This article is part of our Beating the Book series.
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It's been a terrible season, and the playoffs have been even worse. I lost both conference title games to go 2-8 in the postseason, though I might have been jobbed on one of them last week.
Nonetheless, I haven't been wrong about a Super Bowl since 2010, and after feeling wishy-washy about this matchup for more than a week, I've finally gotten clear on what I want to do.
SUPER BOWL 50
Broncos +6 vs. Panthers
Given the two teams' respective paths to the Super Bowl, it's odd this line opened at merely 3.5 - how could Vegas not see it would be bet up to six (and I'm not sure the line is done moving.) The Broncos eked out a win against the Patriots in Denver, thanks in part to a missed extra point and Patriots center Bryan Storks allegedly tipping the snap count to the Broncos defense. Moreover, they were life and death with the Steelers at home despite Ben Roethlisberger playing with torn ligaments in his shoulder and DeAngelo Williams and Antonio Brown missing the game. Peyton Manning still hasn't shown he can throw the ball with any touch or accuracy beyond 10-15 yards, and Demaryius Thomas, once seemingly one of the league's elite receivers, can't seem to catch the ball or make a big play. Throw in Gary Kubiak's cowardly down-and-distance decision-making and insistence on starting the vastly inferior Ronnie Hillman over C.J. Anderson, and this matchup looks lopsided indeed. And in fact my first instinct was to lay the wood with the Panthers, a much better-rounded team coming off the demolition of the Cardinals, one of the league's top teams by any measure during the regular season.
Of course, I wasn't the only one watching the NFL playoff games or coming to that same obvious conclusion. In fact, even with the line jumping from 3.5 to 6, 72 percent of bettors are on the Panthers. So the herd is on Carolina, but someone is holding the line at six by betting Denver. What's the case for it?
To start, I checked out the Massey-Peabody rankings which view the Panthers as plus-9.3 points over an average team on a neutral field and the Broncos as plus-4.52. That means the line should be around 4.8. Massey-Peabody are not always right, but they're a good reality check based on reliably predictive statistical indicators. In any event, their numbers are close enough to the actual line that it wouldn't sway me one way or the other except to reassure me that fading the Panthers would not be a rash move.
The other key factor for me is to look at how Super Bowls play out historically, as they're different from regular-season games in several respects: (1) There's usually a two-week gap between the conference title games and the Super Bowl, i.e., both teams are rested and healthier; (2) it's on a neutral and usually unfamiliar field; (3) the stakes are highest; and (4) the media coverage is at its most intense. I don't know which of those variables is most important or whether in combination they make regular season and ordinary playoff games less relevant for predictive purposes, but I've found it helpful to focus mainly on prior Super Bowls as precedents for current ones.
In fact, I looked into this two years ago and concluded teams with elite defenses almost always cover the spread, if not win outright. I cited the 2007 and 2011 Giants beating superior Patriots offenses (their defenses weren't elite all year, but they were by the time of the playoffs), the 2002 Bucs beating the favored Raiders, the 1990 Giants beating the favored Bills, the 1984 Niners blowing out the Dan Marino Dolphins, the 2000 Ravens blowing out the Giants and of course, now we have the 2013 underdog Seahawks blowing out the favored Broncos who had just torched the previous offensive record book.
The question then, is whether the 2015 Broncos belong in the "elite" category, or they're merely just the best defense this season. If you look at the raw numbers, they were easily the top yards-per-play defense in the league (4.4), ahead of the Panthers who were tied for second with the Seahawks at 4.9. But while that looks relatively close on paper - certainly when compared with the wide disparity in their respective offenses - the Broncos had a far tougher offensive schedule than the Panthers, who played 14 games against the NFC South, NFC East and AFC South this year. In order to get a sense of how the Broncos defense, adjusted for opponent, stacks up historically, I checked out Football Outsiders DVOA rankings, and it turns out per that metric it's the fourth best Super Bowl defense of all time, sandwiched between the 2013 Seahawks (3rd) and the 2000 Ravens (5th). Assuming that metric isn't entirely off base, I'd say that qualifies as elite.
The bottom line, if we grant Denver has an elite defense, it typically doesn't matter who the opposing quarterback is - even the vaunted 2007 Patriots managed just 14 points in the Super Bowl against the Giants, and the 2013 Broncos only eight against the Seahawks. As such, as long as Peyton Manning doesn't give the game away, I expect this to be a close, low-scoring contest. Take the points.
Panthers 17 - 13
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I went 0-2 on the Conference Title games to go 2-8 in the playoffs. I was 114-134-8 on the year overall and 7-11-3 on best bets. I went 135-116-5 in 2014, and best bets were 18-12-1. From 1999-2014, I've gone 2,068-1,880 (52.4%), not including ties.
