Mario Mergola’s NFL Betting Pick for Conference Championship Weekend (2021)
Over the last few weeks, these picks have been on an absolute tear, and it reached the point where I had to question if the trend could realistically continue without a pullback. Instead, we continued to find one edge or another as we moved through the first two rounds of the playoffs.
We’re now at the final few games — and teams — for the 2020 NFL season. Ultimately, it will be remembered as “unique,†but it wasn’t the disaster that many feared. In fact, we will head into the Conference Championships with arguably the four teams who best represent the league in terms of either raw talent or the ability to overcome adversity.
We also have one particular play that stands above the rest.
The previous picks given in this BettingPros weekly column are 42-28-1 on the season. The rest of my against-the-spread picks and historical record can be found at Sporfolio.com.
Odds courtesy FanDuel Sportsbook.
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Green Bay Packers UNDER 51.5 (-106)
I’ve constantly written about taking certain games — or small schedules — as “sets†and comparing the two. In the Conference Championships, we have the perfect opportunity to utilize this tactic.
The Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be the first-of-two games to kick off on Sunday, and they feature two of the unquestioned greatest quarterbacks who have ever lived. The later matchup, as of the early portion in the week, could have presented the battle of Chad Henne and Josh Allen.
Putting those two games side-by-side, it’s incredibly easy to make the argument that the Packers and Buccaneers will produce more offense. Not only are they led by the aforementioned greats under center, but we know the status of both starting quarterbacks.
With all this being said, the eye-opening reality is that the over-under for the game between the Chiefs and Bills is higher than the Packers and Buccaneers matchup.
This should tell us all we need to know.
The Packers and Buccaneers are in a position to go ‘under’ their point total.
As soon as we look past the starting quarterbacks, it’s not overly difficult to see how the game could remain on the lower-scoring side of the scale. Green Bay hasn’t allowed more than 24 points since the end of November, while the Buccaneers rank eighth or better in all of the major ‘defensive average’ statistics that I use — points-per-game, yards-per-game, yards-per-rush, net-yards-per-pass-attempt, to name a few.
The over-under or spread is always designed to capture the mistakes between what people expect to happen and what is most likely actually to unfold on the field. We were given a major clue into this by the oddsmakers, and we should take it seriously.
Prediction: Buccaneers/Packers UNDER 51.5 (-106)
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Mario Mergola is a featured writer at FantasyPros and BettingPros, as well as the creator and content-editor of Sporfolio. For more from Mario, check out his archive and follow him @MarioMergola. He has also been one of the industry leaders in NFL against-the-spread picks over the last 6 years.