always be matchups that can go either way like two solid teams playing each other, the best way to get down on these games is to not get down at all.
The problem we usually face is not "who's going to win?" it's "who's going to cover the spread?" I'm talking about basketball and football. When it comes to baseball and hockey the same methods apply without the factor of a point spread unless you like puck lines and run lines.
Some people get so deep into stats that all the information starts to cancel out the two teams. The trick is to narrow your research to the important stats the ones that count. For example, in football, turnovers are a unpredictable part of the game. If I see a team that averages 1.4 fumbles per game against one that averages 2 fumbles per game I am not going to assume that one will fumble more than the other in this game. A good way to identify the key stats to look at is to go through game logs and pick out what the winners did at and what the losers didn't do. You'll be surprised on how consistent some of these stats are. Since we're in the seasons of football, basketball, and hockey I will cover some of the factors here that are important to each game. This will also give you a better understanding of my systems sections and why I choose certain aspects of a game.
If you've read my systems page for football you'll know that I preach the yards per pass stat. Many people have argued this and that's ok, I made it sound like that was the only factor to consider and I was probably wrong to say that. Do this now, go to yahoo.com and take a look at the boxscores for any week of the NFL and count out how many winners had a better yards per pass number. You'll notice only a couple teams each week won the game with a smaller YPP. Just by knowing this you have a key stat to look at while you handicap. This is definitely a key stat but unfortunately this is not the golden key to predicting who will win the game or who will cover. If it was we'd all be rich and Vegas would be out of business.
Another factor that will heavily weigh out the winners from the losers is to look at scoring margins. This works for football and basketball and will help you determine who can beat the spread as well. The best way to get a good sample of any stat is to always look at conference games or division games and not overall games. Teams play their best in conference games and this way you draw a good sample of their ability when they want a win. Let's walk through the thursday night matchup for this week and see what we can find.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS @ JACKSONVILLE +6.5 TOTAL 44
Just by looking at the record here Indy 11-4 and Jacksonville 5-9 you should already have the perception that Indy will win the game outright, that part is easy but not that easy. There is still a possibility that Jacksonville can pull off a victory or lose the game by less than 6 points. So let's pad our decision with some key stats.
We'll start with yards per pass offense and defense.
MATCHUP YPPO YPPD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 6.7 6.3 0.4
JACKSONVILLE 6.2 7.2 -1.0
You can see with overall stats Indy has a small edge in the margin and passing game. Let's go a step further and look at yards per rush.
MATCHUP YPRO YPRD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 3.4 4.2 -0.7
JACKSONVILLE 4.2 4.1 0.1
Interesting result, The stats are about even with Jacksonville holding a very small edge. Now let's use division games only and see what we can come up with. I'm choosing division stats over conference stats because it's late enough in the season to draw a good sample.
MATCHUP YPPO YPPD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 6.5 7.1 -0.6
JACKSONVILLE 5.8 7.8 -2
As you can see when using division games the stats change drastically making the Colts look worse than their record and Jacksonville looks about right. Another thing to notice when going back is to pay attention to improvements. We all know Indy started out struggling and you can see improvements through out the season. I'm not going to go too deep here but this is a good way to look at all per play type stats, Yards per pass, yards per play,yards per point and yards per rush. That pretty much sums up the stats area, now let's take a quick look at scoring margins using division games only.
MATCHUP PF PA MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 26.5 27 0.5
JACKSONVILLE 18.8 23.8 5
So what kind of conclusion can we draw from all this? For starters I can tell you that 44 points seems like a low total, both teams allowing an average combined total of 50.8 points per division game and the yards per pass defense is a total average of 7.5. The league average score is 22 and the league average yards per pass is 6.5. Even though the offensive stats don't reflect that it is more important to look at defenses first when figuring totals. The reason is that an offense will do better against poor defenses. An above average offense may not score a lot against an above average defense.
So who is going to cover the spread? From the looks of it I can say that Indianapolis will probably win but not cover. Unfortunately there is not enough solid evidence for me to pick Indianapolis here, so the side in this game would be a pass.
The other stat we didn't look at is yards per point, the underrated stat that can really do all the work for you. In the next lesson I will discuss a deep analysis of yards per point. It is so strong that it will blow your mind. In part two of the method of K.I.S.S. we'll get into it. Then in the 3rd part I will get into basketball because that's what will be on tap after football.
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