ASA – American Sports Analysts Handicapper

ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Calgary -105 over Toronto, Sunday at 4 PM ET - The Flames have a big rest edge here as they haven't played since Monday.  The Maple Leafs, on the other hand, haven't had more than 1 day off between games since the season started and have even played a back to back too.  Also, even if Auston Matthews is back for this one, he is not 100% and Toronto also lost some veteran leadership with Joe Thornton getting hurt.  The Leafs are off a win versus the Oilers but it was the 2nd straight game in which they were outhit plus Edmonton again had more blocked shots.  It was a tie game at the midway point of the 3rd period before Toronto got a power play goal.  The Flames, like the Oilers, can play some tough physical hockey and the Maple Leafs have only managed back to back wins once this season.  Once again, look for Toronto to fall short when coming off a win and note that the rested Flames have yet to lose a game in regulation this season and are feeling very confident with their 2-0-1 start to the season.  Calgary also has the home ice edge here plus won both match-ups with the Maple Leafs last season.  More of the same here.  10* CALGARY

#311/312 ASA PLAY ON 8* Green Bay -3.5 over Tampa Bay, Sunday at 3 PM ET - Just too many positives going for GB here to even consider Tampa in this game. The Packers are rested and healthy with no key players missing practice this week. They are set to avenge by far their worst performance of the year @ TB, a 38-10 loss. Rodgers had one of his worst EVER performances and the OLine struggled as Tampa had GB under constant pressure. Since that game, GB’s offensive line has played much better and allowed only 1 hit on Rodgers last week facing a very good Rams defense. If they give him time like last week, we expect a fairly easy win for the Packers. Tampa is in a rough spot. While GB had a bye 2 weeks ago and then played a home game, the Bucs are on the road for their 3rd straight playoff game. Looking back even further, this is their 5th road game in 6 weeks! Lastly, the Packers played on Saturday last week, while Tampa played the late game on Sunday giving Green Bay a full extra day. Historically, teams that are playing their 3rd straight road game in the playoffs, meaning they won on the road in the wildcard round and the divisional round, are just 4-14 SU & 5-13 ATS in the championship round. It’s just a very tough situation to be successful in. Last week the Packers just dominated a very good Rams team. They rushed for 188 yards and outgained LA by nearly 200 yards and 2.0 YPP. We could argue the score could have been worse than 32-18. Tampa, on the other hand, was extremely fortunate. They were outgained on a YPP basis in their 30-20 win @ New Orleans but they were gifted 4 turnovers by the Saints. Three of those turnovers led to TD drives of 3 yards, 20 yards, and 40 yards. In the wildcard round they faced the weakest team in the playoffs this year beating Washington 31-23. Washington was forced to start Heinecke at QB, his first career start, with Alex Smith unavailable and despite that they had the ball in TB territory late with a shot to score a tie the game. 13 of Green Bay’s 14 wins this year have come by at least a TD and if they can put pressure on Brady (only completes 43% of his passes when pressured) they could walk away with this one. The Packers are peaking on BOTH sides of the ball at the right time. Lastly, since 1980 home teams favored by less than 8 points in the championship round are 32-12 SU and 29-15 ATS. We like Green Bay by more than a TD in this one.

#311/312 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Over 52 Points – Tampa Bay @ Green Bay, Sunday at 3 PM ET - We were waiting on the weather here and it now looks like it will actually be perfect. Snow ending early in the morning and light winds by game time. We like an easy Over here between these two high powered offenses. The Bucs have the 2nd best offense in the NFL in terms of yards per point as on average it takes them just 12.6 yards to score 1-point. The #1 rated team in that category is Green Bay who takes just 12.4-yards per point. The Buccaneers average 30.7PPG on the season while the Packers put up 31.8PPG which ranks them in the top two of the NFL. These two teams just faced the Rams and Saints who had two of the better defensive units in the NFL and they both put up 30+ points each. Green Bay’s defense has been ‘average’ all season long and currently rank 17th in defensive DVOA per Football Outsiders. In their last ten games the Packers have faced seven teams that rank in the bottom half of the league in offensive DVOA so their recent defensive statistics are skewed. Now they face a Bucs team that is 3rd in the NFL in DVOA. Green Bay is 19th in yards per point defensively, Tampa Bay is 13th. Tampa Bay has some misleading defensive numbers of their own as they’ve given up 20 or more points in eight of their last ten games and one of the games, they didn’t allow 20+ was against a bad Lions offense. The Bucs recently have allowed 23-points to an anemic Washington offense and 27 points twice to Atlanta who averaged 13.9 yards per point against them. Imagine what Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are going to do. Packers have scored at least 30 points in 13 of their 17 games this season and Tampa has scored at least 24 points in 15 of their 18 games on the year. The Packers worst game offensively this year, by far, was at Tampa but they did score 10 points on their first 2 drives before turnovers did them in. In that game, Aaron Rodgers threw 2 interceptions including a pick 6 and completed only 45% of his passes – he completed at least 60% in every other game this season. It was just the 5th time since 2013 that Rodgers hit on less than 50% of his passes in a game. He was under constant pressure getting sacked 4 times and hit 13 times. Just one of the worst performances of his career. That kind of stuff motivates him and we expect him to play great on Sunday. Can the OLine give him time? We absolutely believe so as they played great last week vs a Rams defense that came in ranked #1 in sack percentage. Rodgers was not sacked once in the game and he was only hit 1 time. Tampa’s offense is also playing as well as they have all season scoring at least 30 in 5 straight games. Both of these teams have the ability to hit 30 points. With the spread set at GB -3.5, the final score is expected to be in the range of 28-24. GB scored 32 last week vs a Rams defense that is better than this TB stop unit. We could argue the score could have been worse than 32-18 last week as the Packers scored on their first 5 possessions vs the #1 defense in the NFL and only punted twice. We anticipate GB topping 30 here which means Tampa won’t actually have to go crazy on offense to get this OVER 52 points. Play the OVER here.