The story begins with my boss, the Lone Star Legend, hopping off a plane in Vegas with a briefcase chained to his wrist. Neatly packaged inside the briefcase were 20 bundles of crisp $100 bills — $20,000 in cash in case you were counting.
Then, as now, The Legend was fondly remembered on the bone-dry plains of west Texas for his two-way heroics as the star of a state championship team. He had gained more than 2,000 yards as a fullback who caused even more concussions than he had suffered, although suffered might not be apropos. He never missed a play and, indeed, seemed to have taken pride and joy in those brain-rattling collisions. As a linebacker, he provoked even more cerebral calamities, and these, too, were recounted with glee even on that day in Vegas.
This was on Super Bowl weekend of 1987, and the cash represented just a fraction of the gelt that The Legend had raked in, both from his tout service — for which I picked NFL over-unders — and whatever side action he might have enjoyed as a result of, um, friendly bets he had made with a few high-rollers. The tout service money was pretty good, but, as it had once been for the mobbed-up casinos in Vegas, the real money was in the tax-free skim from the register — or, in this case, from the money lost by those friends who identified themselves only by number.
It’s safe to say that The Legend had earned almost as much money that year as the actual legend who would lead the Denver Broncos against the New York Giants — a matchup that The Legend described as “that pussy QB against the real football players.”
The pussy in question, John Elway, was getting by on a bit more than $2 million per annum back then, and had passed for 3,485 yards that season — 1,459 yards fewer than Matt Ryan’s total for Atlanta this season, but no small achievement in those days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qcTIDftiAQ
So it was pretty much a given that after checking into his suite and peeling off a few honeybees for each member of his support staff and three more each for the wives (“a little something for you girls to shop with”), The Legend was going to head for the casino to plunk down the 20k on the Giants plus 9 1/2.
Those were simpler times. You bet the side or you bet the total — whereas now you can bet hundreds of proposition wagers and maybe three or four hundred if you’re making your bets with an off-shore casino far from the legal clutches of our repressive government. (Guilty as charged.)
In fact, the Vegas casinos report that the majority of the action this year will be on the prop bets, such as whether a fan will illegally enter the playing field during the game. You can proffer $100 to earn $150 if you bet yes; or you can risk $550 to make $100. I don’t recommend this proposition. Given the level of anti-terrorist security in an even normal time — and the level we will see now that a certain politician has alienated just about every foreign leader except for the one who disappears his enemies with the twitch of an eyebrow — it’s quite possible that anyone who even takes the wrong step might be shot on sight. But the juice on the other side will eventually put you out of action, and the action is the only thing true gamblers crave. To quote one of many graveyard racetrack jokes, “I’m glad I broke even because I need the money.”
To quote one of many graveyard racetrack jokes, “I’m glad I broke even because I need the money”
After I took maybe 20 beatings on Super Bowl bets — winning my share, except that I could not defeat the juice — I stumbled onto the same prop wager that I’ve proffered for the last decade. And damned if I didn’t usually win. That said, I think this prop is especially difficult this year but I’m playing with house money, so what the hell.
It’s meant to be a sucker bet. You wager on whether a specific running back’s first carry will go over or under 3 1/2 yards. So the first thing you see is that Devonta Freeman averaged 4.8 yards per carry this year and, as you reach for your wallet, you wonder, “How long has this been going on?” But wait. Always wait. There’s a dark cloud behind that silver lining. Take it from me, there always is.
But enough of my dime-store existentialism. The problem is that Freeman’s median carry is way less than 4.8 yards. His average carry is no more relevant than what I’m wearing as I attack my keyboard. (Although, if you knew my age, you’d correctly assume that it’s matching blue exercise gear with a white stripe down the outer edge of my pants.) Beyond that, it’s not really that important to coaches how much Freeman or any other runner gets on his first carry, the idea being that good running backs wear down defenses through sheer attrition and wind up getting their biggest gains later in games.
As you’ll see, first impressions can be deceiving. Say you’re looking at Freeman’s most recent games and you see that in the final week of the regular season, his first carry netted 75 yards and a touchdown (although the TD is irrelevant) vs. New Orleans. But, in all, he had 12 carries and the other 11 included just one over 3 1/2 yards (it went for four). I’m not saying that first carry was a complete fluke, but it’s something to consider.
Now, of the four running backs you can bet with this prop, Freeman is actually the most successful on first downs. Does this bother me? No, it’s actually what I was looking for. Because as we all know, Bill Belichick is famous for taking away opponent’s strengths. So I eschew Tevin Coleman and look at how the Patriots have performed against elite running backs. I don’t care that Justin Forsett — 43-155, 3.6 pc — gained 13 yards on his first carry vs. the Pats. Or even that Mike Gillislee, on his fourth carry of the year, gained 28 yards on his first carry vs. New England. What I care about is the Top-10 running backs that New England faced — Ajayi, Bell (twice), McCoy, David Johnson and Lamar Miller (twice). Together, they gained a total of 18 yards in their seven carries. Of those, one carry, by Miller, went over three yards (he had a nine-yard gain on his first carry on Week 3).
You could look at scores of other factors: the runner’s success on grass vs. plastic, home games vs. road, success vs. opposing team and…you get the idea. All those factors might make you more confident, but they wouldn’t make you more successful. In other words, you’d be engaging in…this is your cliche test…paralysis by analysis.
So, I’m sticking with my favorite prop. Not only has it worked for me, but if I’m lucky, I can ignore the game 30 seconds into the first quarter, which, aside from breaking even, should be every gambler’s goal.
Oh, in case you forgot that 1987 Super Bowl classic, the Giants won 30-19, after which The Legend pronounced that the effeminate flinger would never amount to a damned thing. And I got off to a 3-8 start the next year on my over-under picks, after which I was cashiered in a brief phone that went something like “Fuck off, kid.” And thus I failed into radio, an ignominy from which I was never to escape.
