Injuries? No, football will still determine Sunday's winner

by sancho8297 on Oct 4, 2008 11:08 AM EDT

Hello BTSC,

We're a little new to the SBNation, but wanted to drop our take on this week's game against Jacksonville. A lot of experts and journalists think the injuries will dominate this matchup, but we're not so quick to hop on that bandwagon. How often do backups step into games and perform almost to the level of the starter they replaced? Usually this occurs more frequently amongst well coached teams, and we probably don't have to argue much here that Pittsburgh falls into that category.

PIT @ JAC

Our line: Pittsburgh by 4

Pittsburgh has a large lead in Win Grade* and a just large enough lead in Real Points* to convince our rankings that they are capable of pulling off a road win in Jacksonville. Outside of being able to shut down the Pittsburgh passing game the host team doesn't have a lot to bring to the table here. Stopping Pittsburgh's aerial attack is a strategy that hasn't had much success either, as they often find other ways to win football games and put points on the board. We think this will be the case again this Sunday, with the Pittsburgh defense scrounging up some much needed turnovers for an offense that still can't quite get on track.

*These are two ranking systems we use to matchup teams

ITN Rankings:

- Pittsburgh #9

- Jacksonville #24

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It’s never good when all 5 picks on jerome bettis’s show are for the jags. I’m still pretty optimistic though.

by steelguy99 on Oct 4, 2008 7:26 PM EDT reply actions

ESPN has Jag fever too

All five sunday countdown ‘experts’ plus 6 out of 8 of their regular ‘experts’ have the Jags as winners. The line on the game has Pittsburgh as 5 point dogs too.

We’re still pretty optimistic as well steelguy99. We think the defense will be allright, as they survived a good Baltimore team without Keisel and Hampton, and should be ok again without them against Jacksonville. We think as long as the offense doesn’t shoot the team in the foot Pittsburgh will be able to ride out a hard fought victory.

Inside the Numbers LLC

'Making sense of sports statistics'

by sancho8297 on Oct 5, 2008 12:27 AM EDT reply actions