SoCal Bong

You are on the money KenSims. It's not so much about the books trying to keep the action balanced as much as it is about anticipating which side is coming in and when. For the most part the pattern is consistent and public money (favorites and overs) comes in on game day. The other factor I don't believe anyone has mentioned yet is parlay exposure (off the board, not pre-printed bubble sheets). The most common parlay written the last two weeks was almost surely taking all 4 favorites and those cashed in the wild card round which even hurts the books.

Another factor that may not have been discussed is that if most every book around Vegas has Pats -9.5, the one book that goes with -10 may get pounded with Ravens Sharp bets so there is little incentive to be bold and stray from the consensus.

As far as tracking the line moves, remember that it sometimes changes just for a minute. If sharps think 10 is gonna be tough to find, they'll hit it hard if it ever shows up with 6 figure wagers (which Cantor will take, just follow Mayweather on Twitter to see proof) and that line goes right back to 9.5 before anyone else gets a chance to get some.

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NSPF

Just re-watched the first game... Honestly the spread is about right, Baltimore is not anywhere near the team the Patriots are. Doesn't mean that they can't win, or that it won't be close, but it's just as likely that it will be a blowout.

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BradyFTW!

That's true. The betting public tends to bet fairly heavy on the Patriots regardless of what the spread is, so sports books will sometimes compensate for that by moving the line a point or two in favor of the other team.

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LiveShot

Spread is high because most of the money is on the Pats and Vegas has to balance the $$$. More money on Balt and spread will drop.

wistahpatsfan

Just that the spread that is final and gone through all the betting, new information, new assessment, opinions that influence bettors, ...stuff like that. I get that the spread is real today and that you can bet against it or with it if you want. I just prefer to wait it out until gameday just in case Flacco breaks his leg playing hockey Friday night or something stupid like that.

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ausbacker

Baltimore, to their credit, has capitalized on the mistakes made by the Colts and the Broncos. I happen to believe that the Texans are better than Baltimore. If you line the teams up on recent form the line looks right. That said, we all know the Ravens play the Patriots tough and have got the W's when they had to in the playoffs. Style points don't matter in January and February, wins do.

The Patriots are long overdue for a positive statement game against the Ravens. This is one of the few times I'd prefer to see a blow out and total domination of the Ravens.

TheBostonStraggler

Using a small sample is an unfair picture to paint. There will always be outliers when a small enough sample is taken. Everyone needs to take a look at a large sample to determine Vegas' accuracy. Best I could do is find a sample of 2 years. Taking that 2 year sample of the past, there were 167 games in which the point spread was 7 or more. The favored team outright won the game close to 80% of the time. But the underdog tied or covered the spread close to 50% (51.5%) of the time. Think about that, 167 instances of creating a spread on an uncertain outcome and they were almost 50/50. They are either lucky beyond belief or are really good at what they do.
Sure, they get it wrong sometimes. It's an inexact science they perform. But considering their longer term track record (disregarding the small sample outlier), it is safe to say that a spread from Vegas has as a solid chance of being close to right, period. That isn't homer-ism or pre game nerves, that is a quantifiable fact.

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fxkane

Yes, this is the simple truth. But the odds usually make total sense to me, and I was shocked by both of sunday's lines. I expected SF to be this kind of favorite and New Eng to be at around 4 points. Instead the reverse

letekro

Balt is a mentally tough team with an enormous amount of big game experience. Houston is completely the opposite. Houston may be "better" from a talent standpoint, but that means little in the playoffs.

This line is bananas.

josh24

Betting against the spread might be the right choice in this one.
If we look at the past 5 seasons ('08-'12), reg. season and playoffs, teams favored with a -9.5 line or more have won by 10+ points in merely 51.3% of such games (95 out of 185 games), so chances are that we win by less than 10 points. Also, in those games, teams have covered the line only 80 times (41%).
On the other hand, in games with this -9.5 line, favored teams are 20-4, although covering the line only 13 times.

With that said, I think we cover.
Our run defense is really good, and the Ravens rely on the run game most of the times. This Ravens defense is not the same we have faced over the last 4-5 games. I like our chances.