Newton's Locker (2)

January 17th, 2008

New England vs San Diego

Posted by G. W. Newton at 11:06 pm in NFL | No Comments

New England may have just won the Super Bowl last week. I really thought the only team that could have beaten them and would have beaten them was the Indianapolis Colts. But unfortunately, they took the 4th quarter off and I don’t get to see my marquis matchup.

San Diego at full strength and at home has a chance. But there are too many question marks. We don’t really know the status of Philip Rivers or LT’s knees. Obviously Antonio Gates can play with that toe, but we don’t really know how much its affecting him. They have strung a bunch of wins together and in the NFL winning streaks like that are rare. They are also at a disadvantage because the game is in New England. Not because of the extreme cold we are expecting but simply because they just aren’t as good on the road as they are at home.

January 16th, 2008

UFC 80 Preview

Posted by G. W. Newton at 6:03 pm in MMA | No Comments

UFC 80 promises, like all other UFC events, to be action packed but there are 3 bouts in particular that I am looking forward to…

Kendall Grove vs Jorge Rivera

Kendall Grove is coming off his first loss since his rise to fame and its very important that he comes away with a victory. Every one takes a loss now and again in MMA, its just the way it is. It’s the fight following the loss that shows what the fighter is made of. Some recent examples would be Forest Griffin and of course Chuck Liddell. Kendall is a pretty heavy favorite, which means he is expected to win. If he wants to have any chance of ever being mentioned in the same breath with the top fighters in the world, he has to come back strong in this fight. The odds of a top notch fighter losing 2 in a row are slim. Chuck Liddell and Mrko Cro Cop come to mind but they ARE top notch fighters. They had already established that prior to those losses. I believe this is the biggest fight of Kendall’s career thus far

January 15th, 2008

Divisional Round Wrap Up

Posted by G. W. Newton at 7:50 pm in NFL, Report Card | No Comments

Pew!!!! I stunk up the joint, scientifically speaking that is. I was 2 – 2 straight up and 1 –3 versus the spread

Highlights

Well, I had Green Bay right

I knew New England would win, but you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see that

Lowlights

New England let Jacksonville hang around too long, they didn’t really send a message to the Super Bowl champs like I predicted which reminds me…

January 10th, 2008

New England vs. Jacksonville

Posted by G. W. Newton at 7:33 pm in NFL | No Comments

Unlike the NFC, the AFC 1 seeds odds of making the championship game are not as much of a lock. Its more like 60%. But we are talking about the New England Patriots here, so take the odds and throw them right out the window. This is a team that appears to simply be able to do whatever they need to do whenever they need to, to win.

If you read last weeks picks you may be thinking, “Hey wait didn’t you say something about flipping coins and the probability of getting 4 heads in a row was remote and therefore the odds of winning (or losing) 4 games in row was also remote.” Yes I did say that and that is correct. But don’t be so hasty to apply that to New Englands perfect season and think the probably of winning 17 in a row is also remote. The odds of flipping a coin and getting a head on any one flip is ½. So it is with winning a football game for most teams. New England is not most teams. The odds of them winning are much higher than ½ or 50%.

January 10th, 2008

Indianapolis vs San Diego

Posted by G. W. Newton at 7:30 pm in NFL | No Comments

Just like New England, I think Indianapolis is one of those teams where you throw the odds right out the window. Key points on their 3 losses:

Tennessee - The second team lost to Tennessee. If it mattered, Manning could have walked on to the field at any time and ended their season
San Diego - A series of freak occurrences put this loss on them, we will speak of them in more detail later
New England - If these two teams aren’t scheduled to play each other, we have two undefeated teams this season.

January 10th, 2008

Green Bay vs. Seattle

Posted by G. W. Newton at 7:19 pm in NFL | No Comments

There are no overwhelming odds for the NFC 2 or 3 seed like there are for the NFC 1 seed so we have to dig a little deeper here. As a matter of fact I really can’t find any persuasive mathematical trend on this game. So lets get right to the A & A.

The Packers are favored by 8 and the total is 42 so that gives us Green Bay 25 Seattle 17. Well that gives us a place to start. Green Bay of course will have their legendary January home field advantage. Also Seattle is not the same on the road, but then again that can be said of most teams. There’s the whole Mike Holmgren comes home thing. Then there’s Matt Hasselback demonstrating that he is much better at predicting the outcome of coin tosses than he is at predicting the outcome of football games. There is the Brett Favre as the captain of the team of destiny etc. etc. Most of it is crapola.