It doesn’t require the wisdom of Solomon to pick the winners this weekend. The last statistics I saw, it was somewhere around 75-80% of the favorites win in the first round of the NFL playoffs. That’s because most of the time they are also the home team and usually the higher seeded team. So basically I could just go with the favorites and probably end up with 3 out of 4 right.

To bring it back to more of a 50-50 chance I will consider the point spread. Statistics still say I should get at least one right. Think about it this way. Suppose you are going to flip a coin 4 times and count the number of heads you get. Mathematics says that the odds of getting all tails are (1/2)⁴ (1/2)⁰ or 1/16. So figuring that considering the spread brings my odds down to about 50-50, ( the same as flipping a coin) this means I could expect to pick all losers in the opening round of the playoffs only once in 16 years. But our odds are much better than 50/50 because we have our wits about us

I looked in the paper and saw that San Diego is favored by 9 over the Titans and the point total is expected to be 40. But don’t forget, those are “businessmen’s numbers”. Those numbers are about making money and not really about football. So the first thing we do is hold a little algebra class. SD + Tenn = 40 and SD = Tenn + 9 then 39 = 2(Tenn) + 9 and thus the experts are telling us Titans will score about 15 points. This of course also means San Diego will score about 24 so the experts are predicting say San Diego 24 Tennessee 15.

First of all, 24 is way too low for San Diego. They are absolute monsters at home and have been for the past two years. I wont waste my breath telling you about LT, everybody knows that story. We also know all about Antonio Gates but theres a guy at wide receiver name Chambers who used to play in Miami who you can bet is thrilled to be in the playoffs. I think he will really emerge in this game. I know the Titans have had great defense pretty much all year long and they played the Chargers tough a few weeks ago, but they just wont have any answers for the high powered San Diego home offense.

For the Titans, 15 sounds very practical, they are field goal kickers, they have arguable the best kicker in the game this year. But field goals aren’t going to get it done against the offensive juggernaut they are about to run into. If only Pacman were here, with all that kicking off the Chargers are going to do, he would have given the Titans their best chance to score via kick return. Not to mention the titans offense is banged up. Vince Young is still having nagging leg troubles and if he cant run, well he’s not the guy we saw beat that other team from Southern California a few years ago. Not to mention his security blanket, Bo Scaife is out for the playoffs.

I just cant see the Titans staying close in this game, and believe me, there is no one in Wyoming Valley that wants to see them win more. San Diego 38 Tennesee 13, unfortunately for me.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...