NFL Betting – New Orleans Saints Visit Surging Atlanta Falcons

No game will be more exciting to watch this weekend than the battle between the New Orleans Saints as they visit the Georgia Dome and the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL Game of the Week.

Right now, the Falcons are deserving -2.5 favorites at home. At 10-4 ATS this season, it’s hard to stomach a bet against the rock steady Falcons. Can the Saints cause a riot on the NFL betting line?

We have all been waiting for the bubble to burst on the Falcons. They simply seem like an overachieving team on paper. I mean, Matt Ryan is just a third-year quarterback and his best receivers are Roddy White and an aging Tony Gonzalez.

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For those of us who bet on the NFL, this doesn’t feel like a team that should be 12-2 SU and 10-4 ATS, and that’s part of the reason they’re being sold short by the general public.

Think about it for a second: we’ve been so enamored by the tenacity of the Steelers, the thrilling punch of the New England Patriots, the inevitable collapse of the Minnesota Vikings, the fall and rise of the Dallas Cowboys, the incredible turn around of one Michael Vick, the up-and-downs of Mark Sanchez and the struggles of the Indianapolis Colts that the Atlanta Falcons have virtually gone unnoticed.

Even with the NFL’s Game of the Week on hand in Week 16, the Falcons are still not making headlines or being touted as heavily as they should be. Even looking at their odds, they’re not getting the respect they deserve.

In their opening game of the year, the Falcons were brutalized by an inspired Steelers defense and lost 9-15 as -1.5 point favorites (largely because Big Ben wasn’t on the field). Over a month later, they lost as +1.5 dogs to the Philadelphia Eagles in their worst game of the year by a score of 17-31.

The Falcons have also lost against the spread when facing a -7.0 home line against San Francisco, a game they won 16-14. Two weeks after losing to Philadelphia, they were able to outmuscle the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 27-21 victory, but failed to cover a -10.0 line in NFL betting.

Against playoff contenders this year, they’ve either lost outright or won by an average margin of 4.2 points per game. So what does that say about them as they prepare for Monday Night against a New Orleans team which is beginning to peak late in the season?

The metrics actually don’t say anything.

This team is flat out elite. Nobody can argue that. What makes them great is their ability to grind out the opposition with clock-munching drives. When they need big plays, like they did in a comeback victory against Baltimore, they can find the will to win.

Atlanta and Matt Ryan beat the New Orleans Saints 27-24 in Week 3 so a win this weekend would put them one step closer to sweeping the NFC betting South. They face Carolina in Week 17 in a game nobody expects them to lose. Sweeping the division is a great boost for a team that struggled with injuries one year ago, but sweeping the Super Bowl Champions would be massive. There’s a reason this game deserves to be the NFL Game of the Week.

The Saints began the season as the worst cover team in football. Starting the year at a quiet 3-2 SU and 0-5 ATS , they would need a big game against Tampa Bay to earn their first cover of the year.

Their follow-up performance was a decisive loss to the Cleveland Browns 17-30 as -12.5 favorites. Like New England, the Saints would use their loss to the Browns as a wake up call and tear off six straight victories while going 4-2 ATS with Dallas and Cincinnati both forcing covers.

Unlike Atlanta, the Saints have had myriad injuries to deal with. Pierre Thomas and Reggie Bush have missed a combined 17 games this season and with neither able to play, their rushing attack simply hasn’t been the same.

The 5-9 ATS record of the Saints doesn’t necessarily reflect how much they’ve been underachieving this year as much as they’ve just been a one-trick pony and depleted in the rushing game.

Now they’re at full strength, and hanging tough with Baltimore on the road was a huge testament to how playoff ready this team is. The Saints still have plenty to prove to the NFC and the conference-leading Falcons. The fact that the oddsmakers have already taken a half-point away from the home-bound Falcons in this game is a clear indication that the Saints are not to be taken lightly.

Still, any time we collectively begin to take Atlanta lightly they come through in the clutch. The Saints are a high-powered offensive team that can push Atlanta to its limits. If the Falcons are truly a Super Bowl XLV contender like we think they are, they’ll prove it in the NFL Game of the Week.