Shall we talk about the weather and/or the AFC Championship game?

20 January 2019

Since everyone else is talking about the weather, why can’t NFLbets? We’re gonna slaughter some sacred cows about professional football here and we may not even have to resort to “Come on, we’re talking about Belichick and Brady and the New England Patriots here.”

Now NFLbets’ll admit it: We often get way too obsessed factoring the weather into our bets – and subsequently get burned (so to speak) by this silly tendency; admittedly, the assumption served us well for the Colts-Chiefs divisional, but not as much as Indianapolis just not showing up. as recently as the Chargers-Patriots divisional last week. Well, it never too late to turn over a new leaf and we believe we’re about to.

And so to paraphrase R.E.M., “Shall we talk about the weather?”

Since 2001, the home team is 30-20-1 SU in games played at temperatures of 20° or lower – but check this out: The regular season mark for home teams in such frigid weather is an incredible *23-12-1* SU. That’s right: Home teams are 7-8 SU (and 5-10 ATS!) in the cold in the playoffs. Here are the numbers.

In these 15 games are a range of scores running from 10-9 (Seahawks at Minnesota in 2015) to 45-42 (Jaguars at Pittsburgh last year), the average score works out to right around 29-20½; an over/under of 49½ is hardly outrageously high or low at any point over the past two decades. Six of the 15 game results would have paid on a bet of over-49½, including four of the seven such games played after 2012 and therefore more indicative of modern-day rule changes.

Not exactly germane to this discussion but of interest (and what the hell, we trawled through the numbers anyway): The Belichick/Brady Patriots are 3-1 SU – but just 1-3 ATS – in such games, with the sole SU win coming in Pittsburgh in 2004; incidentally, the Patriots were favored in all four games. Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid has played in one such sub-20° playoff game, winning SU/ATS against the Atlanta Falcons on the way to his only Super Bowl appearance and you know how things went there.

Factor in the case studies of the Patriots and Chiefs, tiny-ass sample sizes included, if you like, but clearly simple win-loss records SU/ATS are enough to demonstrate that cold weather has no discernible effect save to hurt the weaker team. Naturally, this becomes clear only in hindsight.

Snow? Purely empirically speaking, snow randomizes stuff but good. Recall some easy examples like the Tuck Rule Game that birthed the current New England monstrosity or the aforementioned Seahawks-Vikings wild card game or the 2017 Grey Cup. The good news is that the snow has ceased falling in Kansas City and a low probability is reported for precipitation tonight, so we don’t need to worry about this X-factor.

Okay, so how about wind? Certainly Patrick Mahomes & Co., who favor the loooooooooooooong aerial attack to YAC (so *that’s* why they were so hot for Sammy Watkins), would be affected by craziness here?

Possibly.

A blogger over at Pinnacle.com studied the affects of wind in games between 2003 and ’15, turning up data that, well, you’d probably expect. The Pinnacle numbers show that “Wind would appear to be of little consequence to points totals until it reaches speeds of 15 mph and above.”

Further, “In the 50 or so such games [considered], average totals were set on the low side at 38½, but actual match totals averaged even lower at 35.3 and consequently, under bets were successful in 64.6% of games.”

In order words, blindly taking the under in games when wind speed is 15 or more does on average some 4.6% better – or a little less than one game per season – than a profit-making NFL bettor. Significant enough perhaps, but guess what: The forecast is calling for winds to top out at 10 mph today/tonight, and who’d believe that Mahomes-to-Kelce wouldn’t be good for two touchdowns in the middle of tornado?

So, nope. NFLbets ain’t buying the weather as a factor in the AFC Championship Game. After all, this here is the NFL playoffs and we’ve got two hardcore offenses ready to play. And we’re sticking with our bet on over 56 points.