I was surprised that the Raiders lost last night and it makes me a little nervous since it shakes up the standings...New England now has sole control of 1st place and the Raiders fall to 5th place. But I don't think it really matters for us since we weren't going to catch the Chiefs or the Raiders either way. The big thing the win did was ensure that there's only 1 playoff spot up for grabs and we need the Broncos to crumble over these last four weeks against the Titans, Pats, Chiefs and Raiders. It's good for us though since New England will almost definitely have 1st place locked up going into week 17. That's a lot more incentive to sit their starters.
I actually wasnt surprised at all. Its a Thurs night game...home teams have a stupidly huge advantage. Take a warm weather team..have them travel to KC where temps were in Teens...and in a notoriously hard place to play to begin with... Oakland losing was a foregone conclusion IMO...which is why Thurs games are so stupid.
Overall home team winning percentage in the NFL is 57%. If you look at all Thursday night games since 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Network_Thursday_Night_Football_results_(2006–present) I'm counting 67 wins for the home team and 53 for the visiting team, which gives you 67/(67+53) = 55.8% winning percentage for the home team. So there's no greater home team advantage on Thursday nights, at least since 2006.
I wasn't surprised too much Carr has a hard time with the chiefs he is I think 1-5 against them since he came into the nfl. It was cold I honestly didn't think that many points were going to be scored I was thinking like a 13-3 game or something.
That's got to be pure chance (also.. can you give us a link to prove that?). If it's consistently the case that in some condition (e.g. Thursday night football) the favored team beats the spread, then Vegas will lose money!.. unless of course the spread changes so that it's no longer the case. If you can prove that say since 2006 favored teams on Thursday night (or any night) have consistently beaten the spread so that you'd make money betting on them, I'll be VERY impressed.
OK I'll believe you Travis, but it HAS to be pure chance. I guess that means my advice is to not think always betting on the favorite in Thursday night games will work out as well in the future haha! Anyway, we can keep track of this in the future.
I'm not sure what's more 'interesting' about it. A loss by KC would've made things interesting. What happened is that one of the Wildcard slots is completely unavailable to Miami. It means that 8 teams are competing for one playoff slot. Pitt, Buffalo, Miami, Denver, Tenn, Indy, Houston, Baltimore. 1 of these teams will win the AFC South and one will win the AFC North. It's likely that the loser of each of these 2 races could have the same record as the winner and their head-to-head matchup with the winner decides who hosts a 1st-round playoff game vs being a wild-card hopeful. I think Pitt will win the division because I think Baltimore's gauntlet will just be too tough. If Baltimore beat New England, though, that could change. I think Denver's goose is cooked, too. Their schedule is just murder and the uncertainty at QB will be too much to overcome. Looking at schedules, I feel strong that Buffalo will be a Wild-Card team.
I guess I feel like an Oakland win would've made things more interesting. An Oakland win would've put that 2nd WC position into play. I guess I'm disagreeing over the meaning of 'interesting' in this context.
Yes, but an Oakland win also puts us closer to having a 3-way tie scenario that we're not going to win without sweeping the AFC East. For that reason alone, I'm a KC (and now Oakland) fan from here on out. That's what I found interesting- I did not think the Raiders would have lost that one but it was fortunate that they did. I don't see Indy or Houston working their way back into the conversation, and I do agree with you that Pitt takes the division and the Broncos fade. That leaves Buffalo and Baltimore for that final spot...but Buffalo is out if we beat them. That means we are huge fans of whoever is playing Baltimore from here on out.
Arrowhead on thursday night, you can pretty much chalk up the chiefs W. no team in the NFL is going to beat the chiefs in arrowhead on TNF, the weather conditions and atmosphere is just too ridiculous for any road team on a short week
