Few things in sports are more deflating than wagering on a team and then finding while watching the game that you apparently care more about the result than the team on the field. It can happen in the preseason, when you have put hard earned money on one side and late in the game, while your wager seems to be in peril, a local television announcer is interviewing a player on the sideline talking about how good camp is going and how much he appreciates his teammates.
“But what about my wager?” a bettor may scream at the television while the player continues his high spirited interview.
Can we know before a game starts who might be more interested in the final score?
In most cases, yes.
Some teams, good ones, are habitually a lot less interested in the final score during the preseason than others who may look to the summer games as a chance to teach their teams to win. When Peyton Manning was a member of the Indianapolis Colts, his teams were consistent preseason losers and then went on to consistently have a regular season record as good or better than the other teams in the league.
Why?
Because good teams know what they have to work with, and utilize the preseason to establish rhythm while also evaluating marginal talent looking to crack their opening day roster. When the bell rings for the regular season the real good teams know how to answer when the games count and use the preseason to best position themselves for the real wars.
Then there are those good teams that seemingly like to win every game all the time. The Pittsburgh Steelers are in this category. Whether the head coach be Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher or Mike Tomlin, the Steelers have been consistent winners for the past five decades both in the regular and postseasons.
This week, the Steelers host the Buffalo Bills, a good team less interested in preseason scores than their opponents. The Bills, like the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and Minnesota Vikings, know they have the horses to compete when the games count and are playing the summer schedule with bigger fish to fry than winning a preseason game on the scoreboard.
This week, I suspect we will not have a local reporter interviewing a Steelers player in a buoyant conversation on the sideline while the scoreboard shows Pittsburgh on the wrong side of the score. That exchange is much more predictably going to take place on the other side of the field.
Qoxhi Picks: Pittsburgh Steelers (-2½) over Buffalo Bills