A Truly Wide Open NFL $eason

You’ll have to go all the way back to 1999 to find another year as wide open as 2008 is shaping up to be. Before week 7, the odds to win the championship for the top ten teams were all worse than 6.5 to 1, and Dallas held that spot. Anyone think they still hold it after Sunday’s showing? I didn’t think so. In other words, Vegas has no idea who’s going to win this thing.

(prior to Sunday’s games)

DALLAS 13-2
NEW YORK G 7-1
SAN DIEGO 7-1
INDIANAPOLIS 9-1
TENNESSEE 9-1
PITTSBURGH 10-1
PHILADELPHIA 14-1
WASHINGTON 17-1
TAMPA BAY 20-1
CAROLINA 21-1

In 1999, things appeared to start out normal, but by week 1 of the regular season, everything had gone haywire. An injury out of St. Louis during week 3 of the pre-season, which no one really thought about at the time, knocked starting QB Trent Green out for the year and inserted a little known back-up by the name of Kurt Warner. Even after week 1 though, the NFL took little notice of a team with talented skill players (Isaac Bruce, rookie Tory Holt and newly acquired RB Marshall Faulk) because they were coming off a 4-12 season. Little did we all know…

The true favorite that season was the New York Jets, who were beaten 23-10 the previous year against Denver in the AFC Championship Game. They had all of the pieces in place to make another SB run for the big Tuna. Those aspirations went down the drain in the 3rd quarter of opening day when QB Vinny Testaverde, on a hand off, ruptured his achilles tendon. Although there were still 15 games left on the schedule, the season was effectively over.

Denver, the defending two-time champion, was adjusting to life without John Elway and got off to an 0-4 start before superstar RB Terrell Davis tore his ACL. They never recovered (and probably wouldn’t have even had he stayed healthy).

The two contestants in the Super Bowl that year were the St. Louis Rams (the Greatest Show on Turf) vs. the Tennessee Titans. In what was then termed the greatest Super Bowl ever played, although I’m not sure how it received that label because the game was utterly boring until the 4th quarter, the Rams went onto win 23-16.

To show you how unlikely of a scenario that that was to happen prior to the season, Las Vegas bookies were giving 200-1 odds that the Rams would win the big game. Apparently somebody who either had too much money for his own good, or was inebriated after a night on the town, placed a $5,000 bet on the Rams before week 1. When Isaac Bruce got deep for his 83-yard GW TD reception, that gentleman was holding onto a ticket worth a million dollars. That just doesn’t happen everyday… and that’s why this season’s so interesting.

2008 began very similar to 1999. The New England Patriots, fresh off their Super Bowl loss vs. the Giants, were ready to go after another one until Tom Brady blew out his ACL on opening day. The Cowboys, actually the favorite prior to the season, have come undone of late and now Tony Romo is nursing a broken pinkie. The defending champion Giants, sitting at 5-1, lost DE’s Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora before the season and have many doubters in the football world. The other representative in the AFC Championship Game, the San Diego Chargers, have sputtered to a 3-4 start and have all sorts of issues. The Colts, who won 13 games last season, have gotten off to a rocky start and are sitting at 3-3 after week 7, although they could just as easily be 1-5. And on and on and on.

So what does this tell us? It’s wide open. Any team can win. It’ll probably end up being a war of attrition and whomever can survive the season and keep their good players healthy will probably have the best shot to hoist the Lombardi trophy in Tampa Bay the 1st Sunday in February.

Warren Buffett came out the other day and said it was time to buy US stocks - that they were undervalued - and I agree, but experts also predict another 6-9 months of pain in the market so why not look for another place to make money in the meantime? It’s a little riskier being a zero sum game (although so was owning Lehman stock), but if you’re a fan of Tampa (20-1) or Carolina (21-1), you have just as good of a shot as the team with the 2nd best odds (San Diego 7-1). There’s really not a lot that separates the top teams from the mid-range teams and if someone can get hot like the New York Giants did last year, then you just might be the lucky guy to cash that big ticket at the end of the season… with a feeling comparable to the guy who cashed the $1,000,000 ticket in February of 2000.

source: www.profootball101.org