Hype, Trap, Bet: Are the Patriots actually this bad?

The date was Sept. 30, 2001. The Seattle Mariners won their 111th game — en route to tying the MLB record for wins in a season. The first iPod was 23 days away from being released. The first movie in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series would come out later that year.

And a young, California kid named Tom Brady stepped onto an NFL field as a starting quarterback for the very first time.

The New England Patriots were massive 12.5-point home underdogs against the Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts, went on to win 44-13 on the back of two interceptions returned for touchdowns, and the rest, as we know, is history.

Why bring this up now? Because the Patriots are currently 8.5-point home underdogs against the Buffalo Bills this weekend, the team’s largest underdog role at home since Brady’s debut.

That day, the No. 1 song in the country was Fallin’ by Alicia Keys. Just goes to show how far the Patriots have fallen in recent seasons.

How bad was public sentiment on the Patriots in that moment? New England reached the Super Bowl in 1996, then decreased its win total for four straight seasons, hired a new coach, fired that coach, hired a new coach that went 5-11 in his first season, then started 0-2 in 2001 while losing its franchise quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, to injury.

That’s the level we’re approaching here in 2023. Since Tom Brady left, the Patriots have lost 9, 7, and 9 games, the franchise’s three highest totals in the past 20 years. They’re 1-5 for the first time since 1995, potentially staring at 1-7 with the Bills and Miami Dolphins on tap. ESPN Analytics has them projected to finish 5-12, which would be their worst win pct since finishing 2-14 in 1992.

The Pats have lost three straight — a fourth straight loss would tie the team’s longest losing streak under Bill Belichick. They rank 31st in scoring with 12.0 PPG and are the only team averaging under one point scored per drive. The fantasy football world is certainly paying attention, as New England is the only team in the league without a single player averaging 12 fantasy points per game.

This has been building over the past few years, but we’re at a fever pitch now. Everyone’s fading the Patriots and their stock is as low as we’ve seen it in over a generation. Which begs the question — has the hate gone too far? Or will the Foxboro freefall continue?

Is it a trap?

Buffalo Bills (-8.5, 42) at New England Patriots
Sunday 1:00 p.m. ET, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Massachusetts

It’s easy to fall into the trap of betting trends without context. Just because the Patriots are 1-5 against the spread this season doesn’t mean you should automatically bet Buffalo to cover this weekend. However, when multiple trends line up together, or you can put the trends in context, that’s when you should pounce.

• Patriots are 1-5 ATS this season, T-3rd worst cover rate in the NFL.

• Bill Belichick has failed to cover in 9 of 10 games for the first time in his head coaching career.

• New England has failed to cover in 9 straight games as an underdog, T-2nd longest ATS losing streak as a dog in the Super Bowl era (the NFL record is 11).

• Mac Jones is 0-12 ATS as an underdog in his career.

You can also look at historical matchups between the teams, as long as the head coaches, quarterbacks, and the general team makeup is similar. In this case, McDermott and Josh Allen vs. Bill Belichick has been a constant over the past few years.

• The Bills have won four straight games vs. the Patriots by double-digits (a fifth straight would be the most ever against New England).

• Mac Jones has only beaten the Bills once in his career, Dec. 6 2021, where he only attempted three passes in extreme wind conditions.

• Allen has made five career starts at Gillette Stadium, with 12 Pass TD to 2 Int, with an 83 Total QBR that ranks third-best by any QB at any opposing stadium since the metric began in 2006.

Belichick is a mastermind in many ways, but he has struggled to solve Allen and I don’t expect him to figure it out now with an offense that just went 39 straight drives without scoring a touchdown.

If you don’t like trends, how about metrics? ESPN Analytics updates the FPI model every week to include recent results. The Patriots have dropped in FPI almost every week as continue to underperform. You could argue that the model isn’t catching up fast enough to how the team has played this season, because a small sample of six games still needs to be put in a larger historical perspective.

But as you can see in that last line of the chart, even a model that might be slow to react to the Patriots struggles has them projected to lose to the Bills by 12.6 points. It’s rare to see four points of value on the betting board like this.

I’ll leave you with one last point: consider how an underdog pulls off an upset or stays close throughout a football game. They score early, force turnovers, score off those turnovers, and then shorten the game as much as possible.

Well, the Patriots haven’t scored a touchdown in the first quarter this season, and their 6 total points in the opening frame is T-2nd lowest in the NFL. New England is also tied for last in the league with a -8 turnover differential this season and is the only team without a single point scored off of a turnover this season. Meanwhile, Buffalo is 3-0 with a +90-point differential when they win the turnover battle and has lost 2 of 3 games where that doesn’t happen.

The Bills are susceptible to close games and losses to inferior teams — we just saw it happen last week! — but the Patriots are not the type of team I expect to keep things close.

The Bets

Miami Dolphins at Philadelphia Eagles (-2.5. 52)
Sunday 8:20 p.m. ET, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia

This is easily the game of the year so far, at least until next week’s “game of the year”.

As I write this, player props aren’t out yet, and I want to enjoy the game without rooting interest. So, let’s take a look at the total, currently at 52.

Dolphins’ games have totaled 41, 47, 63, 68, 70, and 90 points so far this season. Eagles’ games have totaled 34, 36, 37, 45, 62, and 65 points. At first glance, that looks like six overs and six unders, but all six overs cleared by at least 10 points. The three games the Eagles were pushed on offense were their three highest scoring games, and the only two Miami games that failed to crack 50 featured Giants and Patriots offenses that rank among the league’s worst.

Both coaches are extremely aggressive and value scoring points over field position, and I expect each to continue pushing for more points knowing that the other team’s offense can return serve at any moment.

I think the league-wide trend of unders (more on this shortly) has this game total falling lower than it should, so it may be time to course correct and bet on two of the most exciting teams in football. I imagine others will feel the same and would not be surprised if it closes closer to 54 or 55 by Sunday evening.

Game Total Theory Part 3

I listed six picks here last week, all unders on the six lowest-total games of the week. The theory was that sportsbooks didn’t react fast enough to struggling offenses and it was the perfect time to hit the bets before the lines dropped too far. We went 6-for-6.

Now, the biggest talking point in the betting world is unders going 12-2-1 in Week 6. How did the books respond? By putting out game totals that currently sit at 37.5, 37.5, 39, 40, 40, 41, 43, 44, 44, 44.5, 45, 48, and 52.

The smartest thing you can do as a sports bettor is know when to jump off a trend. Take a look at how lucky we got last week.

• BAL-TEN under 41: Finished at 40; 11 scoring plays but 9 FG, a blocked extra point that would have pushed, and Vrabel settling for a FG with :38 left while down 11

• SF-CLE under 37: Finished at 36; Jake Moody misses a game-winning 41-yd FG that would have sent the game over.

• PHI-NYJ under 41: Finished at 34; Eagles had four drives end in Jets territory with zero points.

• NE-LV under 41.5: Finished at 38; Raiders had four red-zone drives end in FG (converting any for a TD puts the game over)

• WSH-ATL under 42.5: Finished at 40; Desmond Ridder picked off in the end zone where the next play could have been a 24-yard FG to put the game over (game was also at 34 early in the 3rd quarter but had just one score in the final 27 minutes)

I’m not going to endorse the blind under bets this week. In an effort to exercise restraint, I’ll make this prediction: despite lower average totals in this week’s games, we see significantly more scoring this week.

Sneaky games to sprinkle on the over include Commanders-Giants (39), Cardinals-Seahawks (44.5) and Packers-Broncos (45).