LOTS of live doggies this week I would have thought...
...Houston gave up a 4th quarter lead last year at home...One of the best offenses in the NFL facing an Indi D who've given up 40ppg in the X!!
...Not to mention Saturday potentially missing, and the numbers with him in/out of the team are amazing!!
Before this season Jeff Saturday had started 126 of 128 games since becoming a starter. He doubled those games missed this season [2008]. The splits with and without Jeff Saturday this past season are dramatic. The table below gives the Colts performance compared to their opponents season average (with the Indy games removed).
With/Without
Points Per Game Rush Yards Per Game
Yards Per Carry Sacks Per Game
Without
-3.05
-58.0
-1.26
-0.71
With
+4.73
-24.6
-0.23
-1.2
[Sorry, I know that is going to post badly! Hope it makes some sense. ]
[And just to elaborate a bit further...the 4 games he missed in 08 were the first 3 games (v. Chic, Min and Jax)...and v. Cleve in wk. 10 or so...
...it was the year that Manning didn't play any of pre-season, so if it was just the first 3 games I'd be tempted not to even consider it, but like I said, the Cleveland game was much later in the year...
...scored 13, 18, 21 and 10 without him...
...on only 2 other occassions all year did they score less than 21. :0corn ]
Dallas just as likely to kick 4 FG's...
...Atl should struggle to score, and aren't exactly known for their water-tight D...
...Bills pumped Miami as home dogs last season with Fitzpatrick @ QB...Edwards looked solid in pre-season, as did their running game...
...But I really like SL!
Yeah, yeah, Bradford starting...let's look at a (simplistic) comparison.
In his first pre-season Ryan went 34/59 284, 2 TD's 1 INT...won his first game...and in fact, won 7 of 8 at home!!
...Stafford...30/67 389 1 & 4...a clearly terrible team, but he did win his 2nd home game...(with zero run support!)...
...Sanchez...24/37 347 3 & 1...won his first 3 games...obviously 2/2 at home...
...Bradford...33/55 338 3 & 0!
Compares very well to the other 3 "big" (recent) picks...
...will have solid run support...against a team who gave up 4.5 ypr last year (bottom 5)...
...and best of all look to have improved immensely stopping the run themselves.
Sure, they'll still give up some big passing plays, but does anyone trust Anderson to take advantage? :0corn
Talking myself into thinking the +4 is huge...~2.70 (+270) ML is also tempting...
:0074
