NFL Europe Week 1 Plays

HinesWard86 · Apr 1, 2005

These are actual serious plays, unlike my AFL plays (which I used as a joke with AFLGuru). I spent soem time following NFL Europe last year and think I could be a credit to the forum in this regard.

Rhein Fire (+3.5) over Amsterdam Admirals (3 units 1.95-1) Although there is a natural home field advantage in Amsterdam for some players (i.e. the ability to do anything you want the day before the game), no one in Amsterdam really gives a crap about football. They would much rather watch Ajax pummel some pitiful Dutch Eredivisie team. Rhein is a pretty good team, with a good RB in Dahrain Deidrick and 4 OL's who were NFL draft picks. The run defense also looks to be rock solid. Pete Kuhracek is also a strong coach and will use his teams strengths to exploit the Admirals. The only question with Rhein is QB play, but they still have a better QB than Amsterdam. Amsterdam is throwing out Gibran Hamdan, a former 7th round pick of the Washington Redskins, Hamdan is pitiful and even though thi is NFLEL, he still will suck it up. These two teams both play close game and 3.5 is a good number to have. Amsterdam are the Arizona Cardinals of the NFLEL, they have had six consecutive non-winning seasons and dont look to get much better this year.

daringly · Apr 1, 2005

There is nearly 100% turnover from year to year. That said, any week 1 dog more than 3 sounds like a good play... The exception being Hamburg, an expansion team. Like in other sports, expansion teams have struggled in the early part of the season. In fact, I don't think an expansion team has ever won its first game, except in the inaugural year when they were all expansion teams.

My plays this week:
Frank/Berl UN45
Ham/Col Ovr33
Reh/AMS Ovr34

on the theory that with uber-high turnover, all teams will revert to the mean, which means games with totals near 40.

Lastly, I played Frankfurt+6. This line is inflated due to Berlin dominating the league last year. Will Berlin have more than 5 wins this season? Yes -105 No -105.

Nothing crazy - just small plays on all of these (1/2 unit on all 4).

HinesWard86 · Apr 1, 2005

Frankfurt is a good play, I considered making it myself but I don't know if I can wager on Akili Smith. That team is pretty good though. Yes, while there are no such things as "veteran" teams in NFLEL however, there are high quality coaches that know how to mold a team together quickly. Pete Kuhracek is a good coach who knows what it takes to win games. Berlin is getting a lot of respect but some of it is deserved. After all, they have the QB who's probably going to be the best of the bunch in Dave Ragone.