The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
NFL Futures Betting: Bandwagon jumping
That old chestnut applies even more to the NFL now that the league operates under a salary cap. Winning teams can’t afford to re-sign all their free agents, making it very difficult to repeat their success from year to year. Handicappers can be vultures when it comes to identifying these clubs early and fading them at choice opportunities.
But they can also be saints when it comes to supporting the NFL’s huddled masses yearning to crawl out of the basement. Because the league’s draft is weighted so that the team with the worst record gets to pick first, those teams -- provided they have some brains in the front office -- get to rebuild with more high-caliber prospects. A sharp capper is always on the quest for a team that’s quietly on the rise.
The list of favorites with feet of clay starts with the defending NFC champions. The Chicago Bears went 13-3 last year (9-7 against the spread) before making it all the way to the Super Bowl. Can the Bears duplicate that success? The futures market has them at 4-1 to retain the conference title -- the shortest odds in the conference -- and 15-1 to win the big game.
However, not all is well in Chicagoland. The Bears waived defensive tackle Tank Johnson, which will take some of the starch out of an otherwise excellent front four. And Chicago is looking at another season with a patchwork receiving corps. The Bears went instead with tight end Greg Olsen in the first round; he’ll catch his share of passes, but he won’t do much to balance the offense in a way that can benefit quarterback Rex Grossman’s development.
For 2007, the Bears are looking at an over/under of 10.5 wins with the Under priced at -155. Nobody would bat an eyelash if Chicago went 10-6 and still won the NFC. But what are the chances things fall apart? According to Two Minute Warning, there have only been 16 teams during the salary-cap era who went 13-3; five of them posted losing records the next year. This is the ignominious company the Bears will try to avoid keeping. Instead, they’ll point at the eight 13-3 teams who went on to win at least 10 games the following season.
The clubs more likely to collapse are among those small favorites who won 9-10 games in 2006. There have been 80 such teams over the past decade, a much stronger sample size, and 31 of them were sub-.500 the year after. The potential flops from this category include the New York Jets (10-6 SU, 11-5 ATS) and the Kansas City Chiefs (9-7 SU, 8-8 ATS). Both teams had tiny margins of victory: 1.3 points for New York and exactly one for Kansas City. They played above their heads last year, and the Chiefs may be especially vulnerable after trading No. 1 quarterback Trent Green to Miami.
Green’s trip to Florida takes us to the more optimistic side of handicapping. The Dolphins (6-10 SU, 6-10 ATS) thought last year would be their return to glory, but Daunte Culpepper simply wasn’t healthy enough for the job. That leaves Green to come in and guide an offense that should get the most out of his management skills. Switching coaches from Nick Saban to former San Diego Chargers offensive coordinator Cam Cameron should also pay off immediately for a Dolphins team that already had one of the better defenses in the league.
The trends also look tasty for the Fish. Out of 37 six-win teams working under the cap, 21 went on to post at least nine victories. Yet the Dolphins total sits at seven, with the Over only a slight favorite at -125. That would be worth a shot even if Miami hadn’t improved during the offseason; the team was only outscored by 1.4 points per game, a better average result than the 8-8 Tennessee Titans, Green Bay Packers and Carolina Panthers.
Two other teams poised for breakthrough 2007 campaigns happen to play in the same division: the Arizona Cardinals (5-11 SU, 8-8 ATS) and San Francisco 49ers (7-9 SU, 9-7 ATS) of the NFC West. Both teams made strides toward respectability in 2006 and again during the offseason, but each is looking at a total of 7.5 wins for 2007
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Bandwagon jumping
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