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Seahawks at Falcons

The Seahawks had no trouble dispatching the Lions in Seattle last week. Now they travel to Atlanta to take on the streaking Falcons. Seahawks reverted to their past successful formula for the win: rushing and defense. It works.

The Falcons may be one of the surprises this season. While our stat profiles point to Patriots and Cowboys as the two strongest teams, Falcons are right there. In fact, on the most important stat in the game, they are league leaders. That's our Killer Stat, Yards per Pass Attempt Difference (what a team earns on offense minus what they allow on defense).

Breaking it down, we can see it is the offensive side where they stand out. Stand out, indeed. Earning 8.23 yards per pass, a solid number by historical standards, they separated themselves from the pack. See the blue graph in the middle section of our Killer Stat, Offense chart. Earning a percentile rank of 100 as the leader, Washington finished a distant second at 79. Falcons were also the league's most improved by a wide margin, adding 6.36 points to their winning margin on this stat alone (right side chart in red).

Here is a chart of weekly performance on Yards per Pass Attempt for the Falcons. Much stronger than league average.

Yards per Pass Att

Atlanta Falcons

2016 through Week 17


This should be a great game. Falcons earned their spot as favorites. With 3 points added for HFA, our computer sees Atlanta by 9. But, there's a chance that Seahawks are stronger than their stat profile projects. During the end of season they had little competition for the conference title. Recently, we've seen teams (Patriots, most notably) hide their strength, sandbagging, in non-important games. I think Falcons can win it, but it could be close. Don't miss this one.

Bill Sanders for BudGoodeSports.com
dr.bill@wrsanders.com

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