You will hear gamblers after a losing week voice the opinion that picking football winners years ago was a lot easier than it is today. Before everyone had access to computer information and up-to-date injury reports their contention is that there was some low hanging fruit to take advantage of that doesn’t exist today.
In the 1970’s and 80’s home team underdogs were sure winners over the course of a season and have an underdog at home on Monday night and you could wait at the window to collect on your wager.
Was it easier then?
No.
It was what it was. Betting on the underdog Atlanta Falcons to beat the powerful Los Angeles Rams on a Monday night decades ago was just as difficult as taking the Cleveland Browns over the Pittsburgh Steelers in a primetime game this season.
What made the past easier was that we know what happened and backfitting our thinking is what we call, you know, 20/20. I suggest that in 20 years handicappers will be looking back at these times and declare how much easier it was to pick winners now over then.
With that said, I do know there is one huge opportunity for late season plays that the National Football League has pulled the rug out from under. In 1973, the Miami Dolphins were defending Super Bowl Champions following their perfect 1972 campaign. On December 3rd of the 1973 campaign the Dolphins hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers in a game they needed to clinch their division title.
The Steelers, Raiders and Dolphins were the three best teams in the league that season, and the only loss Don Shula’s team had suffered heading into that Monday Night Football showdown with the Steelers was a second week setback to the Raiders. That was up to this point the only game Miami had lost in two seasons.
The Steelers and Dolphins put on a great show for the Monday Night Football audience and in the end the Dolphins clinched their division with a home victory, 30-26. For the record, the Steelers won the point spread that night getting 7½ on the line.
The Dolphins still had two games left on their regular season schedule, but nothing to play for. In the early 70’s, home field advantage in the playoffs was not determined by a season record, but by a rotating formula scheduled seasons in advance. The AFC East would know whether they would play a home game in the Divisional round and where they would be for a Championship Game before the season started. That is why in 1972, the Dolphins met the Steelers, who did not have a better record, in Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game.
What this method produced was meaningless end of the season games, and the week after the Dolphins beat the Steelers to clinch their division, they played the Baltimore Colts on the road. The Colts had won only two games entering the 13th week of play and had been drilled by the Dolphins earlier in the season by a 44-0 score when the game meant something.
In their second meeting of the season against each other, the Colts were 14 points home underdogs to the Dolphins. And, with nothing to play for, the favorite Dolphins lost that road game, 16-3.
Now, if we still had the same format that was available in 1973, the Buffalo Bills division clinching win over the San Francisco 49ers would send them into Los Angeles this week to meet a desperate Rams team looking to win the NFC West while the Bills would, by 1973 standards, have nothing to play for.
Empty the bank on the Rams if playoff position was not determined by season record. But this is where it does get tougher today than in days long ago, the Bills do have something to play for. With the recent format change of only the team with the best record in each conference getting an opening postseason bye, more to play for than as recent as three years ago.
So, this one is not as easy as it was before the NFL put more emphasis on regular season records come playoff time. But we still have the Rams at home needing a win to stay in the hunt for a playoff spot meeting a Bills team coming off a division clinching win with only the quest to catch the Kansas City Chiefs left on their wish list.
Not as easy, but still a winner.
Qoxhi Picks: Los Angeles Rams (+4½) over Buffalo Bills