Alliance of American Football (AAF) Sports Betting Picks: Week 2

Alright! How’d y’all enjoy Week 1 of the AAF? I really enjoyed it on some levels, and on other levels it illustrated for me what we always take for granted in the NFL. The QB play and game control was rough in spots. While there was some very solid QB play from John Wolford in Arizona, and Garrett Gilbert in Orlando, Mike Bercovici was apparently acting on his own death wish by not being able (or willing?) to adjust protections at the line, or use his peripheral vision. The upside was we apparently have the technology to re-attach someone’s head without them missing a series now! So that bodes well for future headless horsemen crossovers athletes, as well as Gwenneth Paltrow in “SE7EN.” As usual, I digress…

The other aspect of the game that was dramatically different from what we’re used to at the elite level was wide receiver play. There were so many drops, so many misplayed balls, and so few successful contested catches. There were so many drops, I almost gained an appreciation for Concentration Drops 1, and Concentration Drops 2, for their time in Denver. Almost.

Salt Lake Stallions at Birmingham Iron (-7, 44)
This line is a dramatic scoreboard overreaction in my opinion. I say scoreboard because you cannot analyze the two boxscores or watch the two games and land on Birmingham as a 4-to-5 point better team than Salt Lake. No way. Birmingham played ok vs. the dreadful Memphis Express, who couldn’t do anything right. Salt Lake played pretty well vs. Arizona — who appears to be the best team in the league — aside from their three turnovers. The Stallions had a much better third down conversion last week than Arizona (8-16, 50% vs. 4-12, 33%). If not for the three turnovers, which NFL bettors have established are somewhat random, that would’ve been a much more competitive game.

Birmingham didn’t exactly blow me away with their performance last week either. They just looked like a team that happened to be playing an incredibly poor team. The Iron only had 4.7 yards per play (ypp), and 2.5 yards per carry (ypc), while the Express gave the ball up on three occasions.

LIKE: Salt Like +7

Arizona Hotshots at Memphis Express (+13, 46.5)
Arizona looked really, really good! As a lifelong Hotshots fan, I couldn’t be happier! Seriously, though, Arizona looked really good, and one number tells that story: 9.5 yards per attempt (ypa) passing, excluding the sack losses. John Wolford put up an extremely efficient 275 yards on 29 attempts, with four of those going for TDs. I’m honestly not sure we learned a lot about Arizona last week. I feel I learned more about Salt Lake (they’re a top-half team) than Arizona, as the presumed favorite to begin with.

Memphis is dreadful. They looked every bit as bad at the boxscore. Memphis had only 11 first downs, only 20% third-down conversions, and only 202 total yards on 55 plays (a paltry 3.7 ypp).

LIKE: Under 46.5

Orlando Apollos at San Antonio Stallions (+6, 44.5)
Another overreaction line. Sure, Spurrier-sans-visor and the Apollos looked really good last week, but didn’t anyone watch San Antonio? They’re a pretty good team, with lots of nice fantasy (yes, fantasy) options. They had 24 first downs, with 9-18 third-down efficiency and 35 minute time of possession. However, they were pretty inefficient with all of that possession (obviously, or they wouldn’t be +6).

Orlando played pretty well — obviously — but…any NFL handicapper would again point to the number of turnovers they benefited from (4) in arriving at a game review with an asterisk. Their passing game left something to be desired (I say that even though earlier praising my AAF fantasy QB) in that they only netted 226 yards on 27 attempts. However, my dude “Don’t call me Kareem” Akeem Hunt had himself a nice game with 73 yards on 10 carries. With D’Ernest Johnson, that’s a pretty stout rushing combo (or so it appears through one game).

LEAN: San Antonio +6 

Atlanta Legends at San Diego Fleet (-9.5, 42.5)
I’m sorry, what? The Fleet favored by double digits? Yes, I understand that Atlanta is worse than the Wildcats when Goldie Hawn first took over as coach. I understand that their Head Coach bailed on them, and Mike Vick disappeared like the basketball in this Vine. There’s no way around it — Atlanta looked really poor — but I do not think they looked as bad as they’re being priced. I would’ve made this game -5 SDF (2 for Home Field + power rated about an FG better). Furthering the case for the dog here is the commonly accepted correlation between lower totals with large spreads (in the NFL, the favorites have covered at an incredible rate the last 5-6 years). However, I feel that in a new league, the fundamentals will hold more often than not; a big dog in a short total makes a solid play.

LIKE: Atlanta +10 or more (no, NFL key numbers will not mean the same in this league with no extra points, but I still feel 10 — along with 6 & 8 — will be relatively key numbers.)

LEAN: Under 42.5

Jared Still in a featured writer for BettingPros. For more from Jared, check out his archive and follow him @jaredstill.