These teams combined for more than 100 points in last season’s meeting and New York is looking to settle the score!
The New Orleans Saints are in the Big Apple Sunday, taking on a Giants team that together with last year, they logged the highest scoring game of the entire season. By a mile.
New York was coming off a win over the Cowboys (sounds familiar) and ended up on the short end of a 52-49 barnburner that saw 31 points scored in the fourth quarter alone. The game was actually headed towards overtime, and who knows how much more scoring, before an unfortunate turn of events gave the Saints a chance to win it late on the leg of Kai Forbath.
The Giants went into the Big Easy having won four of five but from that point, won only two of their final eight games. It spelled the end for Tom Coughlin in New York and first-year HC Ben McAdoo won his first game, 20-19 last week over the Cowboys. New York has Washington up next and bookmakers had labelled them as 5.5-point favorites for this contest before Saints money edged the line to -4.5.
NEW ORLEANS AT NEW YORK
Bovada Odds: Giants -4.5 and O/U 53
The Saints also have a divisional game on-deck, next Monday vs. Atlanta. Knowing HC Sean Payton, he’s probably going to roll into MetLife with a vanilla gameplan, stress the run and then quietly accept this loss, diverting his attention to the Falcons. Or not.
Payton and QB Drew Brees, not to mention every fantasy football owner on the planet know they’re going to need to score a lot of points to beat anyone this year and they have the playmakers to do it. It’s more a question of defense and with CB Delvin Breaux out, this secondary is even more vulnerable.
The Saints signed BW Webb this week, a fourth rounder from 2014 (Cowboys) and he immediately becomes one of their most experienced players in the backfield. It’s not a great situation against Eli Manning and his ever-expanding group of top rated targets but road dogs of more than +3 who are known for giving up a lot of yards actually to pretty well ATS in this spot (240-196-6 or 55%).
Dogs that are coming off a game where they threw for 300-plus yards are even more effective, going 43-28-1 ATS (61-percent) and the current run is 13-3 ATS. If the road dog is coming off a home loss, they’re 24-7 ATS and when total is 46 or more, the record sits at 14-1 ATS.
New Orleans did slap a 50-burger on these G-Men last season so I researched the ‘Rolled up Revenge’ angle and it’s effective with divisional teams but not so much in these circumstances. The Giants made good use of their running backs, Rashad Jennings and Shane Vereen vs. Dallas, so this is going to be a battle for New Orleans’ front seven as well. With Brees, the Saints’ O-Line and the points, however, I think there’s some value on the road side.