Nothing/Everything to play for: Week 17 lines.

[VarlosZ]

There are always some quirky lines in the final week of the season. Obviously, very good teams that have already locked up their playoff spot and are likely to rest their best players for most of the game will see unusual lines. This doesn't puzzle me at all.

What I'm curious about is the games where one team needs a win to get into the playoffs or to improve its slotting, while its opponent has already been eliminated. These lines are clearly inflated, and I doubt that it's justified. Examples:

Giants -9
@ Oakland

Carolina -4
@ Atlanta

Detroit
@ Pittsburgh -14

New Orleans
@ Tampa Bay -13.5

St. Louis
@ Dallas -12.5


The Dallas and Pittsburgh lines aren't too out of whack, but you wouldn't look at them any other week and think that the favorite is a bargain.

The other three games seem to rely on one or both of the following principles: the team that needs a win plays harder than it usually does, and the team that can't make the playoffs is more likely to pack it in. These might seem like intuitive propositions, but they imply that teams in the playoff hunt are holding something back until the last week, and that teams out of contention are especially eager to get the season over with at the end. I doubt that either of those tend to be true.

But is there any evidence for these phenomena? The first game that comes to mind, for me, is last year's Carolina Panthers losing to the Saints in Week 17 in a "win and you're in" game, but, admittedly, I haven't done the research.

Opinions, informed or otherwise?