Arizona Cardinals open week as heavy favorites
By Erich Becker
The Arizona Cardinals open up the week as heavy favorites in the Divisional Round at home.
The Arizona Cardinals, now poised with taking on their Week 16 opponents again, open the week as heavy favorites even as the Green Bay Packers throttled the Washington Redskins on Sunday afternoon. After a 35-18 win, Green Bay returns to the site of its most lopsided loss of the season a 38-8 trumping by the Cardinals in front of a lot of Green Bay fans who made it into the game.
Las Vegas sports books are opening up with the Cardinals as 7.5 to 8.5 point favorites over the Packers, this is, by far, the biggest differential between Divisional Playoff opponents.
Nate Silver’s ELO model, which picked three of the four games correctly in the Wild Card round, has the Cardinals with the largest favored percentage at 66%.
After a first round bye, the Cardinals need to find a way to avoid themselves on their path to winning Saturday evening and making it to their second NFC Championship game in franchise history.
The betting lines should change and predictions will undoubtedly change over the course of the week, but the consensus among writers and talking heads is that this is a game the Cardinals need to win, a game they have won before, and a game that should be theirs.
In a round of the playoffs that, for the first time ever, had all four road times winning, the home teams are all favored this weekend by high single digit to double digit percentages, only Kansas City and New England is close in Silver’s model.
The Cardinals know where they will go from here, if they can win on Saturday, one of two scenarios will take place, if Seattle wins in Carolina, the Seahawks will come to Glendale for the NFC Championship game (a game for the ages based on the team’s history, this season, and in the past). If Carolina defeats Seattle, the Cardinals will travel to the east coast for the Championship game.
It’s getting exciting with only eight teams left, next week at this time, we’ll know either the elation of victory or the crushing feeling of what could have been.