How Patriots stack up against largest playoff spreads in NFL history
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The New England Patriots are currently pegged as 15.5- or 16-point favorites (depending on your book) for their upcoming NFL divisional playoff home game against the Houston Texans. That is unquestionably a large point spread for an NFL football game, especially a playoff game, and raised questions about the largest spreads that have ever been seen for a playoff contest.
The line for this game opened Sunday night at Patriots -14.5 and within an hour of being released was bet up to -16. Since then some books have seen a bit of buyback on the Texans and have dropped to -15.5, however other sportsbooks, both online and in Las Vegas, have held at -16.
“If memory serves me correct, you’d have to go back all the way to when the NFC was dominating Super Bowls to find an opening line in that range, and that was back in the 1990s," recalled Peter Childs, head oddsmaker at Sportsbook.ag when discussing the opening NFL numbers with Covers' Patrick Everson.
"Bottom line, the Texans beat up on a third-string QB (Connor Cook) who was making his first career NFL start Saturday. It was an awful situation for the Raiders and it showed. The Patriots are the highest power-rated team in the NFL, going up against the worst playoff team left. We figured we couldn’t make this line high enough."
Well, it appears that the memory of Mr. Childs is holding up pretty well.
Since 1985 (as far back as our database tracks point spreads), there have been only three NFL playoff games that closed with a bigger favorite than we are currently seeing with the Patriots over the Texans.
During the 1994-95 NFL playoffs, the San Francisco 49ers, lead by hall-of-fame quarterback Steve Young, were 17-point home faves over the visiting Chicago Bears in their divisional playoff game and the Niners were even bigger 18-point favorites in Super Bowl XXIX over the San Diego Chargers just three weeks later.
Not only did the 49ers win both of those football games, but they won big and covered the massive spreads (44-15 over the Bears and 49-26 over the Chargers).
The third NFL playoff team that closed as a higher favorite than the current Patriots -15.5/-16 were the Minnesota Vikings who were 16.5-point home favorites over the visiting Arizona Cardinals during the 1998-99 divisional playoff round. The Vikings also won, and covered the spread, with a convincing 41-21 victory to advance to the NFC Championship Game.
So, not only are the Patriots the biggest NFL playoff favorites that we've seen in the last 19 years, but all three games featuring bigger faves historically have seen the big chalk cover the number. Something to keep in mind when handicapping this weekend's games.