The Ringer NFL Show - Championship Weekend and Betting on Super Bowl LV

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Sharp and Verno look back at championship weekend to determine how much blame the Packers deserve in their loss and whether the Buccaneers are truly the best team in the NFC. Later, they look ahead to Super Bowl LV early betting numbers. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, Chris Vernon and I look back on the Bucks and the Chiefs and their victories on championship weekend. We take a look at some of the betting odds for the Super Bowl and break the game down. Coming up next. Welcome to The Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon. And join me as he does every Wednesday is Warren Sharp. Warren. Chris, we only have one game left. But I must tell you, we're going to start with this.

Before we get into dissecting what happened on championship weekend, I thought of you. right after the last game ended. And do you want to know what the first thought that went through my mind was? And this is, we may end up saving this, but you may not want to tell me now. But I thought, is Warren going to hedge? The first show we did here, you said, Chiefs to win the Super Bowl is a great value.

It was one of the few things that you said on the show, and you said, here are the number. I think this is a great value. And as the weeks went on, that value went down a little bit. But if anybody listened to you in week one, they're holding on to a Chiefs win the Super Bowl ticket. And I thought,

I wonder if he's going to recommend what to do with that. What do you do? Do you let the Chief's winning ticket ride? Well, I think we'll definitely touch on it next Wednesday so that we give people final advice or even the Friday before. But I will say I did get off a little bit of that ticket on the Buffalo Bills last week. So instead of making 4x, we're now going to make 3X.

But we do stand to gain a good price on that. And yeah, there's going to be some interesting opportunities. I could tell you something personally I did. So as you know, I'm in Virginia. and one of the things that I ended up doing, a lot of these places that started legalization, I'm not going to mention any their names because they're not giving me anything for it.

But they have bonuses. You put a certain amount of money in and you can get a free bet. So you had the bet. The maximum on the free bet was a dime. Okay, so $1,000. So what I did is I started looking at, obviously I put in more than that,

but I was like, okay, I got this $1,000 free play. What am I going to use it on? And you could use it on anything straight, right? Like I could have just bet the Chiefs last week to win that game, or I could have bet the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. Or I could bet any team to win the Super Bowl if I wanted to. But what I ended up doing before the games kicked off last week was I bet an exact Super Bowl matchup.

I wanted to try to bet the MVP of the Super Bowl, but they didn't have those up at this spot. But they did have exact Super Bowl matchups, which ended up paying out better than the MVP would have anyways for the team I was going for, which was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So I ended up putting the dime at a plus 750 on the exact Super Bowl result would be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to beat the Kansas City Chiefs. So now I have a free play going with $1,000 of free money, which I'll get back if it doesn't work. But now I've got Tampa Bay to win this game. Basically, it's Tampa Bay Money Line, but now I've got a dime to win 7,500. So from my own personal perspective, I'm pretty good on that right now.

But in terms of recommendations, I will absolutely have some ideas and thoughts on what to do for everybody who bet the chiefs at some point earlier in the season with futures. Are you typically always a, if you've got a winning ticket in your hand, hedge it, figure out a way to, win either way or are you in some cases let it ride? No, absolutely. Some cases are certainly let it ride. I actually bet a long shot on the Rams to win the Super Bowl and I let it ride in the first round the playoffs when they beat and upset the Seattle Seahawks. So there's certain times when you do want to let things ride or there's no real great way to hedge. So there's like two reasons you would let it ride. Either you want to let it ride financially or there's

not a perfect way to hedge and so you just decide to let it ride as a result of that. Okay, let's get to how these teams got there and your biggest takeaway first from Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay has now, it's been a long time since they lost a game. You and I

tweeted about this Sunday night, you and I were doing a show after I believe it was week 12 when Tampa Bay had fallen to 7 and 5 and I said at the beginning of the show, there was this Tampa, Kansas City game, and at the end of the game,

Romo surprised me by saying, Jim, I think that we could see these two teams playing again. I really thought Tampa figured some stuff out. And we had this discussion about, did Tampa really figure stuff out, or were they just getting their ass beat and the chiefs kind of took their foot off the gas? And that's why that score ended up being that score at the end.

Tampa has in Romo's defense, Tampa has not lost the game since. So they did figure something out. And here they are with Tom Brady appearing in the Super Bowl. Your biggest takeaway from what we saw in that NFC championship game and how Tampa ended up in the Super Bowl. Well, it was interesting. You know, as I'm looking down through what they did throughout the course of the rest of the regular season after that game. I mean, they have won every single game through the rest of the regular season, but they were not winning these games because they were playing teams that should actually

be able to compete with them. They were five to seven to 12.5 point favorites in all of these games to close the season. Anytime during the season that they were projected to be in a close game, with the exception of the Packers in week six, they didn't fare very well at all. So if you look week one, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were an underdog to the Saints, they lost that game. The next closest game, let's look at anything that was under a four-point favorite. Three and a half point favorite at the Chicago Bears, week five, they lost that game. Then they have the game against the Packers, which they won. Then they are a three and a half point

favorite against the Saints, week nine. They lose that game. Then they are a three and a half point favored against the Rams week 11. They lose that game. Then they're a three and a half point underdog against the Chiefs, which we were talking about the Romo game. They lose that game. And the rest of the regular season, they're favored by large margins. So every close game, any game that was less than four points, they did not prevail in those games until you got to the playoffs. And you had the game against the Saints. You had the game against the Packers. And they were underdogs in both those games on the road and won both of those games. They've, like, looking at one of my things, I tracked a key metric.

I've done it for years called Early Down Success Rate, which was a metric I kind of coined the name for. It's not just looking at success rate on early downs. There's a couple of other computations that I'm doing on this. And I'm looking at how much of an edge you have in a particular game because it's very correlated to wins or losses in the NFL. If you beat your opponent in early down success rate in a game, you're going to stand to win that game, especially in the playoffs at a tremendous rate. And they actually lost the early down success rate battle in both of their playoff games.

They had a massive boon. They were great at early down success the last three weeks of the regular season against the Falcons twice and the Lions. That was when they were passing a lot on early downs and they were able to move the sticks and not go to third down. But in the playoffs, they've reverted right back to where they were and they lost the early down success rate battle against the Saints and the Packers by pretty large margins. But I believe that they were plus four in turnovers in both those games. I can't recall offhand what they were against the Packers last week right now, whether they had four takeaways or, no, they actually didn't because Brady three three interceptions. Yeah. So they didn't win the turnover battle by that

margin against the Packers. But they were significantly outplayed on early downs. They got the job done by third down production. Okay. So let me play devil's advocate here, okay? Much like the Matt LaFleur kicking a field goal with 210 left to go down five. You know, and I've seen some of the different analytics for that to make it look like it's not nearly a stupid as it sounds.

Much like that, what if I say to you, Warren? Warren, I get it. I understand the numbers, but that's simply, I don't care about the analytics when it comes to Tom Brady. And much like I would never give him the ball with 2.10 left,

needing to get a first down or two in order to win a game, he's a different dude on Darden Long. Like, that's why he's Tom Brady. And so you can say that these teams didn't have the success rate on early downs, but look at their success rate on third downs. And that's kind of been his mode of operation for 20 years. It's not bad to have Tom Brady in a third and seven.

And that is unlike almost anybody else. What do you say to that? Okay. So to that I say that this is not what he's been. He's been good on third downs, but his teams for years have not put him in these situations. The New England Patriots offense, not in 2019 when they were terrible, but in years prior to that when they were actually having success, they were one of the most efficient early down offenses

in the NFL. They would bypass third downs at a pretty high rate. They trusted Tom. They threw the ball. And again, you got to get rid of like fourth quarters when they're up big and they're running the ball a lot on these early downs. They were always very good at being efficient, one of the most efficient offense. in the NFL and bypassing these third downs. The problem fundamentally with just banking on Tom

on third downs is it's a very, it's a lot, it's high variance. And it typically, typically, I know Tom is built different is not sustainable. So here's the other factor going up against the, the chiefs. And let me just take this to a very close to home point for the people that watch that game against the Green Bay Packers this very last weekend. Go back to the first quarter of those games. The Packers run the ball on five of six first downs in the first quarter. Five of six is a run play. Defenses know they're running the football.

That's why those runs typically aren't very successful. Those runs on first down gain 2.2 yards per carry. I won't even get in the success rate stuff to it was 20%, but let's not talk about that. Let's just about yards per carry. So then they have to pass the ball on second and third down. Now, I told you that they had six first downs. They ran it on five. They also had six third downs,

which means they never once skipped a second down or a third down by getting a first down on first or second down. They're always getting forced into third down. Tom Brady goes five of six on these third downs. His conversion rate is absolutely absurd. and they're including the touchdown pass to Mike Evans in the back of the end zone. That type of stuff is not very sustainable long term. I know it's Tom Brady, but now look at the matchup against the Kansas City Chiefs for the Super Bowl because that's all we should really care about right now.

The Kansas City Chief's third down defense ranks number three in the NFL when the offense has six to ten yards to go. So the third and short situations where the opposing offense can run or pass, you could do that a little bit against the chiefs. You can convert some of those. But when you're in third in obvious passing situations where Tampa finds themselves somewhat regularly, and now they're asking Tom Brady to convert for them, that's not going to work quite as well against one of the very best defenses in the NFL. And Steve Spagnolo is a tremendously gifted defensive play caller who doesn't. have the most talented unit and that unit certainly has their weaknesses but he always seems to come up with stuff that frustrates the offense that confuses them and they step up at the exact right moments to have success and that's what they've been able to do so far this this postseason

and i'm just concerned that that's going to have a little bit of uh get some of the tarnish off of what tampa tom has been able to do on third downs for the buccaneers today's ringer NFL show was brought to you by Fanduil, celebrate the 55th edition of the big game with exclusive 55 to 1 odds on Fandual Sportsbook. If you've never tried Fandual before, new users can bet on either team and get 55 to 1 odds when the bucks play the chiefs.

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1-800 bets off in Iowa. 1-800-9 with it in Indiana. 1-800-270-717 for confidential help in Michigan. 1-800-gambler in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia. You can call the Tennessee Red Line at Tennessee at 1-800-9-97-89 or visit 1-800-gambler.net in West Virginia. All right. not super impressed with the buccaneers and how they won their game against the Packers. That being said, how much do you blame?

You spent a large amount of the year, you know, talking about coaches and the decisions that they make. Matt LaFleur has been in the spotlight for what happened in that game. Where are you on the LaFleur decisions? Most specifically, the one that, Everyone has criticized roundly, which is the kicking the field goal down by eight to cut the lead to five. I don't think it was a smart decision at all. And I think the numbers bear that out. But I also think that there's a fundamental problem with the thought process that you're going to be able to march the football all the way back down the field to try to score again.

It just doesn't, it just did not make any sense. You're going to need a touchdown anyways. and in this situation, late in the game, you absolutely have to go for the points there. The bigger thing to me, and that's, I mean, I guess the kick was bigger than this notion, but what preceded that kick was the bigger issue to me, and that was a fundamental lack of communication

between the person that's in charge of kick or go decision-making and the person that's calling the play, Now, you would think in this case, oh, well, it's Matt LaFleur. He's the coach. He decided to kick, and he's also the play caller. But no, that's not the case because Aaron Rogers called the play on third down. He said, I was the one who called the play on third down. And I didn't know that we were not going to go for it on fourth down.

So I assumed we were going to go for it on fourth down. I called this play on third down. And then all of a sudden, the big lineman in the kick protection unit start running on to the football field and there's nothing I can do about it and we're going for the field goal and it's over working with several play callers in the NFL. It is vital from a sequencing perspective, from a strategic perspective to have a firm understanding if you are in go position, ideally before first down. Like I would have wanted to know what our philosophy was before first down, there's, I know like the time is not the exact same, but we got,

we got four minutes left in this game. Are we going forward or not when we're, when we're here? We got first and 10 at, let's say the 10 yard line or 12 yard line or 15 yard line. Are we going for it? Are we settling for a field goal here? So I know if I've got all four downs in my arsenal to call plays to try to convert this into a first down and then a touchdown eventually. And Aaron Rogers was unaware completely on first down. on second down and even on third down, whether or not he was going to have a play on fourth down that they were going to be allowed to run. So I just thought that was terrible coaching before even the decision to kick the field goal. Yeah. And I look at it like, all right, it is a different

decision dependent upon who is on the other side. I mean, I really think that. If you're going up against not Tom Brady I could at least see how it could be defensible. But to me, this is like it is the equivalent of I'm down by one against the 90s

Bulls. And I've got a chance to go win the game. And I shoot the game winner and make it, I shoot my last shot with 10 seconds left to go. To go up by one instead of shooting it at the buzzer right and so now i'm giving the ball to michael jordan with 10 seconds left and i'm up by one what the fuck do i think's gonna happen right like to me that's the

equivalent like you've given the ball back to tom brady what did you think like he's we's been winning that game for 20 years he's winning that game like that's what you can't do and the bigger part of this warren forget the catastrophe that it was within the context of the game. Outside of the game, what if that costs them Aaron Rogers? And they can do all this speaking public right now about how, you know, Aaron's going to be here and whatever else.

I was watching Adam Schefter the other day, and he's out there reporting like, this is Aaron's decision. You know what I mean? If Aaron wants to be a Packer, Aaron's got to be a Packer. If Aaron doesn't want to be a Packer, right, he's going to force their hand for him to not be a Packer anymore. Like, what if that is, though, the breaking point.

Like, forget losing the NFC championship. If that runs off Aaron Rogers, this then, in that context, outside of the context of the game, goes down as one of the worst decisions in NFL history, seriously. If he ends up going somewhere else because much like Brady just turned the team

into a Super Bowl, you know, a Super Bowl opponent, like Aaron. Rogers could do that. If he went to another team, it's possible that he could go and turn a team into a Super Bowl caliber team just by his beer presence. And so, well, it's not just, it's not just his presence. Like at a certain point, then you've got the, well, let's join Aaron in, in, in, in, in wherever he is. Right. So you've got other players that are like, let's go win one with this guy. And that's the biggest thing about Tom Brady going to Tampa. It's it's it's it's Tom going there. But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, but it's. But it's, it's. But it's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's now all of a sudden the culture, the culture wherever Tom goes is Tom. Like the culture on the team changes in a split second because Tom is there and now we've got a shot to win the Super Bowl. And so you watch what Tom does. You watch how he behaves, how he acts at practice, how he's motivated, how he's driven, how he's focused. And it's impossible for the culture to not flip on a

dime overnight. And then you've got like your Rob Grunkowski wants to come down there too. And And they didn't really, they already had a great core of players. They didn't really have to attract that many new ones. But a variety of different teams, like, that's exactly what could happen. It's what happened to New England in the past where guys are willing to go there for less money. And so if Aaron went somewhere for and set up shop for several years, right? He's obviously younger than Tom Brady. You're in Ever will be going to have some guys that want to go play with him for a little bit cheaper price if they've got a shot at winning a Super Bowl.

So you look back at that Packers. season and they get there right to the precipice again and now they're not appearing in the Super Bowl. They only, they've won with Aaron Rogers, they've won one NFC championship game. They have lost four. What do we make of this Packer season and why they're not playing in the Super Bowl? In your opinion. Everybody thought that they were going to regress in subcapacity this season. If you look at what the win total was forecast at, if you look at what all the people in the offseason were looking at their single score wins was from last year and how they were like nine and one. And this is something that's going to regress. And they can't be good next season. It's

just impossible for this team to win as many one score games next season. And they end up getting all the way to the NFC championship game in 2020. This to me was a tremendous success. I know for them, they wanted to take the next step. And I think where it probably became a failure for them was the fact that they earned the number one overall seed in the NFC. And they got to host the NFC championship game at Lambo. And it was something Aaron Rogers had put a lot of stock into wanting to do.

And when they were able to do that, was like, okay, now we've got a shot at the Super Bowl. And the fact that they didn't get there to the Super Bowl, I think made it a failure for them with that number one overall seed. But for me, and probably for a lot of other people out there that actually aren't Packers fans, I think we were extremely impressed by what the Green Bay Packers were able to do this year and how they performed overall. I thought the play calling, I thought the changes that Aaron Rogers made, I mean, I'm going to be working on my book in a couple of weeks. I'm going to start writing in. I'll be researching stuff for months before I actually publish it, really digging into a lot of the intricacies of what

Matt LaFleur was doing from a play calling perspective, because they got a lot better from when they were in 2019, from play calls to execution. Aaron Rogers made some fundamental changes with some of his mechanics. I saw him talking yesterday, I think it was, on the Pat McAfee show about how he was. was sinking into some throws with his hips. He worked a lot on his lower body this offseason. He was watching some film of himself and practices, I think, in like the 2011, 2010 seasons. And he saw how he was sinking into his hitch and getting a lot of power off of that. And it was helping with his timing on different passes that he was throwing. And when he throws with proper timing, his accuracy improves tremendously. And so he was working on lower body strength and core strength. And that really made a

big difference this past season. So to me, their season was a massive success and absolutely a big improvement over what the sports books and most betters decided, you know, was going to be the fate of this team before the season started. As we put a bow on the NFC, do you think the best team in the NFC is the Bucks? Do you think that they have their best team representing that conference in the Super Bowl? Yes. I'm reserved when I say that because I think this team can actually be better. I truly do. I think if they improve some of their play calling, they could be even better. Take some of the burden off of Tom Brady for having to be perfect on these third downs. And I think that they could be better. But overall, I think the way that they're peaking and getting better, we knew, I mean, it's very difficult to have a team with all these changes. in a pandemic season.

So we probably had some understanding that this team would get better later in the year, but they absolutely have improved down the stretch. And so where they are right now, I would say yes. There were some... And we haven't talked about Todd Bowles and the job that defense,

there's the two Brady picks, and that defense has come up huge over and over again for Tampa. I was actually... I saw a video yesterday as from early. in the season. And it was Christian McCaffrey getting tackled by Devin White. And McCaffrey gets up. It's one of those like miced up deals. And he says to him, you know you're the best. You're the

best we have in the league right now. And Devin White said, hey, and Devin White says, I know. But I mean, like, you get overshadowed by. And he had, what, 14, 15 tackles in this game the other day. Like everything is about Tom Brady and about, you know, Tampa and the offense and, you know, Godwin and Evans and even Scotty Miller and Antonio Brown. People can reel off these guys play off Lennie. It's always about their offense. Everything that gets talked about is their offense. And yet they've got this guy, Devin White, who is like as good as anybody as a linebacker and the defense and the defensive coordinator that have really, they've showed. up when it's mattered most. They really have, whether it's big plays or whether it's getting huge

stops. And they were all over Roger's ass on Sunday, all over it. Yeah, they were. I mean, even their four-man pressures were able to get home. And that's one of the things like when we talk about, is this the best team in the NFC? I say yes. But that obviously is handicapping the fact that Drew Brees was playing with all these injuries late in the season. And Mike, Mike, uh, his wide receiver won, Michael Thomas, was injured and he's getting off-season surgery, and he only came back just so that he could play in Drew's final game or what's presumed to be Drew's final game. And so, like, Green Bay was without a key tackle, you know, David Bakhtiari.

And so these things end up adding up. Like at the end of the season, some of these things end up adding up. That's why it's going to be fascinating to look at the Kansas City Chiefs who are without both of their tackles now that started the season. You look at Mitchell Schwartz and you look at Fisher. Those guys are both out for this Super Bowl game. And that's going to be a big edge for this defensive line. And Todd Bowles has done a good job. You know, they have done an excellent job.

And getting pressure is important because I think that this Tampa Bay defense is susceptible in their secondary. I think that they are very ball-oriented and they like to jump routes and they're very aggressive. but I think that from a talent perspective, you could beat these guys. You could find edges against these guys. But if you're getting pressure quickly, like they were able to do against Aaron Rogers very frequently, it becomes a challenge to try to work the ball down the field.

And so you're not going to be able to have a lot of success running the football against these guys. And you're going to have to resort to the pass. But if you're looking at deeper dropbacks and deeper routes, you're going to struggle if that defensive line is able to get at you. And that's exactly what they were to do against Aaron Rogers. And it'll be interesting to see if they're able to have any similar success against Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl. Yeah, let's talk about that AFC championship.

We knew that it was going to be a tremendous chore for the Buffalo Bills defensively. That being said, the two guys that are the guys that make that offense so devastating. Mahomes weapons-wise are. Kelsey and Tyree Kill and both of them went all the way the hell off

on Sunday, Warren. I mean, the bills, you know, and Romo was talking during the game, you know, it can't be both of them, right?

You got to be able to slow down one of these guys. And it's fascinating to think about that Buck's defense in relation to what we saw

just on Sunday. If it wasn't a touchdown, it was a field goal. And that goes back to even the week before prior to Mahomes going out and Henny having to come in, you know, the chiefs are scoring like every damn time they have the ball. Their punter gets no work.

And what did you make of the bills? If you love field goals, you loved what they did on offense. But more importantly, defensively, and the fact that, you know, Tyree Kill has, you know, it looked like he could have had 300, yards in the game, he ends up having 180-something.

And, you know, Travis Kelsey hits his receptions over before we even get the halftime of that game. So what did you make of the bills and what ended up being a rather feeble attempt at slowing down the chiefs? There's a couple of things that's stand out to me in this game. The first thing is, as most things do, it comes down to what you can do inside the red zone, right? If turnovers are equal, are you scoring touchdowns or are you not?

turnovers were equal in this game, both team had won. Well, Kansas City, Kansas City was infinitely worse. Six trips to the Reds. No, because the guy's at the one-yard line. I mean, it gave Buffalo literally a touchdown. Correct. That was a terrible.

I mean, the bills got extremely fortunate on that first touchdown of the game in the first quarter, no doubt about it. Six trips to the Red Zone for the Chiefs, five touchdowns. five trips to the red zone for the bills, close to being as good, only two touchdowns. And you just can't allow that to happen, especially because what was very interesting leading up into the game is that the Kansas City Chiefs had the worst red zone defense in the NFL. Down the stretch, there was no team with the worst red zone defense, and yet the bills are only scoring two times out of five. and there's somebody out there, I don't know, probably in the 80s who coined the phrase, any drive that ends with a kick is a good drive, right?

Any drive that ends with a kick because they didn't like turnover or some nonsense. The Buffalo Bills in this game had 10 drives, okay, they had four field goals and three punts, right? So that seven out of their 10 drives ended with a field goal or a punt. And you just can't allow that to happen against the Kansas City Chiefs. It's absolutely touchdown or bust. This was like the Buffalo Bill's Super Bowl. This is pull out all the stops, empty the chamber, come here, guns blazing, anything less than the best effort that we can get is going to be a losing effort.

Now, the Travis Kelsey bit, you're 100% correct. I mean, I was looking at props, and I took a small bite of this really long shot one, but it was Travis Kelsey to score a touchdown and have 100 yards receiving, and it was plus 250. And, you know, there are definitely, and I think his receiving prop was like at minus 110 was like 7 and a half. No, he's like 94 and a half. Sorry, his receiving yards was like 94 and a half, and to score touchdown, he was favored to do that. I think it was like minus 120 or something like that.

But yeah, to do both would pay you plus 250. And this is just a bad matchup against the Buffalo Bills. The Buffalo Bills linebackers can be exploited. And I'm still digging into exactly how much they were stacking the box and trying to force the chiefs to become one-dimensional and throw the football because we know that they sat way back in the first meeting and just dared the chiefs to run the football. And one of the things that we discussed on this show and on the Friday show with House

was the fact that just because a defensive coordinator plays a certain coverage, says, okay, sit back, you know, we want you to get rid of the ball. We want you to hand the ball off to Darrell Williams or Clyde Edwards-Hillard. We don't want Patrick Mahomes throwing it. Like you can't just cave into that if you're Andy Reed. You can't just say, oh, well, this is the coverage they're playing. They're daring us to run. So we're just going to go ahead and do that and still have success.

Like, you've got to force the issue. And they absolutely did, Patrick Mahomes, 29 of 38, 8.6 yards per pass attempt with three touchdowns. Only takes one sack. I mean, his foot, like we discussed on Friday show, or maybe it was with you, people, all these questions about his foot, his head. And I was like, dude, he's going to be fine. Do not worry about this whatsoever.

Now, he didn't run the football. He didn't have, they intentionally didn't have him run the football much. She only had a handful of run plays, and he didn't really gain many yards off of those. But it was a drop-back passing game for him and a few selected run plays that were okay. I mean, Darrell Williams gained four yards of carry, and Clyde Edwards-Hillair only gained 1.2 yards of carry. But it was a very intelligent game plan from the Kansas City Chiefs, put the ball in your best player's hand, work the massive mismatches that exists, which is to the tight end. and it's always a mismatch with Tyree Kill, right? So the bills can't defend tight ends.

Tyree Kill is always open. So we're going to hit those two guys. We're going to let Patrick Mahones throw the ball, figure out a way to stop us. The Buffalo Bill's defense couldn't. And then alternatively on offense, the Buffalo Bills got down to the red zone five times, but couldn't punch in any touchdowns with any type of consistency. One of the most devastating tandums in the entire NFL throughout the entire season was Allen and Diggs and it just never

it never got going Lauren like the whole game and I was I was surprised by that because even though Buffalo as you mentioned was getting you know they were moving the ball and they were getting the ball down into the red zone and then not converting it wasn't digs that wasn't how they were

getting there and that was kind of shocking to me because I had felt like with Buffalo those guys had had such a connection and you juxtapose that versus the other side, which is we, if we can slow down digs, then we've gone a long way towards being able to slow down this team or make it difficult for them to score touchdowns. Likewise on the other side, it's like you would think if we could slow down Kelsey or if we could throw slow down Tyree Kill. And so the Chiefs,

despite some of their defensive flaws, they were able to take digs out of that game. And the bills couldn't take either one of the major weapons for the chiefs out of the game. Yeah, and the bills, the one interesting thing there was they weren't able to handle the pressure quite as well. You know, the blitzes were coming from the Kansas City Chiefs. Kansas City did a lot of similar things that they did in that first meeting. And the Buffalo O line wasn't doing quite as good of a job at picking those up as I was expecting that they would. and there was pressure getting on Josh Allen. And so that pressure, I mean, he's very flummoxed by pressure.

If you look at what he does typically when he's just blitzed, we talked about this leading into the game. If he's just blitzed, he's really good. But if the blitz generates pressure, two different things, or if pressure gets to him through regular four-man rushes, then he's very bad. And we saw that where he was pressured a lot in this game and was very inefficient on those passes when he was pressured.

And a lot of those were like, he's looking to go down the field. He's looking to go after digs, but pressure's getting to him. And you're right, they didn't really seem to be on point with some of the passes. And actually, there were a couple of plays early in that game, earlier in that game, rather, that should have been interceptions. Josh Allen was throwing the ball down the right side of the field, looking to target some of his favorite guys. and they were just errant passes

that should have been intercepted, but the D.Bs just couldn't secure them. All right, so what if I take a step back and I say, all right, we've talked about the flaws of Tampa Bay and kind of the holes they showed. And same thing goes with the Cheaps. They, you know, we can,

if we're just talking about process here rather than result, the bill's moved the ball down the field over and over again. As you said, Josh Allen didn't play all that well. And the week before, and I know that maybe it's a totally different world, and they just bury the Browns if Mahomes doesn't go out.

But they didn't. They didn't bury the Browns. The Browns were still in that thing. And what if I say, all right, the bill's going to the Red Zone that many times and not cashing in, that tells a real story here about how that what appears to be a judge. jug or not could be beat because it ain't Baker Mayfield and it ain't Josh Allen. That's not who they're going against now. And if they want to play one of these games where a team's able to get the ball into the

red zone and then they've got to buck up and get a stop, they are in for it against Tom Brady because that's a different deal than going up against the Baker Mayfield or or Josh Allen. Did in your mind that show a real weakness that could? could be exploited by a better quarterback. Yeah, there's no doubt with a more well-rounded team as well. One of the things that the Buffalo Bills could not do in large part because their number one back was injured. And their O line just isn't built well enough to pass to run protect.

It's one of the kind of the run block rather. It's one of the things that the Pittsburgh Steelers were dealing with two. Their offensive line was older and wasn't good at run blocking. They're good at dropping back and pass blocking, but they're not as good at run blocking. And so Buffalo just couldn't run the football nearly as well. Tampa Bay, as much as I hate the inefficiency that comes about their first down runs, they are a little bit more balanced. So they should, when you get into the red zone, the most optimal time, Chris, on the football field to run the football is the most optimal time from a down perspective is on a short yardage down.

like a second and short, third and short, as well as down inside the red zone, especially when you spread the field and then you can run the football with a running back. Like the four net run. Spread them out, throw three wides out there and then run the football. You also have a massive advantage because you've got gronk. And gronk is a tight end is like the best run blocking tight end in the NFL, perhaps right now that we have. And so when he's in there as part of your 11 personnel package, you basically have a sixth offensive lineman. And so you have a massive edge to run down inside of the red zone.

And so that opens up your playbook a little bit further. For the Buffalo Bills, it was like, okay, well, we can run Josh Allen a little bit down here in the red zone. But if you look at their drive chart, you know, take out the three-yard drive. Yeah, the three-yard drive where they scored a touchdown because they got the turnover on the muffed punt. They literally, aside from like a 16-yard field goal that they kicked late in the game, they had only one drive that gained less than 26 yards. They had a number of drives that they worked a ball down into the Kansas City Chief's territory that obviously didn't end up with with anything. They get to the opponents, look at these drives to the opponent's yard lines, right, that didn't

end in touchdowns, but started on their own territory, right? A drive to the opponent, two yard line that ended in a field goal. A drive to the opponent and the opponent in this case, obviously is Kansas City Chief. A drives to the opponent, two. field goal. Eight, opponent eight, field goal. The opponent 20,

interception. The opponent 33 twice. Both of them were field goals. You know, these are nice, sustained drives that don't end up. They punted at the opponent 49 yard line. I mean,

Tom Brady and Bruce Aaron, if there's one thing we can say that those guys did really good was remember that decision right before the half to bring Tom Brady back out on the field when it looked like they were going to punt the football. It stayed aggressive on a fourth and short, and they end up

going for it. They throw a pass to Leonard for it. They get it. They call a timeout. Then they end up throwing that deep bomb to Scotty Miller over King who completely blew the coverage there. That showed the level of aggressiveness that's going to be required to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in a Super Bowl. I mean, for Tom Brady, I know they might think the season was a failure if they don't win the Super Bowl. But like this season, you know, we could look at all these teams that made it, right? Green Bay, massive success this season. Buffalo Bills, are you kidding me? Even bigger success than what Green Bay was, right? Even though it stings and that they lost this game. Massive success. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this will be a massive success this season, even if they don't win the Super Bowl.

To be the first team to ever play a Super Bowl at home to get Tom Brady in here to see how much they've been able to accomplish in his season with a pandemic this this year. This has been a massive success. For Kansas City, if they lose this game, the season's a failure. I mean, they're the only team that's made it this far that's going to be able to say that. So you could guarantee Andy Reed with extra rest is pulling out all the stops here. And Bruce Ariens has got to call this game as if his life depends upon it. Because I guarantee you that's exactly how the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes are going to be playing this game, as if their life depends upon. The other thing that I thought about regarding who the chiefs have played so far is if you go back to that Cleveland game, I recall you saying one of your criticisms was that while Stefanski has done an unbelievable job this year, they reigned in Baker Mayfield. You talked about the success rate, how successful he was throwing the ball down the field and that, you know, they could have done that more. But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

take a step back and I go, all right, that's Baker Mayfield. They were playing against the Chiefs. This is who, again, Tom Brady's going to be playing against. If Baker Mayfield was, I can't even remember what it was. It was something crazy. It was like 8 for 10 or something you said, right? Six of seven.

Six of seven, six of seven. Yeah, six of seven. That's Baker. I mean, no offense to Baker Mayfield, but he's not, he ain't Tom Brady. And we saw Brady. He had a couple bad picks in that game, but he's certainly,

threw the ball down the field a lot. And when you're talking about they gave up that level of success to Cleveland down the field. Well, you got better weapons and a better quarterback with this Tampa team. And so

there was at least part of me that thought, I mean, I think there's a lot of people that you know, look at that chief team that's such a tremendous juggernaut. But just listening to you talk about moves the other team, their opponents could have made. And in the end, they played against Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen.

Like, I do think there is a real opening here for Bruce Ariens and Tom Brady to be able to put up a lot of points. Who knows if it'll be enough? But I think they can score a lot of points on Kansas City. Well, that's the trick, right? Because Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen, we could say what we want about what these guys have done in the past. But Josh Allen was tremendous this season. And Kansas City still really shut him down. So he obviously doesn't have the track record like a Tom Brady does. Doesn't really deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Tom Brady from his career. But Josh Allen and that Buffalo Bill's passing offense was very good this year.

And the Kansas City Chiefs did a pretty good job against him. The key to me, and I've got a lot of work to do days of continued analysis to try to get to the final picture of this game. And the reason I can spend so much time is because I have time to spend. I'm not helping any teams out anymore right now. And we got two weeks until the Super Bowl. So there's the opportunity plus this line is really not moving all that much at this moment. So I got time to dig in a little bit deeper, which I always do at the Super Bowl, to try to uncover some additional angles that will share on more pods here with the Ringer over the course of the end of this week.

And then next week when we do a couple more. So I'm going to enjoy sharing some of those takeaways with the listeners. But all I can say is this. At this very moment, one thought that jumps into my mind is if Bruce Ariens and Tom Brady throw a curveball at Spagnolo and actually throw the football more on first down, that would really help them out a ton. I already mentioned how great Spagnolo is on these third and long obvious passing situations at limiting your offense.

his secondary played tremendously against Josh Allen. Think about that offense that Buffalo has. I mean, Gabe Davis might not have been quite at 100%, but you got a ton of John Brown and Stefan Diggs. You got Cole Beasley. You got guys out. It's not like you have one number one and nobody else, right? They have a lot of guys, and Spags had to go and cover all of these guys.

So, yes, Mike Evans is a stud. And yes, Chris Godwin is a stud, but Steph Diggs is no slouch either. And I know you got Tom Brady throwing to him, but if you're throwing the ball primarily on obvious passing situations, it's still going to work against you when you got a guy like Spags with a couple weeks to prepare a defense for it. So I'm going to be, I do not think right now that there's going to be any change to the strategy, even though I would advise it, any change to the strategy of run first. One of the things that I saw theorized from a guy close to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was that one of the reasons that they run the football so much on first down

is because that play eats up like 36, 37 seconds because you run the play. Maybe you don't get a whole lot, but you got Tom Brady, like you said, you can convert late, and it's keeping Aaron Rogers off the football field. It's going to keep Patrick Mahomes off the football field. So even if you're not gaining a whole lot, it's a benefit. But the issue that I take with something like that is, obviously, the more first downs you pick up, the longer you're going to keep that other team off the football field. So if your focus is primarily on using these first downs as a tool to run the clock, if you fail on third down, boom, the ball is going back. Congratulations.

You used a little bit more. You used 40 seconds on first down. But the ball is going right back if you don't convert on these third downs. Whereas if you stay out of third downs, convert on early downs, and you can play whatever tempo you want at that point, you're moving the ball closer to the end zone. So if you do fail, you're giving it back to Patrick Mahomes in worst field position, which doesn't really matter to him because he's going to go the distance. So you got to get closer to the end zone so that you can score points. I mean, you want to bypass third downs to do that. So I think the smarter strategy is to be more efficient and work the ball down the field quickly.

but that's going to be the biggest thing is what strategy the bucks choose to take. And then also how much pressure that four-man rush can get or when they blitz can get on Patrick Mahomes, whose foot is going to be fully healed. And what is Todd Bulls' defense going to do? How are they going to change up things? Because what they did the first game against Kansas City did not work in the secondary, where they're like, we're just going to play our defense, you try to beat us. Like Tyree Kill, I think the dude had like, what, 100.

50 plus yards in the first quarter of the game. I mean, it was absolutely insane the yardage that Tyree Kill had in the first quarter. So they need to figure out a better strategy to deal with them. And I think that's going to take a little bit of work on that side of the ball. Last thing before we get out of here today. Was the line what you thought it would be? Do you think it will move some or a lot? And as of our recording right now, on this Wednesday, who's the money coming in on?

Has any big money come in on either side? Well, there's been a little bit of money that's obviously come in on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I was not surprised whatsoever with the number, though, from a side perspective. From a total perspective, I was a little bit surprised at how high this total was. and we took a tiny bite at the under 57. Now, that does not mean that that's going to be my final position on the total. It just means that we like the under 57. The model showed that the total should be a little bit lower than that.

And the line is dropped now. It's down to 56 at a lot of spots, 56 and a half at other spots. But again, that does not mean that that is going to be what my final position is from a total. or on the side, haven't done anything with the side. And again, it was just a mere dabbling on the total at 57. I think that this number should end up staying pretty close to what it is. I truly do. I think a lot of the public's going to ultimately come in on the Kansas City Chiefs here.

I think the sharp money that has been betting on Tampa Bay every single week during the course of these playoffs is inevitably coming right back on Tampa Bay. And I think they're going to be taken Tampa Bay plus the points. Now, I will tell you that there's always a discrepancy that we see in the Super Bowl. Sometimes you see it in some of these other games where you get a lot of money being wagered by the public on standalone games, where it makes more sense to bet the favorite on the money line and the underdog with the points because a lot of what the public tries to do is they come in here and they say, especially guys that only bet a couple times a year or want to bet a lot of money.

and are betting on the Super Bowl and don't typically bet sides, they're looking at this game. They're saying, hmm, I can get plus 150 by betting Tampa Bay on the money line. I'd rather lay 150 than have to take them with the points and not, you know, and have a much worse payout. So they bet the dog with the payday. And so that's why there's a little bit of value. Then the public that wants to bet the side, they're not looking at the side and they're

saying, hey, I want to bet Kansas City money line, I'll give you $170 to win a hundred. They just want to lay the three. And so you've got a lot of the public that wants to bet the KC on the spread or the dog on the money line, which creates a little bit of market inefficiency whereby you can bet the favorite on the money line for a cheaper price than you otherwise would be able to bet. And so that's why a lot of sharp guys end up coming in at whatever point they want to and choose to bet the favorite on the money line. I'm not suggesting I'm definitely doing that. I'm just suggesting that as a strategy here.

But I think this line is going to stay to answer your question pretty close to where it is right now because I think you're going to get fairly balanced action at the moment. Let me ask you a technical question since you talked about that number with the over. And you mentioned the model. You looked at the model and the model thought that the number should be a little bit lower. Is there anything that can happen in the course of your research that would make you defy the model? Or is the model the model? That's what it says it should be.

And that's what I trust. What has to happen for you to not, for you to go against the model? Well, there's a few things that can play into it. So you've got health of both sides of the football. You've got guys from both receiver cores that did not play in last, week's game. Will these guys be playing in this game? What's going to happen defensively? You have a guy like Winfield. He wasn't playing. You got two tackles that aren't going to be playing. So you're looking at some of the different health situations. Who's going to be replacing those guys? What else

happens from a health perspective overall? Also, you look at the total now at 56. There's no value in what the model says there's an edge. Right. So all of a sudden, if it gets down to 55 and a half or so or 55, then there could be, okay, well, now the model thinks that this number is probably closer to being accurate. So then what would you end up looking at from a handicapping perspective that could find edges? I can tell you some of the single biggest issues that I have in this game from trying to predict how many points could be scored at this very moment include how is the chief's offensive line going to hold up against this defense. How is Bulls going to strategize covering Tyree kill and what are the buck's going to do on first down? Are they still going to run the ball as

much? How efficient will these runs end up being? And so all of those things factor into what I ultimately will do from a handicapping perspective to try to uncover value here from a total or try to come up with like where I think that this total should be in terms of from a betting perspective. That Eric Fisher injury feels like it could be massive. it's one of those that's under the radar, casual fans aren't going to pay attention as much. But this guy is a all-pro caliber left tackle. And you're going up against a team that just, you know, I mean, they were on Aaron Rogers' ass. And so, you're right?

Like one way to slow down Tyree Kill with Travis Kelsey is for there not to be time for the play to develop. And, you know, if his replacement can't hold up, they could really be getting Mahomes on the run quite a bit. There's no doubt about it. And it's not just like we're replacing one linemen. I think four of their five linemen that were projected starters this season are not playing for them right now. If you look at who could be their starting lineup, you have Mike Remmers possibly at left tackle. He hasn't played left tackle since 2016. Your center and your left guard are both seventh rounders.

Now, that doesn't mean anything, but I'm just sharing that they're both seventh rounders. The right guard is Wuzniewski. He was on the Pittsburgh Steelers earlier this season. They cut him in November. And the right tackle was a Wiley was an undrafted free agent guard, who they've now going to be moving to right, who's now playing right tackle for them. So there are issues there along that offensive line. Like what they planned to enter the season is absolutely not what is there right now.

And I think it's a testament to Andy Reid of Patrick Bahomes and their greatness to stick with their plan, which is like, okay, we got all these backups. We got these backup tackles protecting our blind side, protecting the front side of Patrick Mahomes. Are they going to get scared and just run the football here like some other coaches would? I don't think that's going to be the case, right? They're still going to do what they do. What they know is the most efficient way to attack this defense. And it's going to be fascinating. That's why one of the biggest things for me is just that how does that protection stand up to

Patrick Mahomes and how often is he going to get sacked on these times that he's dropping back and how can he make up and offset that? Because you see first down, they could get an offensive holding, right? That's the other thing. It's not just the sacks or the hurries. It's, you know, the potential for holding calls to, be called and how quick are these referees going to be to call offensive holding, which, you know, you typically don't like to see a lot of flags in the Super Bowl, but you've got to call

a foul, a foul. If there's obvious foul, like I'm always in the opinion, Chris, I don't know what you're, I'd be interested to hear your take on this one personally, but what do you like to see in the Super Bowl? I personally always sit at, if there's a foul, it's a foul. Like, I don't want to just let the, quote, quote, let these guys play because different teams might try to bend the rules in different ways, did they have different styles and letting them play might benefit one team more than it benefits the other team. I just want the rules to be enforced the same exact way that they are throughout the regular season. I want the officials to be as good as possible when they're executing these rules. And I don't mind that earpiece buzz if they are calling something that's

completely erroneous. But I don't want them to not throw a flag when there's a penalty that should be called and I don't want them to throw a flag when there's there's nothing there but call what is actually should be called during the regular season that's how I view the player so I don't think it should be called a different way but what do you think I'm a I whatever you decide I want it to be consistent right yes I don't want you all of a sudden to start in if you've let everybody you know hand fight the entire game then well I'm not talking about the game I'm not talking about the game. I'm talking, and I get what you're saying. Maybe you're talking about like a Hail Mary play late and do you let them get away with it more. No, no, no. I'm talking about the entire game.

Like, if you're going to let guys get away with shit the whole game, then that's the way this game's going to play. But if you're going to call everything, call everything, right? No, but what I'm saying, well, I get what you're getting out, but what I'm getting at is if it's a foul in the regular season, do you relax the rules a little bit so you throw half the flags in the Super Bowl? Or do you just stick with what the rules are supposed to be as written in the rulebook. And if a team happens to be holding a shitload in the game, then they're going to get penalized a fair amount for it early in the game so that they'll stop doing it later on. I would certainly lead more towards your way because otherwise you end up with the Ram Saint

situation. Right. You know what I mean? And it costs the team going to the Super Bowl. That's what it caught. Right. Being lax cost them going to the Super Bowl. And that can't be.

So I would err more towards, yes, your side of this stuff because the consequences of being lax on it ended up, at least we know very specifically costing a team going to the Super Bowl. I don't disagree whatsoever. I think they need to be as consistent and called things by the book as they were during the regular season. But we'll see they typically don't. And so how often will some of these backup offensive linemen be called for holding? guys playing different positions than what they've played most of their careers. It'll be interesting to see because that pass rush got after Aaron Rogers pretty quickly. All right. Dig your head in the books and the spreadsheets, Warren. I'm counting on you

to give us the pick. I know we're going to spend the next week and a half talking about this is a great, great Super Bowl. We are super lucky to have this Super Bowl. I mean, obviously the media is going to love talking about, you know, the goat and baby goat and all this other type of stuff. I mean, it's a matchmaking in heaven for them, to be honest with you. But for us, even like trying to handicap this game or fans of studying football, I mean, that's my passion, my joy. I take enjoyment out of trying to break things down and try to figure out what could happen before it actually happens. And it's going to be super difficult in a game like this because you got greatness on both sides of the ball. You got two of the best quarterbacks that we have in the NFL.

So it's going to be very difficult to try to forecast. but that's part of the fun is the journey. And it's going to be one hell of a journey trying to figure this one out. The good thing, though, about the Super Bowl, as you know, Chris, is that let's say even you I spend a week breaking down this game and researching every single angle. And I write this like last year was a 40-page report on the Super Bowl. Every angle on it, what I thought, I think was going to happen. It's just part of like my training for helping different teams.

I don't give those teams 40-page reports, but I don't have two weeks to. work on them either. But then I come into this, you may not find a big edge on the side of this game. You may end up being like, oh my God, Tampa Bay should have been laying three points here. You got to take a plus the three, right? Like, that's not going to be the outcome of whatever your research is going to be, but you will probably be able to find edges in a variety of different props. And they post props on everything. Now, especially with these offshore, oh, sorry, like all these other legalized books in the U.S. trying to get in on the game and try to come up with numbers. There's so many different props that you can get involved in betting nationwide now that there's edges to be had, even if you don't find an edge in the side or the total on the game, just in the prop market.

Oh, I can't wait to get your report to find out what the weekend's going to sing first. I can't wait. I know you've got an edge on that war. We hit the Coldplay song a few years ago when they were in the super. Does he start with blinding lights or does he close with it? It definitely, it definitely pays to have somebody on the inside at some of the rehearsals. I can just tell you that much. All right, Warren, I'll be listening to you at House later this week. I know Kevin Clark is going to be talking with Danny Kelly tomorrow as the NFL draft guide is going up on the ringer. So make sure everybody checks that out.

Warren, I'll talk to you next week. Sounds good, Chris.