Free Analysis For Thursday Night Football!

DENVER 21 NY Jets (-6.5) 20

Over/Under Total: 40.0

05:20 PM Pacific Time, Thursday, 17-Nov-2011

The Broncos are making the Tim Tebow experiment work by building an offense built around his skills, which is his ability to run a zone read running offense like he did at Florida. Denver threw just 8 passes and ran the ball 54 times last week in a win over Kansas City last week and they beat the Raiders with Tebow averaging just 4.9 yards per pass play (they ran for 299 yards). Denver has actually won 3 of Tebow’s 4 starters because of their underrated defense and by taking care of the ball. Teams that don’t throw much don’t turn the ball over as much and Tebow isn’t a quarterback that throws interceptions when he does have to throw it (just 1 interception on 105 passes this season and only 4 picks on 187 career passes). The Broncos have scored 18 points or fewer in 3 of Tebow’s 4 starts but the overlooked defense has allowed an average of 16 points in the 3 recent wins and that unit is a bit better than average for the season thanks to a solid run defense (4.2 ypr allowed to teams that would average 4.4. ypr against an average team) and a very good pass rush (2.7 sacks per game) that has turned up the pressure lately (17 sacks the last 5 games).

New York is still considered an elite team, but the Jets have actually been out-gained 314 yards at 5.1 yards per play to 329 yards at 5.3 yppl this season are only 0.1 yppl better than average from the line of scrimmage after compensating for their tougher than average schedule (they’re 0.4 yppl worse than average on offense and 0.5 yppl better than average defensively). The Jets do have great special teams, so they are pretty efficient with their yards, which is why they’re out-scoring their opponents by 1.7 points per game, but my main math model favors Denver by 1 point in this game. That model doesn’t take into account the Jets’ tendency to play better than their stats but my other model, which does take other factors into account, favors New York by only 2 ½ points. Even if the fair line should be Jets by 3 ½ points that would still make Denver a 55.5% play at +6 points. This is one of those games that is still tough to bet even when I know it’s a good bet. Those are the games that I’ve been making Strong Opinions this season and my Strong Opinions are 18-5 in the NFL. So, I’ve decided to pull the trigger on this game and make it a Best Bet, as the tougher a game is to bet the better bet it usually is. I also like that 77% of all bets have been on the Jets in this game and the public is usually wrong when the betting percentage is so one sided. I’ll take Denver in a 2-Star Best Bet at +6 points or more.