2008 NFC Divisional Odds

(See last week's post for a description of what is going on here.)

This requires a bit of a leap of faith, but that Eagles price at The Greek is pretty nice. It is possible, if not probable, that the Cowboys' medical staff is at least somewhat responsible for their continued success of preventing injuries, but even after we regress these to the Vegas lines, the Eagles come out looking pretty good.

Brett Favre is no longer a Green Bay Packer. The world isn't going to end. Really, it's not. The Packers' over looks like one of the best total bets (that or the Lions under), and just about wherever you go, Green Bay to win the North looks like it is significantly +EV.

Even after having read their PFP chapter, I'm not sure why there's such a big discrepancy with Tampa here. Their Pythag was a little misleading last year (more in line with that of a 10-win team), but that doesn't even explain half of it. Maybe someone can fill me in there.

Finally, everybody agrees on who the favorite is. None of these seem worthwhile.

Pro Football Prospectus' 2008 NFL Predictions

This year's edition of Pro Football Prospectus was released today. The annual includes all sorts of excellent quantitative analysis; I should suggest picking one up yourself if you have even a passing interest in the NFL. For our purposes, though, I'm just going to focus on the little line on each team's page that says "2008 Mean Projection".

Last year, Prospectus' projections actually beat the Vegas lines by a pretty significant margin. Even after making adjustments to the lines based on juice, Vegas' average miss was 2.58 wins; PFP's was 2.36. I'm not sure how they did in previous years (I don't have the books; if someone else does and could pass along their projections, that'd be great), but beating Vegas by over 8% is pretty impressive.

PFP and Vegas have discrepancies of greater than 2.5 wins on four separate teams:

Just from flipping through the book, a couple factors are coming into play here-- Pythagorean record and schedule. Last year the Cowboys won 13 games, but according to PFP their Pythag record was only 11-6. That, couple with the 5th most difficult schedule in the league this year, is probably contributing to the large difference.

Despite playing in the same division, the Eagles are projected to have the 27th most difficult schedule; they were also 1.1 wins below their Pythag last year. Tampa was a full win below their Pythag, and will face the 23rd most difficult schedule.

The Packers don't fall into either of these categories; I would guess the difference with them is caused by people overrating the loss of Favre.

It's worth remembering that PFP doesn't necessarily have to beat the lines for these to be good bets. For example, if the Packers only win 8 games, Vegas was actually more "right", but you still win your bet. As long as you are using some competent, unbiased predictions, it's probably worth taking a shot with some of these larger discrepancies.

Photo: Amazon.

Inside Vegas: Conference Championships

The chances of each remaining team winning the Super Bowl, based on the futures odds at Sports Interaction, The Greek, Bookmaker, and Matchbook:

I took out some of the sites that have really high juice on these, as that skews things when a team's odds get as high as New England's.

The Pats are favored by 14 on Sunday, and their -700 line at Matchbook puts them at 86.8% to advance. So, if they get there, they're 82% to win the Super Bowl.

The Chargers' 13.2% chance of advancing coupled with their 7.8% Super Bowl chance puts them at 59% to win the SB if they get there. Combining the two, that puts the AFC at 79% to win the Super Bowl.

Given this, I'm surprised that the early SB line is AFC by 13.5; that seems too high. The Pats being favored by 14 this week gives them a 87% chance of winning. If the AFC is only 79% to win the SB, why are they favored by 13.5 points?

The first three here are unchanged from last week. The coin toss line is actually surprisingly close to being a good bet, but not quite.

That Brady line is even more incredible than last week's -130. He has to have better than a 77.8% chance of winning the MVP for that to be a good bet. The Pats are only 71.2% to win the Super Bowl.

Same goes for Favre. +500 needs a 17% chance to break even; the Packers are 14.9% to win the SB. These lines are shockingly bad.

Moss at +800 is infinitely better than those two. Does Moss have a 16% or better chance of winning the MVP if the Pats win the SB? If he does, it's a good bet. Seems like he might.

Same goes for Maroney at 15:1; he only needs a 9% chance of being the MVP in a Pats win for that to be a good bet. If the game was going to be played in cold weather that'd be really enticing, but, well, it's not.