Line: Tennessee Titans -3 pts -$112 over Arizona Cardinals
Welcome back to Beat the Odds, Preseason Edition. There is a definite strategy to betting pre-season football, and I’m going to break it down for you.
The first thing you should look at when betting on the preseason is the coaches’ career records in preseason. On top of that you’d ideally like to look at their career records, and break down these records week-by-week during preseason.
A week 3 preseason game is much, much different than a week 4 or week 1 preseason game. By looking at these career records, this will give you a good indication of how a coach will prepare his team for their games, and it shows you how much a coach will care about winning or losing preseason games.
Preseason football is all about the coach’s game planning and preparation. Which teams will put in some of their more creative plays in a true dress rehearsal for the regular season and which will play their “vanilla package” – a straight up, no frills attached base offence and defence.
The next step in analyzing a preseason game is to try to find a coach’s press conference transcripts. Analyze them to see what the coach is trying to say about the coming week’s game. Is he talking about trying to get through it without injuries? Is he trying to focus on working on the run game? You get the idea. Basically, you want to see what the coach has to say. Sometimes they have a very specific goal in mind, (ie we are going to run the ball 20 times for our starters, no matter what) and in preseason accomplishing these goals can sometimes be more important to a coach than actual winning and losing.
Another good idea when betting a presason game is to look at each team’s depth. Are the backup and 3rd string QB’s on the team good? Are the backup and 3rd string RB’s good? Look at various positions and see if you can find places where you see strength in a team’s depth chart. You will probably be relying on these guys more than the starters to win your bet, as they will get major playing time in the 2nd half.
And lastly, just like a regular season game, you need to look at the injury reports. You need to find out who is playing and who is sitting. You can usually find these things out in the same way you would find out if you fantasy players are starting or in the coach’s transcripts we talked about before.
Now on to our game, Tennessee and Arizona. Looking at the coaches, Arizona coach Ken Wisenhunt is a career 8-15 in the preseason. This should already scream out to you as he doesn’t care too much about winning during the preseason. Further look is that he is 2-3 in Week 3 of the preseason. Week 3 is the ultimate “dress rehearsal” game of the preseason, and the week where you see your starters the most. It doesn’t look like Wisenhunt puts any more weight into winning this week than any other.
Meanwhile Titans coach, Mike Munchak, is a career 4-2 in preseason. A good indicator that he gets his teams ready and prepared for the games. He is 1-0 in Week 3, so nothing negative against our play.
Both teams will be playing their starters for at least a half. Wisenhunt has said he will let his starters go into the 2nd half while Munchak has said at least a half for his starters. There is no advantage in playing time
The QB’s playing time will be equal as well with both starters playing a lot and then players who are noted as capable backups coming in the 2nd half. However Arizona’s duo of Skelton and Kolb have really struggled in their first two games, and the definition of capable backup may not apply to the way Kolb is currently playing.
I also lean towards the Titans with their O-line and D-line play. This is where games are won in football. If you can protect your QB, you should have success on offence and if you can get pressure on the other team’s QB, you should have success on defence. The trenches are what matters.
From watching both of these teams’ preseason games, you can see there is an obvious advantage for the Titans. The Cardinals’ QB’s have been running for their lives with Kolb leaving the first game on a big hit and conceding a safety in another. The Titans pass rush has been good so far. They got to the Tampa Bay QB’s often in their last game and did a good job getting to the Seahawks’ QB’s as well. This looks like a long night for the Cards and missing starting tackle Levi Brown to injury does not help the situation.
The Titans offense looked good in the 2nd game where they got some time. They focused on Chris Johnson getting some touches and had some success with some big runs. They have talked about establishing the run in the preseason and should go to Johnson again when the starters are in. I don’t see a huge decided advantage on this side of the ball, but the Titans should be able to put up some points.
I look for the Titans to pressure the Cardinals all game and look for the Cards QB’s to make some mistakes and give the Titans offense some short fields, which will result in better #’s for the offense. Add into the other factors of the coaching records and I can see the Titans coming out ahead by double digits.
Pick: Take the Titans and Give the 3 points
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