Conference Championship sides and totals
Plus recapping the Divisional Round
It’s been a cushy season without too many bad beats, so it’s tough to complain, but the Divisional Round was annoying. We had KC at -8.5 in the writeup, but I imagine some of you got it at -9.5, and that safety at the end was brutal.
In Rams/Eagles, I was frankly rooting for Philadelphia to lose outright at the end because I was so frustrated at their inability and unwillingness to put that game away better. A missed PAT wound up forcing a push there on what should have been a clear win.
And then in Bills/Ravens, several little things set the game up for getting middled and losing both bets, including the Ravens’ final three drives finishing with a failed 2-point conversion, the Mark Andrews fumble, and then another failed 2-point conversion that could have at least forced OT. That’s not to act like the Bills didn’t deserve to win — and as I wrote last week, I was probably slightly rooting for them just given I have a lot of friends who are fans — but I guess I still feel like between the first-half Lamar Jackson turnovers and the second-half runout, the Ravens were probably the right side, and the 2-point loss was rough. Equally rough was that if they just hadn’t scored that late TD, we’d have stayed under, but instead the 27-25 final pushed the game one point over the 51.5 under we’d taken.
I’d initially planned to not pick any game totals last week, and just take the sides in all four games. If I’d stuck to that, we would have went 2-1-1. Instead, I decided the under hitting in five of six Wild Card Round games was a good indication there was value on the under in the two higher-scoring games, and both bets lost for a 2-3-1 week. For the playoffs now I’m 3-1-1 on sides and 1-4 on totals; there’s always something about running cold on totals that feels so self-inflicted, like why am I even picking this stuff? But there are only three games left, so we press on.
For the season, we’re down to 73-64-5, for +3.3 units on sides and totals. While we haven’t been slaughtered or anything, we haven’t had a winning week since Week 16, and the tough reality is I don’t feel strongly about either of these games. That said, I’ll break them both down below in depth, to give you a feel for the ways I’m leaning, should you want to consider that for your own action.