Despite the half-decade trend of home teams dominating in conference championship games, both straight up and against the spread, the Los Angeles Rams are a more popular ticket than the New Orleans Saints for the NFC Championship Game.
It's likely a combination of things, including the recency bias of seeing the Saints struggle with the Eagles and the Rams exert their will on the Cowboys, not to mention the spread (Saints -3.5) having an extra half point (the "hook" as it's known) to make the Rams particularly attractive.
Let's dive into some of the trends for the spread and the over/under to look at and see what we can find.
Saints (-3.5) vs. Rams
Before New Orleans failed to cover against the Eagles, it was easy to stump for Drew Brees and Sean Payton in this spot, since they were 10-1 against the spread in spots where they had two weeks to prepare since 2009. The Saints probably should have covered -- if Payton throws on third down late in the game instead of running the ball, the Saints are probably close enough for Wil Lutz to make his field goal. The resulting run opened the door for more Nick Foles' playoff magic, but New Orleans was able to hold him off.
The Saints still moved to 6-0 straight up in the playoffs at home, making them a potentially nice moneyline value if you're into that sort of thing.
New Orleans was surprisingly bad as a home favorite in 2018, going just 3-5 against the spread. Oddly enough, they won their only game as a home underdog by beating the Rams, who were a 2.5-point favorite in New Orleans for some reason.
The Rams were not great on the road, going 4-4 against the spread. Their road wins aren't that impressive: at Seattle and maybe at Denver are the only good ones. Otherwise they picked up wins at Oakland, at San Francisco, at Arizona and at Detroit. They lost on the road to the Bears and Saints in the regular season. The Rams are 2-1 as a road dog since Sean McVay started in 2017, which is pretty remarkable, considering they've played 16 games on the road and have only been a dog three times.
McVay only has two games in the playoffs under his belt, going 1-1 straight up and 1-1 against the spread.
Since 2009, the Saints are 7-4 against the spread in the playoffs and 43-34 overall as a home favorite.
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Over/Under 56.5
This was the real dagger: the over was 5-0 in Saints home playoff games under Brees and Payton, who usually come out and go full Hank Scorpio on everyone when they host a playoff game. But the Saints looked rusty in this game and Brees missed two early, wide open deep touchdown passes. Missing open touchdown passes isn't really his "thing" but it happened anyway. The Saints also orchestrated an 11-minute drive in the third quarter. By the time it ended they had a touchdown, but it was kind of obvious the over wouldn't hit.
ANYWAY, no need to linger on that game. It's over. It happened. No one's bitter. Let's move on.
Taking a peak at conference championship matchups from 2000 (arbitrary, whatever) on played in domed stadiums with an over/under of 35 points or more, the over is 6-0 in those situations. Tack on the Cardinals-Eagles game from the 2009 playoffs (retractable roof in Arizona) and the over is 7-0.
For comparison's sake, championship games played outdoors in the same span are 13-13-2 to the over.
In each of those years with the domed teams, we are also talking about at least one top tier offense: 2016 Falcons, 2012 Falcons (7th, lowest on this list), 2009 Colts, 2009 Saints, 2006 Colts (vs 2006 Patriots) and the 2001 Rams. Most of the time it was a matchup of two top-tier offenses or at least two top-half offenses. This isn't even the highest total we've seen compared to the rest of the games -- Falcons/Packers from 2016 was set at 59.5 and still managed to cover.
Year | Team (PPG Rank) | Opponent (PPG Rank) | Total | Final Score |
2018 | Saints (3) | Rams (2) | 56.5 | ??? |
2016 | Falcons (1) | Packers (4) | 59.5 | 44-21 (over) |
2012 | Falcons (7) | 49ers (11) | 49 | 28-24 (over) |
2009 | Colts (7) | Jets (17) | 40.5 | 30-17 (over) |
2009 | Saints (1) | Vikings (2) | 54 | 31-28 (over) |
2006 | Colts (2) | Patriots (7) | 47 | 38-34 (over) |
2001 | Rams (1) | Eagles (9) | 51 | 29-24 (over) |
There's a very good history of dome games going over. So that's a plus if you're betting on there being a lot of points in this one.
On the other hand, the trends this year for these two teams has not been great when it comes to the over. The Rams rank ninth in terms of hitting the over this year, but they were only 9-8 to the over, including their over against the Cowboys this past weekend. (It's possible that early scoring led to hijacked numbers, which led to a lot of unders hitting -- only nine teams went over 50 percent of the time.) The Saints were way down the list, going 7-10 on the over, including their under against the Eagles this past weekend.
The Saints lack of overs might best be understood by looking at time of possession on their drives. New Orleans averaged 3:15 per drive, longest in the NFL. The Rams were just 17th in terms of average drive time, but they were third in terms of Drive Success Rate, which means that a drive resulted in at least a first down or touchdown. The Saints were second in that category. Think about how much time is getting melted when a team reboots on its set of downs.
Or just think about the Saints 11-minute drive in the third quarter that snuffed out any chance of hitting the over against Philly. Oh right. Oh right. We're done talking about that.
I actually don't think DSR should be too concerning -- the Falcons and Packers both ranked top 10 in terms of DSR and top 10 in terms of time of possession per drive when they blasted through the 60-point barrier two years ago. Just like any football game to hit the total, there's going to need to be explosive plays. The Rams were third and the Saints were eighth in 20+ yard passing plays last year; the Rams were just 12th and the Saints were just 20th in 40+ yard pass plays. The Rams were 11th and the Saints were 24th in terms of 20+ yard rushing plays.
There's good reason to think this total might ultimately not hit the over, even though the last time the two teams met the number went way over.
