Hello my friends..
I am taking a "Pass" on the ESPN main event tonight between Baltimore and Atlanta as there are too many invariables in that contest for my liking and instead will look to collect on the other contest being played!
take care and be well
Jim
St Louis and Chicago….OVER 36.5
8 pm EST Thurs 8/12/04
2**Play Selection
Well my friends, if there are three things that we can count on in this contest, its for Ram HC Mike Martz to: 1) Make at least one really stupid play calling move sometime during the game, 2) make a time clock management mistake, and 3) have his QB’s toss the rock downfield.
This contest will mark the return of former Ram DC and now Bear head man Lovie Smith to his old digs in St Louis, it only stands to reason that since Martz and Smith used to coach on the same staff that each of these HC’s will want to own the “Bragging rights” once the final gun sounds.
I remember as a kid growing up watching Gilligan’s Island after school and if memory serves me, wasn’t Lovie the pet name that Thurston Howell the third liked to call his wife? Anyway, where most people go wrong in handicapping the preseason stems from the fact that they try and analyze the game as they would during the regular season…and you just cannot do it that way!
In preseason games you must evaluate totally different factors, sure you must still take into account any injury or weather concerns as well as any “Bad blood” issues that may exist between the two teams, but you also have to factor in and try to project what each team will try to accomplish.
Chicago for example enters this affair with a completely new coaching staff that does not know their players, thus da’bears will probably use the better part of this preseason to evaluate virtually every player on the roster, what does that have to do with anything you ask? Simple, it means that every man on da’bears roster is fighting for a job and will play hard….with the exception of LB Brian Urlacher who will miss four to six weeks with a pulled right hammy.
St Louis on the other hand is a veteran team that has had their coaching staff in place, this translates into the Rams simply wanting to get thru their preseason schedule as healthy as possible, and especially since they have already suffered key losses in the ole injury department with tackle Kyle Turley and DT Jimmy Kennedy out for what appears to be the remainder of training camp, the Rams will also miss the services of LT Orlando Pace who is holding out for more duckies in his paycheck.
I mentioned earlier that you must consider different factors when handicapping preseason games versus regular season games, none is probably more critical than knowing the QB rotation order and being able to judge how each QB after the starter will likely perform.
In this contest we have young Rex Grossman who started the final three games last season for Chi-town as the starter with veteran Jonathan Quinn backing him up, bringing up the rear after Quinn we have Craig Krenzel of Ohio State fame followed by Ryan Dinwiddle, for the Rams we will see only see QB Marc Bulger for a series or two and I really don’t expect to see aging veteran Chris Chandler much at all either, I would expect to see a lot of former Spartan QB Jeff Smoker who I like a lot and maybe some of Russ Michna tossed in.
All in all, we should have some pretty good play from the QB’s on both sidelines, however, I do not trust Ram HC Mike Martz and his 6-11 straight up and 7-10 ATS preseason mark with my money and apparently “Joe Public” feels the same as the number opened the the Rams –5.5 and has since fallen to Rams –3.5
I believe the way to attack this contest is with a wager on the OVER 36.5 as both HC’s will want to win this thing to show up the other, this contest will also be played indoors on the fact track of St Louis and will feature a lot of young talent trying to win jobs.
KEY STAT:
St Louis over the past two pre-season’s have gone 3-3-2 in the O/U department while Chicago posted a mark of 5-3 O/U over the same two year period, however, if we were to apply the same O/U number of 36.5 that is on this current match up to these teams past 16 combined pre season games we would see that 11 of those 16 contests exceeded the total!
take care my friends and be well
Jim Campbell
