Posted:
#1
Game: Bengals @ Jets
Time: January 3, 2010 8:30 PM
Line: Bengals +9
Jets win and they are in. ANY combination of a Jets victory and any/ALL other at 8-7 teams winning their respective games will give the Jets the #5 seed and #5 seed ONLY. #6 seed is not possible if the Jets win. No need to look at 'all teams LOSE out' as the probability of all prospective playoff teams losing all their week 17 games is virtually incalculable.
It's simple for the Bengals as well. If they win, and Patriots win, they are still 5 games behind the Pats in strength of schedule for the #3 seed which is an extraordinarily unlikely amount of games for them to make up in one remaining week. Therefore, even if the Bengals go all out against the Jets, they will STILL, with very high likelyhood, lose out with strength of schedule. Now, New England is playing a MUST WIN Houston team @ Houston (not easy) but here is the benefit for Cincy. They will know their fate, and whether or not they should rest their starters, since the game has been flexed to 8:20 PM as the Sunday Night game. All in all, they WILL be the #4 seed.
What does all this mean? Well, why in the Hell would Cincy want to play either Pittsburgh or Baltimore, their two most likely opponents, when they could play the Jets @ the Jets in week 17, rest their starters, then have them back @ Cincy for the first round of the playoffs. The choice is brutally obvious.
So you have two outs here as a Jet fan betting this line early in the week.
#1 The Bengals can rest their starters if the Pats win and the strength of schedule is too much to overcome knowing the result of the 1PM game having lost out on the #3 seed in advance.
#2 The Bengals can still choose to lay down knowing they can do so to play this lucky ass team and it's double dose of neophytes in the head coach and QB at their house the next week.
The Jets will make the playoffs and amazingly, the Jets will have 2 straight weeks of teams dumping their respective games for them as they back in to the playoffs in easily the single most unearned playoff spot in perhaps my entire lifetime.
Maybe, this is the football gods giving the Jet fans a wink and a nod for the living hell they have been put through in their decades of Jet fan misery.
Maybe, this is the football gods giving the Jet fans a wink and a nod for the living hell they have been put through in their decades of Jet fan misery.Now the issue of the +9. Given they just walked all over the Colts second string and won by 14. I think +9 for Cincy is very, VERY reasonable.
You can't trust Sanchez with this type of line in ANY other situation. But I don't believe the Cincy DB's will be taking risks and biting on his passes. I foresee TJ doing what he has all season, and in this game getting 5 to 6 years per carry vs. a lifeless Cincy frontline. I don't even think Marvin will have them make the loss look convincing.
This game will remind you the 2002 42-17 shellacking administered to Green Bay @ Giants Stadium where the Jets needed miracle losses by both the Dolphins and Pats to the back into the division crown. GB in that game needed to beat the Jets to ensure home field throughout the playoffs (i.e. they actually had something to play for) and decided to promptly give up 28 pts. in 1.5 second half quarters and call it a day.
0
That's no way to prepare for a game which decides your playoff position guys!! 
...love the avatar- Scalabrine is from a little town just down the road from my house (Enumclaw WA)...ahahahah......GL with your picks
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