Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Super Bowl by the odds: Vegas pick and perspective on Patriots vs. Rams

Rams reach Super Bowl

David J. Phillip / Associated Press

Los Angeles Rams players celebrate after overtime of the NFL football NFC championship game against the New Orleans Saints, Sunday, Jan. 20, 2019, in New Orleans.

If Talking Points’ Super Bowl point-spread pick were a poker hand, the blog has been playing with its cards face-up.

There was no concealing which side we fell on in the Las Vegas Weekly’s prop-centric piece or the column warning against boiling the game down to the quarterbacks. Protocol calls, however, and the promise to handicap all 266 games of the NFL season must be upheld.

Overall, this season’s pick’em has either been mediocre or decent, depending on the criteria. Talking Points has gone a passable 131-122-12 picking every game, but a poor 27-33-1 on plays with a 40-28-4 mark on leans and 64-61-7 performance on guesses rounding out the books.

The Super Bowl is always a play, and a heightened one at that considering 216 days will pass before the next opportunity to bet on a non-preseason NFL game.

Read below for Talking Points’ official pick and reasoning on Super Bowl 53.

Los Angeles Rams plus-3 vs. New England Patriots Handicapping the Super Bowl has gotten repetitive. Different teams, same equation. That’s how it feels since the advent of Talking Points.

For the seventh straight year, the point-spread decision in the biggest game of the year comes down to a similar question. Does a bettor go with the team that’s looked better in the playoffs to drive the line in their favor or the team that’s been stronger over the full course of the season and might be getting shortchanged? It should come as no surprise that the blog has gone with the larger sample size, and bet against perceived recency bias, in every instance.

The results have been negligible. Talking Points is 3-3 on the last six Super Bowls. But there’s no changing now. Going with the team that’s produced more consistently over the course of the season, even if they arguably aren’t playing their best at the moment, is the choice. And there’s no question that team is the Rams.

Yes, the Patriots have the greatest quarterback in NFL history in Tom Brady against the Rams’ Jared Goff, who might rank in the bottom half of the league’s starters. But does New England have a definitive advantage at any other position group? Some may see offensive line, where the Patriots are No. 1 in pass protection by Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings. But the Rams counter with being No. 1 in run blocking, and more importantly, they have an all-time great defensive line to challenge the Patriots’ front.

New England surely has a plan for Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh, but their presence will be felt. Let’s not forget Los Angeles assembled this core of veterans, including cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib, expressly for a shot to maximize their chance at a championship while Goff was on his rookie contract. Their roster is infinitely more impressive than the Patriots’, and for a large part of the season, the betting odds implied as much.

Los Angeles was the top power-rated team in the league for a large part of the season and even had prop bets up on if they would go undefeated before falling in New Orleans in week 9, a game in which they opened as the favorite. The course of the season was much bumpier in New England, which spent most of the year in the bottom half of the NFL’s top 10 by advanced metrics and oddsmakers’ power ratings. Many wondered aloud if it was one of coach Bill Belichick’s worst teams.

The Patriots have erased that talk and looked much more formidable in getting past San Diego and Kansas City in the playoffs. That’s a tougher path than Los Angeles has encountered in beating Dallas and New Orleans, and yet New England beat its pair of opponents by eight points more than the Rams did in the last two rounds.

But is that really worth upwards of 4 points? The Rams would have been at least a 1-point favorite in this matchup before the playoffs began. Heck, they were a pick’em going into the conference championship games.

It’s a similar quandary to the past few Super Bowls, and Talking Points will respond with an identical solution. Paying a premium for a team coming off two of its best games of the season isn’t ever going to be the answer — even if it’s the Patriots.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.

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