As usual, I am going to take a dive into the week’s slate of games and try to dig up some trends. Hopefully, they give us an edge when making game selections each week. For Wild Card Weekend, we’re going to split the slate into Saturday’s AFC matchups and Sunday’s NFC games.
Of course, trends are trends…until they’re not. Sometimes betting on the other end of a trend ending can be advantageous. The goal here isn’t to plant a flag based on a trend, rather to simply shine a spotlight on these trends that exist and talk through some of them as food for thought.
Wild Card Weekend Overview
Just as a brief overview, I'll touch on some big-picture numbers since the NFL expanded to 32 teams and their current playoff format in 2002. Over that span, playing underdogs has been fortuitous. Dogs in the Wild Card Round are 37-30-1 against the line (55.9%). Of course, that also means that home field has held no true advantage for the start of the postseason, with road teams going 36-31-1 (54.4%). Over the past two seasons, home teams (all eight were favorites) are a combined 0-8 against the spread.
One other ongoing trend for the start of the playoffs is lower-scoring games than expected. The Wild Card Round has been an under magnet, with 60.3% (41-of-68) of those games falling short of the implied total. That's held true of late, with unders going 6-2 over the past two seasons. If you played every under over those 17 seasons, you would have 10 winning seasons and just three losing ones, with the last season in which more Wild Card overs hit was in 2011. Since that 2011 season, under have hit in 20-of-28 (71.4%) Wild Card Round games.
Vikings at Saints
No team was a better bet this season than the Saints, who went a league-best 11-5 against the spread. Interestingly with that record, they were just 4-4 against the spread at home, where they’ll be this weekend.
This will be the eighth home playoff game Drew Brees and Sean Payton have hosted. Home field advantage has been beneficial for the Saints under both Brees and Payton, posting a 6-1 record in those games, with their lone loss coming last season in the NFC Championship Game. Although the Saints have been a tough out at home in the postseason, they are just 2-5 against the spread in those home playoff games. Of their six wins, four have come by six or fewer points.
If playing team total sides, the Saints hit their implied team total in eight of the 10 full games played by Brees this season, with both games falling short against the Falcons.
In the playoffs, the Vikings under Mike Zimmer have a 1-2 record heads up and against the spread. These teams played a stellar playoff game two years ago in the Divisional Round in which the Vikings pulled out a 29-24 win on a Stefon Diggs 61-yard walk-off touchdown. These teams have played four times since Zimmer joined the Vikings, with both teams splitting the series 2-2. The Saints have been the better bet in those games, going 3-1 against the spread.
One of the main narratives this week will be Kirk Cousins’s record against winning teams. As a starting quarterback, teams led by Cousins have a 7-30 record against teams that are above .500 at the time of playing them. This season, the Vikings were 2-4 heads up and against the spread in those spots, with wins and covers versus the Eagles and Cowboys.
Seahawks at Eagles
Both the Eagles (7-9) and the Seahawks (7-8-1) were under .500 against the spread this season. Despite their subpar record against the line for the season, Seattle was 5-2-1 against the spread on the road this season, which plays into this game Sunday.
This game is the lone rematch of a regular-season matchup this weekend. In Week 12, the Seahawks beat the Eagles 17-9 in Philadelphia as a 1-point favorite. The Seahawks have been one of the best bets to make traveling to the East Coast.
Since drafting Russell Wilson in 2012, the Seahawks are 21-9 playing in the Eastern Time Zone, while sporting a 19-9-2 record in those games against the spread. That includes winning seven straight games (5-1-1 ATS). In the playoffs, however, they are 2-3 straight up (3-2 ATS) in those spots, dropping their past two playoff games on the East Coast to the Falcons in the 2016 postseason and the Panthers in 2015.
In the playoffs in totality, Seattle has an 8-5 record (7-6 ATS) with Wilson under center. On Wild Card Weekend, they have a 5-1 record (4-2 ATS) with a 1-1 record (2-0 ATS) on the road in the opening round of the postseason.
The Eagles are no strangers to being an underdog in the postseason under Doug Pederson. Under Pederson, the Eagles have been underdogs in all five of their playoff games, outright winning four of those games and covering the spread in all five.
This is the first of those playoff games to be quarterbacked by Carson Wentz, which places him the trend we highlighted in the AFC trends as a first-time playoff starting quarterback going against a team with a quarterback who has already accrued postseason starts. That trend doesn’t bode well for the Eagles, but the rate of those games that fall short of the game total pairs up with a trend that the Eagles have had at home this season. Philadelphia games ran hot on the road (54.6 combined points per game, second-most in the league) while they ran cold at home (37.8 combined points per game, 29th). Games in Philadelphia went under the game total in six of eight games this season.
