In the hopes of being entertained and reading something worth reading, sometimes, Bokolis is in the mood to read what someone else thinks. So, puttering around the internet, trying to motivate myself to hack up a prediction post, I scratched my arm against Yahoo's fence and gave some banana from Uproxx a shot to tell me about the best teams to not win a Super Bowl.
Is this list incomplete? Was it supposed to be a list of best teams never to make a Super Bowl? Bokolis doesn't see 2007 Patriots? This must have been mailed in, so I'll fix it...here.
While the 1990*, 2007** and 2011*** Giants took out some of the all-time paper champions, Bokolis is sure the Giants were quite happy to have someone else take care of two potential stumbling blocks to super bowl victories.
* - 49ers and Bills
** - Patriots
*** - Packers
The 2011 Saints were at least as good as the 2007 Cowboys. Much to Giants good fortune, the Saints were stuck playing on the slop in Frisco- that field at Candlestick could go a month without water and still not be firm- because the 49ers had the tiebreaker. Unlike the 2007 Cowboys, the Giants had no designs on going to the Superdome and winning. Nobody was beating the Saints in the dome that season.
As for the the 1986 Bears, the Bears had whitewashed the Giants in the previous year's playoffs. To boot, their defensive stats were right there in '86 with the '85 team. It was going to be a problem. But, between being better than the previous year, being home and no McMahon, the Giants had reason to be a lot more confident of victory.
The article neglects that, while McMahon was on a super bowl hangover for the first half of the year, the injury that put him out was effectively an assault by Charles Martin, was ejected and suspended for two games for something that would likely get him a year in today's game.
Certainly, Schroeder made some atypical- for him- plays in the '86 divisional round. But, on that day, the Bears defense just didn't have the mojo working. The Skins shoved them around.
Towards the present day, Bokolis split the conference championships and is now 7-3-1 for the playoffs. This is six years running that I've sent y'all to the window. This year, we'd have some snakeskin boots to go with the gators from last year. But, there is no resting on laurels here.
Panthers (-5) over Broncos - This line has wobbled around. It opened at 4, jumped to 5.5, reached 6, and is now inching back downwards. As Bokolis was typing it was 5 in Las Vegas and 4.5 offshore. The offshore lines have typically moved in advance of the Las Vegas line. Bokolis jumped on 4 at the start and would think that the play is to buy it down to 4 if possible.
As for the game, hey, Carolina has shown itself to be the best team all season. They have not wobbled in the playoffs and their only loss was a throwaway game. This spared them from all the 19-0 bullshit and they've had a rather quiet two weeks in the lead-up. The offense will do plenty, and the opportunistic defense will do the job here on P. Manning that the Patriots would not.
In fact, I'm going to both hedge and have a little fun here. Since the individual quarters all have a point spread of Panthers -0.5, the plays are, Panthers in the first and second quarters, Broncos in the third and fourth quarters. The combined amounts equals the amount on the game, working out to laying -115.
The next move is to make half a play on the over (43.5). Why half? With the rest of the powder, if Carolina is leading by 5-17 points after the third quarter, they play would be to look to come in on Denver on a 4th quarter prop so as to hedge the game result. If it comes into play, while everybody's watching commercials, Bokolis will try to update accordingly.
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