Let's Get The Score Update Out of the Way

Scoring down a bit for Week 7:  43 2/3 points a game.

7 Week per-game average is now 46.273, about .43 points a game below last year's total.

• Two national prime-time games end within a score (Thurs. night and Mon. night -- you can almost ignore Sunday as Peyton Manning Night), meaning 9 of 22 national games have gotten to the fourth quarter in contention, with still only the one cliffhanger in Week 2 that had the game decided in the last two minutes.
• Five non-competitive games out of the 15 this week.  Four games decided in the last two minutes (Detroit got a TD to win 24-23 at 1:48, Buffalo won with a TD at one second left, Kansas City got a field goal to best San Diego at :21, and Washington won with a field goal at the gun.)  That's 20 out of 105 games played so far like that, 18.87%.
• Games within a score in the 4th quarter are now at 65.09% vs. 68% last year (a difference of about three games total now), and games within one score at the end are at 41.9% -- that one well below the 48% last year.
• Over was 6-8 this week, not that surprising, with one game actually fully middling.  Detroit-New Orleans went over at most spots, but went under at the Peppermill and the William Hill.  So the over is 55-60-1 for the year for full consideration, and partial at 49-59-8.
• Home teams got revenge for last week -- they were 12-3 this week!  65-39-1 for the year.
• Home team was called for more penalties in eight of the 15 games, with a ninth squaring even.  45 out of the 105 games had the home team get more penalties called on them.
• Home team was called for about 3/4 a penalty less a game.  98 vs. 109 last week, both weeks with 15 game schedules.  That was 7 of the 11 fewer penalties called this week.
• Team with more penalties was 9-5-1 this week.  48-49-8 for the season.
• Team with more Points of Emphasis fouls was 4-8-3 this week.  39-41-35 for the year.