Thursday, May 17th, 2012
The Green Bay Packers will make the road trip west in back to back weeks to tackle the Arizona Cardinals in an NFC Wildcard playoff game on Sunday afternoon. This NFL pro football game is scheduled in Arizona at 4:40PM Eastern Time with national television coverage provided by Fox.
The LVSC NFL odds makers have set the opening point spread in this game and the Arizona Cardinals were opened as a 3 point favorite with the over under coming in at 48 ½.
The early money from the NFL betting public has come in on the road underdog Green Bay Packers, as the Arizona Cardinals are currently a 2-½ point favorite. The total has seen early movement towards the under, as the over under is currently lined at 47 ½ for the NFL betting public to play into.
NFL money line gamblers can make a play on the favored Arizona Cardinals at –135 with the road underdog Green Bay Packers bringing back +115 to win this game without the need for getting the points.
These teams met in week 17 with the Green Bay Packers earning a 33-7 victory. Once again when Arizona has nothing to play for the team lays an egg. With Minnesota defeating the New York Giants earlier in the day the Cardinals had absolutely nothing to play for. The Cardinals rested starters and played vanilla on defense.
Arizona finished the season with a 10-6 record and champions of the NFC West. The team was just 4-4 at home this season. The Cardinals pass defense has been torched for 300 or more yards in three home games this season.
Veteran quarterback Kurt Warner hit on 66% of his passes this season with 26 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. In his last high profile game Warner pounded the Vikings for 22 of 32 passing for 285 yards three touchdowns and no interceptions in a Sunday night game in week 13. Warner’s second leading receiver Anquan Boldin is banged up with an ankle and knee injury. Boldin is questionable for this game.
Rookie running back Beanie Wells rushed for 793 yards on the year with a pretty good 4.5 yards a carry average. Second year pro Tim Hightower contributed with 143 carries this season with a 4.2 yards a carry average.
The Cardinals ranked 23rd in the NFL in pass defense as they allow 234 yards passing per game. They allow over 20 points per game.
Green Bay has been a hot team down the stretch winners of 7 of their past 8 games. Their offense has exploded down the stretch scoring 33 or more points in their past 3 games. In extremely high profile games the Packers were 0-2 dropping both games to Bret Favre and the Minnesota Vikings.
Fifth year pro Aaron Rodgers concluded a successful campaign completing 64.7% of his passes with 30 touchdowns and just 7 interceptions. He was very accurate last week against Arizona completing over 80% of his passes. He has been sacked a very high 50 times this season. The Packers have done a better job protecting Rodgers down the stretch. This is Aaron Rodgers second full season as a starter and will be making his first ever playoff start and it will be a road contest. It will be interesting to see how he handles the crowd noise.
Third year running back Ryan Grant has been a workhorse this season. He has carried the ball 282 times on the year with a 4.4 yards a carry average and 11 rushing touchdowns.
The Packers are an outstanding defense. They allow just over 18 points a game. They are number one against the run allowing just 83 yards and a low 3.6 yards per rush against average. Green Bay will need to be good against the pass and they are. Green Bay allows 201 yards passing per game ranking 5th in the league. A concern for the Packers is that that their defense was torched in defeat through the air twice by Bret Favre and Minnesota and gave up 472 passing yards to Ben Roethlisberger in a 37-36 loss at Pittsburgh.
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NFL Trend: Green Bay is 7-0-1 ATS in their past 8 games.
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