So I was watching Cash Cab the other day and I realized
just how hard Discovery is going after the stoner demographic. I mean, they have quiz shows, nature shows,
shows where shit blows up, and nothing
else. They’re going after the
stoner demo, which has abandoned MTV the same way Discovery went after the Survivor groupies when MTV took over reality TV. (For a station no one watches
anymore, MTV really has affected MTV in a lot of negative ways.) It makes me wish I was a drug addict — I feel like I don’t get nearly as much enjoyment out of that station as I should be getting.

Anyway, I bring all of this up because this week seems
filled with all $25 or $50 questions. The
last few weeks I’ve been totally unable to get a grip on the league (the Phillies probably had something to do with that, but still). This time,
I’m like the Mormon who gets the question about Palmyra, New York (FWIW, that
joke was a lot more offensive when I
first wrote it.)  So ignore that 63-62-5
record, believe me when I saw I’m locked in, and consider this week my video challenge. 

No doubt I accept.  

As always, my pick will always be the first one listed. Home
team in caps, “over” if I’m picking a home team and “at” if it’s a
roader.  All lines as of Thursday morning.

ATLANTA (-6.5) over Denver

I know Matural Ice
and the Falcons are playing with house money, Jay Cutler just threw for more yards in a single game than John Elway ever did and their passing
attack gets to air it out inside and in a dome, but Denver is starting Peyton Hillis; a white fullback picked in the 7th round of this
year’s draft.

Plus both Peter King
and I have “a feeling” about Denver
in this one, which is never a good sign when it comes to gambling. 

MIAMI (-10.5) over Oakland

Count me among that ever-increasing group of over-obsessed
fans hoping upon hope that Al Davis
takes the next step into complete and utter insanity by canning interim head
coach Tom “11-35 at the University of Idaho” Cable. Last week Jake Delhomme tossed a career-worst four INTs and the Raiders still
couldn’t get the win — unless it turns out that DeAngelo Hall was a Lee Atwater-esque bad influence on that
secondary, they’re getting four more picks off the Chad Pennington/Ronnie Brown QB combination. 

I will say this about Cable, though: At least he didn’t take his pants off in front of his team at halftime.

As for Miami, last week they
pulled off the least convincing win since Ambre stole Bret Michaels’ heart
because Daisy vomited on herself last week against Seattle, but this is their remaining schedule: 

Oakland, New England, St. Louis, Buffalo,
San Francisco, Kansas City, New York Jets. 

Wow.  A team whose
unquestioned most talented player was the second best running back on his
college team might make the playoffs.  Weird
league.

Baltimore (-7) at THE NEW YORK FOOTBALL GIANTS

The Giants won’t get be getting over 200 yards on the ground
or controlling the clock for nearly 40 minutes against an energized Ray
Lewis and a Ravens team that has been absolutely mauling opponents. You know B.More has won their last four games
by a combined 71 points? That’s outrageous, and even though Flacco doesn’t look
as perfect as he has when Steve Spagnuolo throws the blitz, sink and rest of
the kitchen at the look, the Ravens will not
lose by a full touchdown.

Why we’re here I have a theory I want to throw out. I’m
calling it the “Ozzie Guillen Effect.” Ozzie Guillen, the temperamental manager of the Chicago White Sox, is famous for his tirades. Every time
his team starts to struggle he absolutely blows up at a media member, at
veteran players, his GM, or just in general. Recently, people have begun to understand that this is conscious — he
doesn’t want his team reading/hearing about how awful they are/are playing, so
he makes the story about himself. He
looks like he’d be awful to play for, but every time one of those players’ polls
come out, Ozzie is near the top of “best managers.”  

I think this is a tactic other coaches/should employ, and
some actually do. I was having an
argument the other day as to why the Giants are able to develop young players
in the media storm that is New York while so many other teams in “tear ‘em
down” cities (our very own included) fail so often. How come the Giants can develop players and
the Jets can’t? Part of this is
drafting, obviously, but a big part is also the head coach. I think that the Giants players were able to
become what they were because everything there was some controversy Coughlin
would step up, make an absurd guarantee, get all red in the face, and make
himself the story.  Obviously this
doesn’t explain the unfortunately named Elisha,
who faced as much criticism as anyone in the league until he got that much, but it
might help explain everyone else. I’m not
sold on this one yet, but it’s something I’m playing around with.

INDY (-8.5) Houston

I don’t think Houston
has ever played in Indy and lost by double digits, so this really isn’t the
ballsy pick it looks like. Besides, Indy
is gaining steam with the big win against Pittsburgh,
Houston is 0-4 on the road and they got destroyed by Baltimore last weekend.  They really looks close to falling apart once
and for all.

Plus I love comparisons. Indy is totally the San Antonio
Spurs of the NFL, and I still think
SA could win the damn chip this year. 

BTW, Ray Gustini’s breakdown of this game is just
phenomenal:

In retrospect, you have to question Gary Kubiak’s decision
to enter the season without a defensive coordinator.

Mike Lombardi says the Texans need to adjust their
philosophy and build a defense a ’size and speed’ defense, which makes so much
sense, I wonder what the counter-argument sounds like. “No, don’t you see-we
only want small and slow guys on this team!” It sounds absurd, and then you
realize that’s how the Texans have been drafting for the last seven years.

Tennessee (-3) at JACKSONVILLE

Tennessee
keeps having stupidly low lines because people keep on thinking they’re “due”
to lose.  Sure, it’s going to happen, but
not on accident, and certainly not because it hasn’t happened yet.  Listen people, Tennessee is really good, Jacksonville is not. A three-point line is a joke here.

Chicago (+3.5) over GREEN BAY

The Sex Cannon
damn near pulled off the upset against the undefeated K.C. and the Sunshine Gang but if he has to make another go of it
Sunday, this pick is changing hard. The
North is going to be a dogfight, but after Matt
Forte and the Bears run roughshod over a still-reeling-from-Brett-Favre’s-Thursday Green
Bay crowd; Chicago and Minnesota are going to
be the dogs in the fight.

KANSAS
CITY (+5.5) over New Orleans

I wanted to pick New Orleans
under the whole “they have to win on the road sometime, right?” pretense until
I remembered I called bullshit on that rule in the Tennessee game.

So yeah, Kansas
City is awful, but they at least are young and with Tyler Thigpen no longer playing like, well, Tyler Thigpen, they have
something to build on over the last few weeks. 
The Sea of
Red will be out in full
force knowing they’re watching next year, look for at least a close game.

While we’re here, let’s bring up that not only did the Giants unload Jeremy Shockey on a team that doesn’t
play him, one he spars with on the field, but they
also might get a first round pick for him. Great.

CAROLINA (-14) over Detroit

You know what is hilarious? How no one is saying that eventually this Detroit team “needs” to win a game or is
“due” to win a game.  They’re 0-16
material, through and through. Their QB1 wasn’t playing football a week ago,
their coach won’t play their backup quarterback because he “doesn’t want to
embarrass him” and because Matt Millen has been such a joke for so
long, all the players don’t have faith in themselves or their teammates. On top
of all that, they still have to face Carolina, Tampa, Tennessee, Minnesota, Indy, New Orleans,
and Green Bay — not a cupcake in the bunch. 

Also play out the ramifications for GMs around the
league. Millen sucked for years, and for years he kept his job because
William Clay Ford, Sr. had faith in
him. What if it turns out that that
faith created the worst football team in the history of football? It’s
possible, right? Won’t this make other
owners more apt to look closely at public criticism? I’m telling you, a GM is going to lose his
job because Millen was so
god-awful at his, and he can’t go
back to being an analyst (a job he was actually good at) because all the fans
will just laugh him out of the building. That man’s trail of destruction knows
no bounds.

Get that team some Ty
Pennington love and charge it all to the account.

On the other side of the ball, Carolina’s defense is really, really good:
they’ve given up 27 less points than the next closest team in the NFC and less
than half as many as Detroit (!). 
Seriously, this year, after nine games Carolina has given up 133 points. Detroit? 277. (!!)

TAMPA BAY (-4) over Minnesota

I met a girl from Minnesota last week. When she was drunk her Rs really came out — I paid so much
attention to this fact that several of my friends accused me of going home with
her (I didn’t, I was just that obsessed with the accent). It was awesome, and now I miss her.

With that out of the way, I was looking for Tampa Bay
on one of those “‘power rankings” to gauge what other people thought on the
team. For a solid 30 seconds I couldn’t
find them — it was because they were all the way up by the top, seeing as they
were 6-3 and on a coast I haven’t caught much of I had assumed middle of the
pack. This team must be way better than I thought.

Isn’t it worth wondering that, with the Wildcat offense
taking over the NFL, why the Vikes haven’t put it in, even a little? I mean Purple
Jesus has to be the best
offensive threat in the league, and Chester
Taylor is an honest-to-god backup. Why not run it a couple times and see if
you can get AP a little bit of
space? 

St.
Louis (+6.5) at SAN FRANCISCO

These teams seem equally awful. Why would I lay 6.5?

Still, I’d be remiss to poke some fun at Mike Singletary,
who, unlike Tom Cable, did take his
pants off in front of his team in the locker room. Still, my favorite part of that story isn’t
the actual act (although that part is fantastic) but rather the fact that he
swore he would find out who told the press about his antics, and still
couldn’t. Wow, has an NFL head coach
ever lost a team quicker?

SEATTLE (-3) over Arizona

Matt Hasselbeck
and Deion Branch return just in time
to ruin Seattle’s
good draft pick! In other news, it looks
like Arizona
is running away with the division, which is perfect because it means that the
Cardinals are due for a few tankers. If
anyone can blow a lead like they have in a division like they’re in, it’s the
habitually flawed Cardinals. Also, can
there be bandwagons against
things?  Like can I be the first to
proclaim that there is no way Kurt
Warner wins another MVP If so, the
bandwagon is underway and there seems to be plenty of room.

PITTSBURGH (-5.5) over San Diego

Watching a beaten and battered Ben Roethlisberger
trying to read a defense knowing that a steady Byron Leftwich is waiting in the wings is like watching a woman
trying to work a remote control, god he was awful last week. Both Ben with a
defense read and a woman with a remote totally think they can do work it, they
know if they don’t do work it they’ll won’t have the chance again that day and
will be forced to watch sports (quite literally, in the case of Big Ben), but as the frustration builds the performance just keeps
dropping and dropping until they mercifully hand over the reigns.

To make it worse, their backup — in this case Leftwich, who has a passer rating of
something like a million so far; and in a women’s case, a man — is the complete and
total master of the domain. Yesterday I
was GChatting with my buddy Dave and
found out, a solid 20 minutes into the conversation that not only was he talking
to me, but playing a video game and watching two TV shows — and he was high!
On top of all that he was keeping me up to date on both TV shows.  Fucking
unbelievable. 

Anyway, until Roethlisberger
gets himself healthy he’s like a woman and Leftwich is Dave.

Still, Pittsburgh
is at home and I’m not picking LT’s
carcass and Norv Turner again.

WASHINGTON (+1) over Dallas

Washington
has had two weeks to prepare for Tony
Romo and his broken thumb. Romo’s fatal flaw before he got hurt was putting the ball on the floor too much; he’s
going to be fine now even though he can’t grip the ball? Really?

BUFFALO (-5) over Cleveland

Last week Pretty Boy had an absolute ball game and the team still couldn’t cover. I’m furious with the Browns in specific and Cleveland in
general.  Dear god, how to you give up in
game that you’re winning??

Also, I can’t find it now, but I think I read something
about how Brady Quinn didn’t throw
one pass beyond 12 yards in the air last Thursday. Is that possible? Does he have the candyiest arm in the league
or are all his offensive coaches that scared to let him air it out? 

I don’t care that this is surely going to end up as another
failed Buffalo
pick for me. I’m riding them out.

Philly (-9) over
CINCINATTI

Andy Reid, pissed because the city whose team he’s led to
more wins over the last decade than any other NFC team, is going to kick the
Bengals in the chest and step on their throats when he’s down.

And our city will continue to call for his head.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under NFL picks, football, gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.