January 08, 2012

Week 14: Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Jacksonville Jaguars

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS @ JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

Vegas Line: Jaguars + 2.5

Rob’s Line: Buccaneers + 0.5

Apologies to fans of Tampa and Jacksonville, but what is there to like about this FMM Bowl? No, FMM isn’t another sponsor attaching its name, college football style, to a game. It’s ‘Florida Minus Miami’ and features two of the most unattractive teams in the league right now.

Jacksonville’s struggled all season, but in Tampa, where high hopes were harboured right up until their trip to London in Week 7, things have unravelled at an alarming rate. Including that trip to Wembley, where the rut seemed to begin, the Buccaneers have lost six games in a row. The lone bright spot in that span was the effort shown in Green Bay and they easily covered the spread against the Packers. However, as I’ve written previously, it’s difficult to take that effort too seriously as the Pack had one eye on their Thanksgiving road trip to Detroit the small matter of four days later.
A similar effort in Tennessee brought back some much needed pride before they seemed to capitulate at home to Carolina last week. How they’ll get up for a road game in Jacksonville is anybody’s guess and maybe they won’t. Perhaps the sole motivating factor will be that this is something of a Florida derby, but I think the safest route here is to place the hard earned squarely on the Jaguars.
Tampa is terrible on defense, but considering that Jacksonville are only good on the ground, via Maurice Jones-Drew, it’s safe to assume that the Bucs’ secondary could have its lightest afternoon’s work of the season. Josh Freeman is expected to return at quarterback for Tampa, but he’s regressed so much from last season that it hardly seems like an upgrade from backup Josh Johnson. Freeman will benefit from facing a Jaguars secondary that’s seriously banged up and he has solid targets in Mike Williams and Kellen Winslow.
In a game this close between two poor teams, I’m taking the home team with any points on offer. So, as risky as it is, I prefer the safety net of a start as opposed to asking one of them to score enough points to cover a small deficit. Jags to cover, but only just.

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