Betting Guide to the NFL Wembley Game - Pt I: All the talk is of Miami's Chatman

NFL / Andy Richmond / 27 October 2007 / 1 Comments

American football addict Andy Richmond talks us through the best bets when the Dolphins take on the NY Giants...

Shakespeare would have known nothing of the NFL but he would surely have welcomed them to these shores thus "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England" - the blessed plot in this case being Wembley on Sunday when for the first time in history the NFL stages a regular season game outside of North America.

So what of the two protagonists in this play - well the Dolphins' 0-7 season is certainly a tragi-comedy to match anything that Shakespeare wrote and their season seems to go from bad to worse with every passing week. The Giants however, arrive in town on the crest of the wave, a five game winning streak and eyeing a playoff spot.

If we take those two records at face value we could easily be looking at a very one sided game indeed and the current match odds with the Giants trading at around 1.2 are not very appealing at all - although you could argue that they are fully reflective of the statistics that these two teams have delivered this year.

Fortunately match odds are not the staple diet of American punters or sports and there are several handicap lines, player performance markets and specials available on Betfair for us to apply our statistical analysis to.

So let's take a look at how these two sides match up, how the game is likely to be played, the key players and relate those to some of these markets before we see if this game is the one sided affair it looks at first glance - effectively going behind the numbers.

0-7 makes it look grim for the Dolphins - the only side ever to have an unbeaten NFL season (16-0) - are for the first time in their history at the bottom of the NFL pile.

Offensively they have put points on the board in the majority of their games, even scoring 28 points against the unbeaten Patriots last week, but here comes the key statistic - the player who has delivered 42% of their offensive yards this season succumbed to a season-ending injury last week in that game against the Patriots.

Ronnie Brown will be missing for the rest of the year and in a move which suggested that Miami were already sacrificing 2007 to build for the future, they shipped No1 wide receiver Chris Chambers to San Diego in return for a second-round draft choice in 2008.

All that pretty much destroys the Dolphins' offensive game plan and that must break the heart of their head coach Cam Cameron who presided over the turbocharged San Diego offence.

Jesse Chatman will start in Brown's place, and although at the start of the season he was sharing the rushing duties with Brown it soon became clear that it was Brown who was the flair player and Chatman can only be considered to be a stop-gap player who is unlikely to be able to carry the same load as Brown.

Without such a go-to guy as Brown, how is Miami quarterback Cleo Lemon going to cope with the Giants' fearsome pass rush - they had six sacks last week and now have 27 for the season, with 25 of those coming in the last 5 games and I expect the Giants to be blitzing heavily with defensive end Osi Umenyiora and veteran Michael Strahan featuring in the sack attack.

I'm not sure that the mediocre Miami line will be able to hold these two amongst others and feel they will struggle to move the ball on a regular basis. Cleo Lemon may find himself picking himself off the Wembley turf rather more often than he cares for - he was sacked 3 times last week and he could match that on Sunday.

So that's Miami with the ball - and it still looks bleak, can we squeeze a bet out of those stats? Well there's plenty of markets available that would allow you to do that and the one I like best is the Lemon passing yards market - with inexperience and numbers against him I'll be trying to back under 240.5 yards at around the 1.92 mark, if you want to go one step further try backing Jesse Chatman not to break the 75.5 yard rushing mark at a slightly shorter 1.85.

Just remember that this is a Giant defence that leaked 80 points in its first two starts this season admittedly against two of the better NFC teams - the Cowboys and Packers. As a Packer fan of 25 years standing I had to mention them somewhere - but have only conceded 69 points since so you have a lot in your favour with those two bets and some form players on your side stopping some inexperienced and out of form players.

Related Links:

Best Bets - Pt II

The Player's View

The View from Across the Pond

Comments (1)

1. Educated Bet | 30 November 2007

   Thanks for the insight. I am going to make the play.
   Peace... Iron Mike