ESPN’s Bill Barnwell Predicts a Super Bowl LI Rout.. For Which Team?
The headline on ESPN.com Thursday afternoon read “Super Bowl LI Rout Predicted”.
Columnist Bill Barnwell believes the Patriots will win 34-17, not necessarily a rout but a win by 17 points. The Margin of Victory odds within this range pays $70 for every $10 bet.
For Barnwell, it’s all about the Falcons weakness in the pass-rush department.
This game keeps coming back to that pass-rush problem for me. It's tough to believe the two most recent games we've seen, with the Falcons suddenly morphing into the '85 Bears of pass pressure, are more meaningful than the 16 other games we saw, where their pass rush was relatively tame. If they move Beasley over center and target Joe Thuney and David Andrews in pass protection or get an incredible game out of Deion Jones, maybe the pass rush shows up, but they haven't gotten much pressure with four men and are facing a quarterback who kills blitzes before they even get home.
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- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com
