Pittsburgh/Baltimore....OVER 37........................WINNER

Saturday 1/15/11 4:30 pm est.

4****BEST BET

We have two NFL divisional round playoff games taking place on Saturday and of the two games I only like one and thats the first game which kicks off at 4:30 pm est. and has the Baltimore Ravens visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers. The odds maker opened the contest up with the hometown Steelers listed as a -3.5 point home favorite at most shops. However, due to sooooooo much money pouring in on the Baltimore side of the slate, most shops have dropped the point spread to its current level of Pittsburgh -3, a glance at the most current betting trends reveal that a mega 73% of all monies wagered have been on the money-line with Baltimore.

The support Baltimore is receiving from the betting public is really no surprise when considering that most Joe Public bettors base their opinion on what is fresh in their collective mind, the freshest memory is Baltimore's 30-7 shellacking of Kansas City last week in a game that took place on the Chiefs home field. The young Chiefs, who had the NFL's 4^th easiest schedule, really had no momentum having lost two of their final four games to close out the regular season and against Baltimore in the NFL wildcard round showed their lack of playoff experience by turning the ball over a whopping five times.

Needless to say, the young Chiefs were simply not ready for a prime time affair against a heavyweight opponent like Baltimore and got their arses handed to them in the late stages of the game as the game was actually a 10-7 contest in the third quarter. The Ravens win over Kansas City last week coupled with the fact that Baltimore finished the regular season with the exact same mark of 12-4 as Pittsburgh including a 1-1 straight up and ATS record in two seasonal meetings this year in head-to-head action, has Joe Public siding with Baltimore.

Then of course, the talking heads in the media have been continually pounding the point home to ole Joe Public that this contest will be a low scoring, physical, rock'em sock'em type of game that will probably end with one team or the other winning by a FG. Hey, the guys in the media may be right if history ends up repeating itself as the past four meetings between these two teams have been decided by exactly three points and five of the last seven get-togethers have been decided by four or less points.

The Steeler defense only allowed 232 total points this season which is an average of 14.5 points per game, those 232 total points allowed were the least in the NFL this season and represented the third least amount of points allowed by a team in the history of the NFL since they switched to a sixteen game regular season schedule. With that being said, Baltimore has one heck of a defense themselves as evidenced by allowing only 270 points during the regular season which is an average of 16.88 points per outing.

All of this talk of how great each defense is this contest, along with the two low scoring games played this season against each other (Baltimore win 17-14 and Pittsburgh win 13-10), has the talking heads in the media convincing Joe Public that this will be a low-scoring-tight game, yet the odds maker has the O/U on this contest set at 37..why?

Could it be because each team has the abiltiy to shut down the opposing running game with regard to the Ravens totaling only 113 rushing yards against Pittsburgh in their two prior meetings this season which is an average of 56.5 yards per contest while Pittsburgh only tallied 138 rushing yards in the two meetings for an average of 69 yards per game? Meaning of course that both teams will probably elect to go to the air and take advantage of the opposing pass defenses that are ranked much lower with regard to Baltimore allowing 214.35 air yards per outing versus Pittsburgh allowing 214.06 passing yards per game....this is playoff time, win or go home.

There is a reason why Baltimore went out and got WR's Anquan Boldin and T.J. Whoseyourmamma to add on to their arsenal of WR Derrick Mason and TE Todd Heap and it wasn't to try to run the ball against Pittsburgh's Steel wall in the playoffs, it was to take advantage of the Steelers weakness in their defensive secondary. Baltimore QB Joe Flacco has progressed to the point that he is on the verge of becoming an elite signal caller when considering that in 48 career starts he has a pretty good TD to INT ratio of 60 to 34 and an even better ratio of 25 to 10 this season.

On the flip side of things, the Pittsburgh Steelers have their own playmakers in the passing game and it all starts with QB Big Ben Roethlisberger who has a TD to INT ratio of 17 to 5 this season along with a QB rating of 97.0. Pittsburgh is a battle tested team that has won two Super Bowls since Big Ben took the reins of this team, Roethlisberger has his own nice stable of WR's to throw to as well including cagey veteran Hines Ward and speedy WR Mike Wallace along with TE Heath Miller.

Pittsburgh loves to use a trick play here and there, in times past they have used former college QB and now WR Randall El in a variation of a half back pass, look for the Steelers to change things up by having former college QB and now WR Hines Ward attempt the same play as a means of fooling the Raven defense. In the end there will be wayyyy more points scored in this contest than what the pundits in the media are predicting, remember, this is win or go home. One team will open up and score and the other team will be forced to do the same.

A check backwards in time reveals that seven of the last ten games played in Pittburgh between these two teams since 2002 has exceeded the posted total. A deeper look-see reveals that Pittsburgh when playing at home in the month of January, is a perfect 8-0 to the OVER when installed as a home favorite including a perfect 2-0 to the OVER versus Baltimore in previous January games played in the Steel city since 2002.