That being said, Pats ST's still definately better.

here's the thing. If the Patriots use their special teams for more than returning kickoffs and kickoff coverage then they're ****ed.

Thank god for this #backpackgate. If the Falcons score less than 40 and lose, delusional Falcons fans will be able to Marshall Faulk themselves to death. "I'll never believe otherwise!"

It's like 80% that the Pats have the Falcons playbook.

GG ATL

These stats would be better if they were actually accurate...

Easier kicking conditions lead to a higher % of made kicks. More news at 10. Table is for field goals & includes playoffs:

	Dome	%	Outdoors	%
Bryant	21/22	95.5%	16/18	88.9%
Gostkowski	3/3	100.0%	29/34	85.3%

But yeah, Gostkowski kind of sucked this season, so it's reasonable to say that Bryant had a better year. It seems silly to say that either provides a big advantage, though.

I feel like you just made up these #s entirely? Bosher had 44 punts this year, not 66, of which 21 were inside the 20. Allen has 72 punts this year (28 more than Bosher), and 2 more inside the 20 (23). Also, Allen has had 27 of 72 punts returned this year...that's 37.5% (less than half, for reference purposes Bosher has had 21 of 44 returned, or 47.7%).

Bosher has allowed 21 returns for 209 yards and Allen has allowed 27 returns for 134 yards. That's why their net punting averages are so similar...41.6 for Bosher & 41.4 for Allen.

While it's totally fine to say Bosher had a better season as a punter, your #s are entirely made up, & he again benefits from playing in a dome.

Pretty sure you were looking at the yards allowed, not the return yards stats, as that's not a factual statement either (Falcons are 21st in KR avg).

Anyway, here's a table:

	KR Avg	Opp KR Avg	PR Avg	Opp PR Avg	Net +/-
Falcons	21.0	22.6	11.4	9.6	0.2
Patriots	18.7	19.3	6.9	5.0	1.3

Of course in the playoffs it's...

	KR Avg	Opp KR Avg	PR Avg	Opp PR Avg	Net +/-
Falcons	16.7	32.7	12.0	2.5	-6.5
Patriots	35.5	15.2	6.5	9.6	17.2

But then you're running into the same issue that people have been saying about Pats not playing any good offenses. Texans defense was elite, and Brady was bad that game. Two of their touchdowns were a kick return and Brock throwing an interception which ended up with Pats at the Texans 6

Phil Emery promised first-round pick Shea McClellin that one day they would be in the Super Bowl together, he technically did not lie.

**** me

JMurder used ESPN and was working while working so entirely possible that there's some margin for error there but kicker better, punter better, return whatevs. At this point though I'm even telling myself I'm talking about special teams and to stfu because the MVP gonna make it all irrelevant.

"Our punter has longer average!"

"Good for you. Our punter is usually working with a short field."

I'm going to weird Super Bowl party. Well, it's not really a "party" in as much as it's just two families getting together for the game.

I live in Atlanta and there will be no Falcons fans there. My family roots for the Packers, the other family for the Cowboys. So we're all butthurt, but I think we're all still pulling for the Falcons.

Well that's odd considering the Pats punted way more and have a much lower inside the 20 %

Generally they try to take +EV bets. Suppose the book knows for a fact that the correct line is Pats -3, but that at that price the public leans heavily towards betting the Pats. The line may move to 4 or 5. The motivation for moving the line can be because taking NE -4 or NE -5 bets is juicier than taking NE -3 bets. Or, in the real world, the motivation can be that the book isn't actually sure what the correct line is and is moving it defensively in case they are wrong. But a well-capitalized book doesn't move the line purely so that people will take ATL +4 and ATL +5 bets, because based on what the book thinks the line is, those are unprofitable bets for it to make. If you have to accept bets that you think are -EV for you simply to balance things out, then your book is undercapitalized.

That's true but despite the fact they led the league in PPG people know Pats defense actually isn't really amazing BC of their schedule. Also Pats defenses tend to look ugly BC they play bend but don't break, are designed around not giving up big plays and tackling well but will often give up a bunch of dink and dunk stuff.

Funny how you blame some Patriots fans for talking out of their asses when that's pretty much what you just did and have been doing for most of the season.

Oh yeah for sure. I'm bringing up points on why Pats won't win or why Falcons are better but at the end of the day still think Pats will win because Bill is Bill so Ryan will probably end up with ~50% completion and a 5 y/a or something

Brady had a bad game vs the Texans who had a pretty good DL and a secondary that could cover. Thankfully Brady doesnt have to deal with either of those things this weekend.

All of Brady's 6 SBs have been decided by 4 or fewer, which is kind of nuts. Got this one ending that streak

Atlanta Falcons 31
The only team in USA named after a region 24

Was interested in this. Best I could come up with after 11 minutes of research is:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-league-teams/

NFL Facebook Fans. Disclaimer: In no way am I defending this as a metric.

Cowboys 8.27 9.28%
Patriots 6.51 7.30%
Steelers 6.33 7.10%
Packers 5.26 5.90%
Broncos 4.40 4.93%
49ers 4.24 4.76%
Bears 4.13 4.63%
Saints 4.07 4.56%
Seahawks 3.95 4.43%
Giants 3.89 4.36%
Raiders 3.19 3.58%
Eagles 3.00 3.36%
Panthers 2.36 2.65%
Ravens 2.34 2.62%
Colts 2.27 2.55%
Dolphins 2.17 2.43%
Texans 2.13 2.39%
Vikings 2.02 2.27%
Jets 1.99 2.23%
Redskins 1.95 2.19%
Lions 1.89 2.12%
Falcons 1.83 2.05%
Chargers 1.70 1.91%
Chiefs 1.48 1.66%
Cardinals 1.38 1.55%
Browns 1.24 1.39%
Bengals 1.19 1.33%
Bucs 0.91 1.02%
Titans 0.91 1.02%
Bills 0.82 0.92%
Rams 0.76 0.85%
Jaguars 0.58 0.65%

89.16 100%

Someone should run a regression analysis with Super Bowl victories and number of fans. Perhaps add in expected number of fans based on geography. Obviously the Cowboys will have more fans than the Jaguars based on geography but something tells me 5 SBs vs 0 has a little something to do with it.

SUMMARY OUTPUT

Regression Statistics
Multiple R 0.793134786
R Square 0.629062789
Adjusted R Square 0.616698215
Standard Error 1.15743635
Observations 32

ANOVA
df SS MS F Significance F
Regression 1 68.15678288 68.15678288 50.87622132 6.19777E-08
Residual 30 40.18976712 1.339658904
Total 31 108.34655

Coefficients Standard Error t Stat P-value Lower 95% Upper 95% Lower 95.0% Upper 95.0%
Intercept 1.508220859 0.271972235 5.5454957 4.99516E-06 0.952779457 2.063662261 0.952779457 2.063662261
X Variable 1 0.81793865 0.114673563 7.132756923 6.19777E-08 0.583743992 1.052133309 0.583743992 1.052133309



RESIDUAL OUTPUT

Observation Predicted Y Residuals
1 5.59791411 2.67208589
2 4.77997546 1.73002454
3 6.415852761 -0.085852761
4 4.77997546 0.48002454
5 3.96203681 0.43796319
6 5.59791411 -1.35791411
7 2.326159509 1.803840491
8 2.326159509 1.743840491
9 2.326159509 1.623840491
10 4.77997546 -0.88997546
11 3.96203681 -0.77203681
12 1.508220859 1.491779141
13 1.508220859 0.851779141
14 3.14409816 -0.80409816
15 3.14409816 -0.87409816
16 3.14409816 -0.97409816
17 1.508220859 0.621779141
18 1.508220859 0.511779141
19 2.326159509 -0.336159509
20 3.96203681 -2.01203681
21 1.508220859 0.381779141
22 1.508220859 0.321779141
23 1.508220859 0.191779141
24 2.326159509 -0.846159509
25 1.508220859 -0.128220859
26 1.508220859 -0.268220859
27 1.508220859 -0.318220859
28 2.326159509 -1.416159509
29 1.508220859 -0.598220859
30 1.508220859 -0.688220859
31 2.326159509 -1.566159509
32 1.508220859 -0.928220859

A fun game is trying to guess/determine SB victories per team. When I did it I got the following results:



My guess is the following teams will cause trouble:

People are really sleeping on Falcons defense. For the overall season yeah they've been pretty bad but over the past month or so they've actually been quite good.

They are very young for the most part

I can see them to continue coming together and performing well or completely shredded by elite veterans

pats defense legit one of the best in history

Show your work

I've heard that the reason the spread is only Pats -3 is because there is a good amount of tickets in which people took the Falcons preseason 150/1 to win the super bowl. Then that number dropped to 100/1 and people still fired. 80/1, 60/1, etc etc. So it may make sense for Vegas to want a lot of people to take the Pats to even out the money that way too.