Are the Super Bowl Odds selling the Saints Defense short?

There’s a small and powerful cluster in the betting community that lives and dies on proposition bets, and the oddsmakers have cast out the lines on their in-game Super Bowl predictions. Most notably, Peyton Manning has been given a Super Bowl prop of reaching 310.5 passing yards in the game, with the oddsmakers giving the OVER a steeper return with a -120 line over -110 for the UNDER. That’s a great compliment to Peyton Manning, but it’s a huge slap in the face to the defense of the New Orleans Saints.

Of course, when you think about the Saints, you hardly ever think about their defense and there’s a big reason. They allowed 357.8 yards against per game this year, the eighth most by any team in the NFL. The secondary is a bigger problem as they ranked 26th in the league with 235.6 passing yards allowed but the front-seven weren’t much help in the rush defense. Despite boasting Will Smith, Scott Fujita and Jonathan Vilma the Saints gave up 122.2 rushing yards on the ground (21st) and In terms of points allowed, they gave up 21.3 per game ranking them just 20th amongst all 32 teams.

As we saw in the NFC Championship game, however, what makes the Saints’ defense dangerous is their insane ability to generate turnovers. With 39 turnovers overall, 26 of those coming off picks, the Saints ranked second in the entire league behind the Green Bay Packers.

Takeaways are going to be the only way the Saints earn respect from the Super Bowl prop makers, and the rest of the world, as they tune in to the 2010 championship game. Peyton threw 16 interceptions this season, and 10 of those were when he played outdoors. If the Saints can pick Manning off incessantly, they’ll turn the Super Bowl odds in their favor. That’s a very big “if” though.

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