Seahawks Patriots Week 1 Recap
It was an interesting start to the season to say the least ...
For those of us who truly love the NFL and were excited for tonight's opening game, it was certainly an unexpected disappointment to see the Seahawks starting QB, Sam Darnold, leave the game with what looks like a serious hip injury on the 5th play of the game. This and other events in this game (the loss of AJ Brown, Drake Maye throwing 3 picks) fell squarely into our categorization of week 1 chaos. And just when the game looked boring and bleak, we saw backup QB Drew Lock do just enough on top of the Seahawks defense truly tightening the screws when it counted.
In our recent post about the Football Sharps' system first wager recommendation of the year, we covered the game factors and data that covered this system's recommendation. The system predicted the Seahawks to win by 7, so it naturally looked for the best available lines for the Seahawks. The system will always compare the juice on spread bets vs. moneyline bets to see which is more favorable. As you can see in the "Our Recommendations" section of this game's analysis, the moneyline was the recommended wager in this case. Why?
It compared:
Methodology Explanation goes like this :
The offered moneyline of -166 is better than the fair value, so moneyline offers better value.
And if you look at the week 1 wager the system made, it was the moneyline for this game. It actually made an earlier moneyline bet that was not as favorable as the final recommendation, but that has more to do with the bet timing rules of the system, which look to bet favorites as early as possible in the week. Ironically, for this game, the spread moved from 3.5 to 3. which can often tell us something about public money, sharp money (or both), but usually when the line moves against you, it's not a good sign.
In the event a team is without their starting QB, they are going to be at a severe disadvantage. The outcome can range to a surprisingly solid performance by the backup as we saw tonight, to an absolute hopeless blowout. And these outcomes can take place even after the backup has a week of practices with the starters - it's usually worse when a backup is trust into the spotlight mid game. And in all of these cases, our system does have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to scenarios where teams as missing their starting QB. If Darnold is out next week, we may have to make the Seahawks game a stay away until we get gather more data on the team's performance without him.
An interesting note on the difference the system sees between Drew Lock and Sam Darnold. It's 2.1 points as it would apply to the score of the game. So if Darnold played the full game tonight, the score is closer to 15-10 than 13-10. It is not unreasonable to assume Darnold playing the entire game would have resulted in at least another field goal for the Seahawks - in which case the prediction of SEA -7 doesn't look so bad.
In the end, the saving grace is that the game was competitive and engaging right till the end. Let's hope for more games like this and certainly for less injuries ...
