Tampa Bay Buccaneers
vs.
Atlanta Falcons
Week 1
NFL Pick
9/11/16
Veteran quarterback, Matty Ice (Matt Ryan), and the Atlanta Falcons look to start the season strong at home against first year head coach, Dirk Koetter, second year quarterback, Jameis Winston, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Atlanta Falcons started strong in their 2015-2016 campaign, compiling a record of 5 and 0. However, during the middle of the season they saw themselves in a 0 and 6 rut, finishing the year at 8 and 8. The Falcons possess an ample amount of firepower on the offensive end with the fantasy football and outright stud, Julio Jones, as well as last year’s breakout performer, Devonta Freeman.
ONCe again, Atlanta’s offense ranked in the top ten when it came to yards per Game, but yards don’t mean anything if you cannot put points on the board; Atlanta ranked 21st in points per Game. The Falcons and Roddy White split ways this past season, but that makes way for former Bengals’ receiver, Mohamed Sanu. If Tevin Coleman can control his fumbling problems, look for Tevin Coleman to see the field a decent amount, providing a nice one-two combination in the backfield.
Dan Quinn needs to get the defense on the same page so we will see if he can bring some more of that Seattle Legion-of-Boom mentality to his team. The defense was actually pretty good at causing turnovers and was a middle-of-the-pack type of defense, but with the background and expectations of Dan Quinn, look for this defense to make improvements this year.
Jameis Winston is billed as a future star in the NFL. During his career at Florida State, all the guy knew how to do was win; he compiled a starting record of 26 wins and 1 loss. ReGArdless of the talent around him, the guy willed his team to victories on many occasions. The same can be said of last year with the Bucs. However, he also found ways to will his team to losses.
That’s a common occurreNCe among rookie quarterbacks. Careless errors and plain bad decisions often put the Bucs in a hole, but the guy has plenty of talent and I do not expect any sophomore slump from him.
The Bucs sure do not lack size or athleticism at their receiving and tight end positions. Look for Mike Evans to correct his problems with drops and have a stellar season.
The MUSCle Hamster, Doug Martin, found his way again and was second, only to Adrian Peterson, in rushing yards. Hopefully, that was contract-year related.
Last year, the Bucs surrendered 26.1 points per Game which ranked them as the 7th worst. A good portion of that was related to poor field position and turnovers. With the addition of real deal holyfield cornerbacks such as Brent Grimes and Vernon Hargraves III, I’d expect the Bucs to force even more turnovers considering their defensive line and line backers are borderline elite.
Early line indicators favor the Falcons by 3 points (5 dimes sportsbook). This roughly translates into giving the Falcons a 59.4% chance to win and the Bucs a 40.6% chance to win the Game.
Using an adaptation of an Elo rating with unique variables, the results come out to about a 65% chance for the Falcons to win and 35% for the Bucs with a spread of close to 7.
However, I’m going to throw stats out of the window with this pick. I’m picking the Bucs to win as the eye test and addition of experieNCe and talent will prevail. Bucs +3