Bucs vs Saints – Brady vs Brees Part Two

The New Orleans Saints will be visiting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this weekend – Sunday Night at 8:20p to be exact. This is the second meeting this season between these two. There are a lot of sub-story lines here. One of which is that Brees and Brady keep overtaking one another for the all-time TD record. Coming into the game Brady leads with 561 and Brees has 560.

The line for this game opened at Bucs -4 and has stayed solidly at that number. You may recall that Brees and the Saints won the first match-up easily. That score was 34-23 but wasn’t as close as the score indictated. Brady was still getting used to his new team. The Bucs went on two win six of their next seven games after that loss. The Saints went 4-2 after that opening game against the Bucs.

The Bucs signed free agent WR Antonio Brown last week. Brown was on league suspension and hasn’t played in a real football game in over a year. So, will this signing actually help the Bucs offense? Or will Brown be a distraction like he was for the Raiders and Steelers the last couple of years? There is no way to tell. But I can tell you from my own playing experience that adding a new player from the street midway through the season is rarely welcomed among most players. They feel like they have been chugging away all season, putting in the hard work and this guy is just going to come in and steal the thunder.

Back in March when the NFL announced the schedule (but without exact dates) sportsbooks released early lines (called look ahead lines). We wrote an article about those lines and offered our own prediction based on them. Back then, the early line was TB +1 at home vs the Saints. A lot has happened since then and now TB is favored by 4 points instead of getting 1.

The Saints Don’t Win Much on Grass But They Do Cover

Both teams are coming off lackluster performances. The Saints needed OT to defeat a flailing Bears team. The Bucs edged out the one-win NY Giants by two points. Both the Bucs and the Saints really need and want this game.

The Saints don’t play outside much. And when they do, they don’t have great success. They are an indoor, artificial grass type of team. In fact they are just 1-6 straight up in their last 7 games on natural grass. Yikes. But against the spread they are 3-1-1 ATS in their last 5 games on grass.

Other Notable Trends for Bucs vs Saints

• New Orleans is 1-5 ATS in its last 6 games
• New Orleans is 8-2 ATS in its last 10 games on the road
• New Orleans is 9-1 SU in its last 10 games on the road
• New Orleans is 4-1 ATS in its last 5 games when playing Tampa Bay
• Tampa Bay is 2-7-2 ATS in its last 11 games at home
• The total has gone OVER in 8 of Tampa Bay’s last 10 games at home
• The total has gone OVER in 5 of New Orleans’s last 5 games

Judging by all the trends I mention in this article I think that the smart play is on the Saints getting the points. They cover on grass and they traditionally have owned the Bucs (albeit mostly without Brady).

The Over seems to be jumping off the page as well. I personally hate betting totals and feel they ruin the game-watching experience. But if you like betting totals, the over is probably the better play. It is currently sitting at 52 points at most sportsbooks.