The Vikings will host the Giants in NFL Wild Card playoff action this Sunday in a game that kicks off at 4:40 PM EST. The Vikings are currently favored by -3 with a total of 48.5.
This game shapes up as one of the most interesting of the weekend. Not because the teams involved are so good but because it’s one of the most evenly matched games.. At least on paper.
Essentially, it’s a game between two mediocre football teams with the winner likely to lose their next game. But hey, who knows?
The Giants were a team of two seasons this year, the 1st half of the season and the 2nd half. They got off to a 7-2 start and started turning heads only to go 2-5-1 down the stretch. But to their credit, they wrapped up a playoff spot prior to the final week of the season and come into this one rested.
The Vikings, remarkably, were 13-4. However when the Vikings win, they barely one with most of those W’s coming by one score. But when they lost, they were REAL bad. Their losses were by 24, 11, 37 and 17.
Again, we think it’s important to look at a teams stats over the last several games as opposed to season to date when trying to make heads or tails of the playoffs. But in this instance, it wouldn’t make much difference. Whether you break it down over the entire season or over the last several games one thing remains constant. Two mediocre teams.
Here are the yards per point numbers over the last 7 games. The first number is the offensive number and the 2nd the defense. Note that for the Giants, we excluded the last game of the season when they rested starters.
Giants 15.1 14.7
Vikings 14.5 13
Both teams are below average. The number that really jumps off the page is that defensive ypp number of 13 for the Vikings. It’s the worst of all playoff teams and shows they can’t stop anyone. Of course you don’t need that stat to figure that out. Just look at the scores of their games.
Score Prediction Model
NY Giants 47.5 22 Minnesota -3.0 25 full season data NY Giants 47.5 30 Minnesota -3.0 21 last 4 games data NY Giants 47.5 31 Minnesota -3.0 26 last 7 games data
Note that with the score predictions, we did not exclude the Giants last game where they rested starters and yet they still come up as the straight up winners in the predictions that use data from the last 4 and 7 games.
This is the playoffs and the Vikings are at home. Anything can happen and hey, Minnesota has found a way to win 13 games this year. That’s pretty damn good.
But the numbers are the numbers. The smoke and mirror show isn’t likely to get them very far in the playoffs. Any way you slice it this football team isn’t very good. This game is a coin flip and we just can’t trust the Vikings defense. Literally no lead is safe.
With neither team being very good we’re going to take the lesser of the two evils here and grab the field goal with the Giants in a game they could very well win straight up.