Back to Football: Week Eight [censored]

WHAT THE BLEEPING BLEEP?

I figured that, since Cleveland gave Jacksonville their only win and that even the worst teams win at least one game, usually, I'd take a risk and pick Oakland for Sunday. It was a mistake, of course, since Cleveland was at home, a better team, and probably fired up from the loss. Oops, oh well.

I had my doubts about Green Bay in New Orleans, of course, but I never imagined THAT bloodbath. I also would NOT have wanted to be on that team after a certain point that night. Aaron Rodgers looked PISSED every time the camera pointed at him, and that kind of attitude is not very encouraging. I have serious doubts about the defense. I mean, I know that black is slimming, but it doesn't make the players invisble or without matter, yet they slipped by the Packers as if they were. Very, very sad, all around. Well, except for Saints fans, I guess.

As for Philly v. ARI and Pittsburgh v. IND, those were toss-ups, and I went the wrong way, oh well. But by gawd, I never imagined a Dallas loss, IN DALLAS, to AAAARRRGGGGGG I'm to angry to even identify the team. Just imagine copious amounts of swear words here.

So I went from the highest high at the end of the early games to sort of the lowest low, ending up with a modest, painfully average, for me, 10 for 15 record on Week 8. I suppose that it was a case of counting my chickens before they hatched.

Back to Football: Week Eight and the Late Games

At the bar, as the scores shook out, I started to see a shocking, pride inducing trend. The teams that I picked, from Detroit and Denver in the early, early games, to Miami, New England, and Buffalo* as more obvious choices, to the still obvious, but tentatively picked Seahawks, Kansas City, Houston, and Bengals, to the gamble on Minnesota, every single team that I picked was winning or had won. After a while, after the Texans won, marking a 100% improvement over last year's season with a total of 4 wins, it was down to Tampa Bay and Minnesota, the latter of which pulled the game into overtime. A Minnesota defender forced and/or capitalized on a Tampa Bay fumble around the 20 yard line and ran in for a touchdown within the first few minutes.

I sat back in glee, watching the replay over and over. The ball popping loose, the purple guy grabbing it and running, running running, and passing by the orange pylon on the inside. I'll watch it again, right now. You can too. I've never been happier for a Viking win in my life! Ten NFL games played and finished this week, ten games successfully picked by me. I picked Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Oakland to win the afternoon games, Green Bay for Sunday Night, and Dallas for Monday. I don't even care if I'm wrong on all of them (unlikely, but not impossible - the Cowboys could flub it and lose at home, maybe) at this point.

Back to Football: Week Eight From the Bar

5 to go in the third and the Texans are up by 24. Seattle and Carolina are tied at 6, but the rest of the scores are a mystery. FOX - at least this affiliate - put the captions right on top of where the scores display and they insist on listing key stats for the players. *I so don't care*.

Tennessee did get a touchdown, then failed their attempt  for two. Miami is up by 18 over JAX, and Houston completed a 49 yard field goal to go back to a three touchdown lead.

New England has 45 points, and I cannot imagine Chicago having anywhere near that many. The other scores that have seen are also going my way, but none of the early games are final, and I think Cinci is about to disappoint.

Back to Football: Week Eight Sunday Morning

Thursday's game was an easy pick, making me 8 for 8 there. A game in London meant that the first game today started at 8:30 Central, or 6:30 Pacific. Fortunately, the teams playing were from the Eastern and Central time zones, so no one on the West Coast cared?

It was a much more competitive game than I thought it would be, since some player dubbed Megatron on Detroit was not starting against Atlanta. Late in the 4th, it was Atlanta up by 2, but checking the scores just now, I was very, very happy to see DET in bold and the word Final under the score. They won by a single point, and I am 2 for 2 in games played so far.

I'm off to get coffee and breakfast. I just hope Cincinnati and Seattle don't disappoint me again this week.

Back to Football: Week Seven Sunday Night

Prediction: Now that Peyton Manning has tied Fav-re's record, a freak, but somehow legal hit will cause him to suffer a broken leg and he will have to be put down.

I was premature about my description of the Giants interception to touchdown against the Cowboys in the last post. The Broncos interception to touchdown plays just now were like buttah - like two sticks of buttah in the form of football plays.

Back to Football: Week Seven Sunday

Sadly, but perhaps rightly so, karma struck Seattle and gave them their overdue loss on a clearly faulty call (or did it? I have no idea right now, and it's not like I can just look these things up, sheesh). I can't tell you with certainty that the call was wrong, since I did not see it. I did hear plenty of analysis of it from the CBS Football guys, however, while I was doing things on my work computer. I mean, if the football guys say it was wrong, it was probably wrong.

There were so many disappointments this week, but it's a bad week to be from a [geographic region] that starts with the letter C. Chicago and Cleveland really let me down with their losses to Miami and Jacksonville (seriously, Jacksonville?). Chicago is really the more disappointing though - they were at home. I can't be that upset about Cincinnati this week though, because that pick was a real gamble, and perhaps just wishful thinking. Fortunately, one of the teams from a C [location] lost to the Packers.

Seattle and three of the four C losses today leave me at five for nine on the early Sunday games. I've picked Kansas City, Arizona, and Dallas for the late games, and I don't think the Niners have a chance at 5,280 feet.

I took a break from working out my work issues (you have no idea) to work on this post and watch some NFC East action with Dallas and the Giants. I picked Dallas, and they're kind of letting me down. I watched a surreal interception caused by a receiver that fell down as the ball was rainbowing through the air. It was almost in slow motion as the lone defender grabbed the ball and started running the other way. The touchdown that followed was, as Linda Richman would say, like buttah. 

Commercials came on and I was transfixed by a song and image of a large man going to Akron and his old high school. Soon, it was revealed to be Lebron James and I'm still having major feels about this commercial. 

Sh*t, dude, that is some heavy stuff. It also encouraged me to start a weight training regimen again.

But as the subject says, back to football: Dallas came back from their turnover and are going to finish up the half with a tie, instead of down by seven. But really, I should get back to my work stuff, get a meal of sorts, and do more work things.

Back to Football: Week Seven Early

So now, I am seven for seven on Thursday picks. I watched the previews on nfl.com today and it didn't really help me make any decisions. I did decide to pick Pittsburgh over Houston, however, for a few reasons:

• Pittsburgh is at home
• Pittsburgh has lost enough games to make them pissed off enough to win
• I can't really trust Houston to win with any level of consistency yet

My Monday predictions are four for seven this year, so Houston has some hope there. Well, except that I've been four for four since week 3. 

Back to Football: Week Six Can't Miss Play

They play that I really wanted to see is over at SB Nation. It's beautiful, and it turns out to be a Dan Marino trick. That has GOT to sting.

Unfortunately, the young killers weren't hungry enough and the Giants are playing like sh*t tonight, so the best I can hope for this week is 77% correct.

Back to Football: Week Six Highlights

I was out at my local coffee/breakfast/bar place and they were playing the football games - Denver vs NY Jets. I ended up talking to my 4th crazy of the week, an NY Giants fan who knew a lot about football betting. I would have asked him for help understanding how it all works, but I decided not to because I didn't really want to talk to him THAT much. He did explain that the "over-under" was the total points scored in a game, and he predicted an over-under of 56 for the Monday night game.

On the TV, it showed the scores from the other games, and I was disappointed to see GB 20, MIA 24 with less than 2 minutes to go. I coped with the loss and moved on to other topics, like how the Cowboys suck. We could definitely all agree on that, except for the bartender, who is also the establishment's resident frat-boy, so, it's okay. So talking talking talking - or rather me listen to this guy babble and stuff, and then on the TV, I see GB 27 (and highlighted), MIA 24 FINAL!

FINAL(!)

My left fist goes up in triumph, I probably said "Packers!" or "Yes, Packers won!" and my companion even had a little drinking accident as a reaction to my reaction. It was a happy moment.

Well, eventually, I go home and go onto NFL.com to see other scores, and aside from Pittsburgh (stick a fork in them, they're done) losing, and a CAR-CIN tie (and who can predict those? don't even bother), my gut picks have been spot-on - 83%. So I sat back and casually kept an eye on the NFL.com site and my Facebook feed, noticing their links to videos of great plays that week.

Eventually, I decided to watch one of the "can't miss" plays because it was the winning touchdown pass from the Packers. It was sweet, but also pretty boring. I imagine that watching it in real time, however, would have been an incredible rush - similar to a hit from an injectable painkiller or some other instant high. I was surprised that I didn't see Packer fans in the stands crying. However, the play itself was pretty cut-and-dry, and when you know the outcome, it is a lot less exciting.

Anyway, after the video finishes, it moved on to another can't-miss play, which was some touchdown play of the Raiders. I kept it going, because it could be interesting, but it wasn't. Then, THEN, it goes back to the Packers, but the score is 17-17, and I realize that they're going to play some Miami score - the nerve! So I was like, "don't show me that sh*t! I don't wanna watch no anti-Packers scoring sh*t, NFL.com!" and then I said "sh*t" a few more times, and stopped the video and sh*t.

My afternoon game picks are as follows:

• SD over OAK, for obvious reasons, but with 2 minutes left to go, OAK is up*. 
• ARI over WAS, for obvious reasons. ARI is up, but there is a while to go in the 4th yet.
• CHI over ATL because NFC South teams haven't really proven themselves, especially Atlanta. So far, I look to be right. 
• SEA over DAL because the young hungry killer predator birds will eff you up every time. SEA is up by 3, with less than 5 to go in the 4th, but DAL has the ball. We shall wait it out.

* but in the time it took me to write this, and 4 seconds in football time, SD got a touchdown and is up by 3 I mean 2? things were weird on the website. Maybe there was a flag on the extra point kick, whatever. 

Back to Football: Week Six Interlude

Well, sadly, I was right about the Thursday game, making me 6 for 6 on Thursday night this year. I started watching at the end of the first quarter when the score was 17-0. The quarter ended with another IND touchdown, but then Houston showed up to the game and played some beautiful football. It was a real shame that they lost, and I hope their season doesn't end up like it did last year.

At least they scored more than 17 points in this game.

Back to Football: Week Six Already

Just dropping in to note that I'm worried about Houston. They started out well last year, like this year, but then ended up at 2&14. I picked Indianapolis for tomorrow's game, but again, I kind of home I'm wrong, for Watt's sake.

Back to Football: Week Five Early

This week, when telling a Texans-fan co-worker that I predicted a Dallas win this weekend, he looked up 'NFL spreads' on Google to see what the internets had to say. The source he found corroborated my thought, but also indicated that Dallas has not won 4 games in a row in either a long long time, or ever. I'm more inclined to believe the former. ANYWAY, that makes a possible case for Houston, but I'm still picking Dallas.

The more important thing for me in that interaction was seeing how easy it was to find out which team was the actual favorite. When I got home, I started Googling and found some incomprehensible Vegas Odds site, tried to read the Wikipedia articles about sports betting and understand things, and then decided that I liked the site Foot Bullocks Football Locks as a determination of which team is the real 'Favorite'. It seems that my 'Gut' picks align pretty well with that real Favorite so far.

I made updates to my spreadsheet for the first 5 weeks, then realized that I should preserve my 'Ranks' picking. It is still interesting to see if having more wins in a season is a good predictor of winning that week, and when it is better. I'm also adding columns to the spreadsheet to accommodate other people's picks, if anyone wants to try their luck on any given week.

The Favorite certainly prevailed last night, to the chagrin of Minnesota fans. My favorite post on this thread had to be 'punt on the first down' as a possible strategy for Minnesota to come back from 28-0, Packers.

Not to mention, the memes.

I have to say, however, I worry that the Packers only won because the Vikings were just so bad. Had Minnesota been playing with their first string QB, or maybe even second string, I'm not sure they would have won. Perhaps I'm just displaying the normal Packer-fan pessimism we all have though.

Here's to Sunday. For the record, here are my picks: 

Early Games

Late & Monday

CHI: The favorite is Carolina, but I've got this feeling, you see.   TEN: Tennessee, Cleveland, Tennessee, Cleveland. I don't care and they both suck. I settled on the Favorite. PHI: St. Louis isn't that good.  NYG: Knowing how bad Atlanta was last year.... NO: Yeah, The Bucs beat the Steelers in some random freak of nature, but really now.  DAL: It's Dallas at home, and they clobbered New Orleans last week. I'll be happy if this pick is wrong, and yeah, Dallas and four-in-a-row, blah blah, but I have a feeling.  DET: Lions at home, and they're on top of the NFC North.  BAL:  The Vashda Nerada of the NFL will strike again. PIT: Losing to a $h*t team two weeks in a row only happens to other $h*t teams.  ARI: Everyone says Denver, and I know that Arizona flashes and burns out frequently, but I've got another feeling.

KC: #*(< the 49ers, seriously. Seriously. And the 49ers are actually my second favorite team. Now, it would be one thing if this team beat the Packers in the playoffs every effing year and then went on to win the Super Bowl, but they don't. They choke like losers. I also like the idea of my boyfriend playing his old team and beating them.  SD: It's the Jets. CIN: New England sucked something awful on Monday. I don't think they have it in them anymore.  SEA: Young, hungry killers against Washington?