Cause and effect.
It seems so basic to me. You drop an inflated ball and it bounces up after impact with the ground.
Cause and effect. Black and white. The natural progression of when a certain motion is taken a predictable reaction will occur. By definition it is as clear as a bell. The dictionary defines cause and effect as: noting a relationship between actions or events such that one or more are the result of the other or others.
It seems simple, but once something happens, what people think is going to happen next covers the full spectrum of possibilities. In my business, picking NFL games, I have found that a team will more often play better following a loss than a lopsided win. The public most often interprets previous success with future success and recent defeats cause for expecting more setbacks.
Case in point.
The Dallas Cowboys got slammed last Sunday in Washington, and their dismal performance has critics wondering if this is a one-and-done Cowboys kind of team come the playoffs. Let me clear that up right from the top, based on certain cause and effect data, the Cowboys are going to survive in Tampa this week.
Yes, they got hammered in Washington, and they did it right when they were supposed to in order to peak their motivational advantages. Of course they lost last week in Washington, it was clear before the game that their focus was already on their opening playoff game. They have been preparing for their battle in Florida for two weeks, and they got a motivational spike in the middle of that preparation with an ugly performance against a longtime division rival.
Do you think the Cowboys have a better chance this week had they won 38-3 in Washington last Sunday, or having lost, 26-6? One result raises confidence and the balance between expectations and actual talent tips to motivational problems.
But a loss? A loss is a spike in the motivational juices for the Cowboys this week.
And when inspired, Dallas is lethal defensively, and Brady’s last game for the Buccaneers could well be as decisive as the four touchdown loss he absorbed against San Francisco last month.
What we can have Monday night in Florida is a Cowboys team perfectly poised to wreak havoc with the Buccaneers front line. The question then becomes will Brady get crushed and have his days with Tampa Bay end here, or will he be who he has been so often, a savior beyond compare?
In this particular case, Brady’s assumed success in the playoffs has the point spread a lot lower than it could be for a road team with four more regular season wins. Dallas went into the final week of the regular season with a longshot chance of getting the top seed. Entering the final week of the regular season the Cowboys needed to win and have both San Francisco and Philadelphia lose to grab the top seed in the NFC.
None of that happened.
What did occur was exactly opposite of what the Cowboys needed. Dallas lost, and both the 49ers and Eagles won.
We have a division winner at home that lost more games than they won and only beat the point spread twice after the second week of the regular season. And the road team in this matchup had a chance to earn the top seed in the NFC playoffs a week ago and now open their postseason slotted in the fifth seed, behind the four division winners.
The Cowboys couldn’t have gotten a better draw, and the Buccaneers a worse.
Qoxhi Picks: Dallas Cowboys (-3) over Tampa Bay Buccaneers