Da Bears
I’m on record publicly as being skeptical of the Bears’ success so far this season (and Tampa to a lesser extent, though I’ll leave that for another post). It’s not that Chicago has a terrible team, they’re easily a mid-table side capable of beating most teams at home and are expected underdogs on the road versus all but the bottom 20-25% of the league. Their defense is very good and their special teams are back to being excellent again.
The offense however, is offensive. They’ve yet to score 30 points in a game this season and are still near the bottom of the league in short yardage, an improvement over ranking 32nd in 2009. Cutler and the skill players are not bad, but obviously their line is atrocious and is preventing the Bears from being a Super Bowl contender.
Similar to college basketball, road records can often tell you a lot about the actual quality of a team. Beating teams at home isn’t particularly indicative of a good team. Teams with poor home records, however, are almost never good. Only six teams have recorded four or more road wins this season: Pittsburgh, NY Jets, Philadelphia, Miami, Tampa and Chicago. The first three are among the best in the league, Miami has been horribly unlucky and I’ll cover Tampa in a later post. Looking at the Bears road wins, they’ve beaten two teams without an NFL caliber QB (Carolina and Miami), the 2-8 Bills and the 3-7 Cowboys. Sorry if I’m not overly convinced.
All of this is merely a preview for determining the proper odds on Chicago losing their last 6 games in a row. Their schedule is arguably the toughest in the league down the stretch:
vs PHI (+3.5) (Eagles ML is -178)
@ DET
vs NE
@ MIN
vs NYJ
@ GB
If we set lines on all of these games, we can then convert to an approximate moneyline and then throw all of these in a parlay calculator to see what the payout should be.
We’ll start with the Packers because it’s the easiest of the 5 remaining to handicap. The Jets host the Bungles this weekend and Baltimore is at home to Tampa. Both of those games are a similar type matchup to Bears @ Green Bay and those games are both -9, -400.
New England and the Jets are both of similar quality to the Eagles and we’ll install both of them at -4, -200.
This leaves divisional road games at Detroit and Minnesota. Detroit is 2-2 at home, routing the Rams, beating the Redskins and losing by a FG to the Jets and Eagles. They are 6.5 point underdogs Thursday at home to New England. I could make an argument Detroit should be favored, but we’ll make the game a pickem for our purposes here. As far as Minnesota, they could have given up on the season by the time this game rolls around. I think this is the Bears best chance to win out of the 6 and will make Minnesota a +1.5, +120 underdog.
Entering these in the parlay calculator (-400, -200, -200, -178, -100, +120) yields a payout of 18.33/1. If you up New England and the Jets to -6, -270 favorites, the payout drops to 15.13 which is pretty close to what I offered Pat if I may say so…
I’ll still take action on this at 15, but there’s no way I can do 12. Even moving the Lions to -140 and the Packers to -450, along with the Jets @ Pats adjustments still leaves it at 12.5. I’ll offer Pat a compromise and say I’m willing to go a low as 14:1 just because I think this will be a fun bet to make and as Pat mentioned, I can’t actually bet this anywhere else.
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Minor clarification: You should point out that the “road” win over the Bills should more properly be counted as a neutral site win. There were more Bears fans than Bills fans in the former Skydome for that game, although not by a huge margin. The way that game played out, it seems unlikely that the Bears would have won in Ralph Wilson Memorial Stadium.