Nurse the Hate: Hate the NFL Week 7

I'm a big fan of Nashville despite the feeling that the inevitable blowback is coming.  There will be a price to be paid from the never-ending parade of positive press generated by the freelance hipster writing core currently squirreled away in overpriced apartments across Music City.  Nashville is a great place to wear Depression era clothes, have an ironic waxed mustache, and open a shop dedicated to something nobody really needs or wants like derby hats, organic hot sauce, or restored vintage bicycles.  If you have an artistic slant and don't feel like really competing in capitalism, there just might be a place for you in East Nashville as a heavily tattooed bartender or mercenary mandolin player.  It's also the best place in the South to be a "publicist", which on closer scrutiny reveals that might actually mean you are a 26 year old woman with a public relations degree, have a Facebook page, can create an email list, and have "industry contacts".  Though the "industry contacts" are actually the heavily tattooed bartender and his friend the mandolin player, this doesn't really matter as it allows the woman to pretend she is a powerful music insider while at parties and not a little girl playing dress-up while getting checks sent from Daddy.

Rarely does an NFL franchise so little reflect the city it represents.  The Tennessee Titans are the JC Penny of the NFL.  They have poor style with perhaps the worst looking gear of any team, and a stadium that lacks any of the character of the city in which it has been dropped.  The team has become the Milwaukee Bucks of the NFL, a team that can be depended upon to be OK but never championship caliber.  As far as I am aware, the Titans have not produced a highlight that has been shown on ESPN since that sordid Steve McNair murder was swept under the rug.  They are just sort of sitting there like a Cracker Barrel off an interstate exit.

Today the Titans are hosting the 49ers, a team headed in an opposite direction as the Titans.  The Titans are going to run Jake Locker out there a few weeks after sustaining some sort of catastrophic injury.  I could look it up on the web, but I think it was something along the lines of "frayed spinal cord and shattered pelvis".  It was one of those injuries that made you wince when you read it.  If it had happened to me, I would currently be convalescing in a private hospital in Switzerland.  I envision myself being pushed around in a wooden wheelchair by a silent nurse with a blanket across my legs while sipping a drink from a straw.  Jake Locker is instead going to play football against the San Francisco 49er defense.  That really seems like a bad idea.

The Titans are unable to run the ball on anyone.  Chris Johnson is averaging 1.8 a carry in the last month.  That mean Jake Locker is going to have to score points on a 49er defense that is getting healthy.  Uh-oh.  Oh yeah, last week the Titans played a physical Seattle team.  Teams are 0-5 the week after playing Seattle.  What else do you need me to tell you?  That San Francisco has convincingly won their last three in a row?  I love San Francisco -4.  

I went to the Browns game last week where I witnessed what was the worst forward pass in NFL history.  I was under the influence of 17 beers and trying to explain how football works to a German, but I could swear I saw Brandon Weeden try to shovel pass a ball 15 yards across the field.  It seems impossible even now.  That is the memory that even the most casual NFL fan will have of that game.  What they won't recall was that prior to that play, the Browns were either going to win or stay within the spread against Detroit.  Assuming that Weeden doesn't do something historically terrible (and that is, admittedly a HUGE "if"), the Browns will stay in the game this Sunday at Green Bay.  

The Packers entire receiving core is injured except for Jordy Nelson.  They have had to look so deep for personnel that play WR this week that they will be introduced as "Some Guy" over the PA during player introductions.  Example:  (imagine booming voice) "At running back!  Eddieeeeeee Lacyyyyyyy!  At quarterback... Aaaaaaaaaaron Rogers!!!!! At wide receiver....  some guy...."  Then a spindly black dude you have never seen in a Packers uniform will run out of the tunnel to polite applause. 

I know Aaron Rogers is totally awesome.  Everyone knows that, especially Aaron Rogers.  Go ahead.  Ask him.  However, I do believe that players need to have at least have a vague familiarity with the team playbook and QB to be able to play productively in the NFL.  I might be wrong, and if I am, I am going to lose a bunch of money.  Betting on the Browns always seems foolhardy, and doing so today as they visit the probably already frozen tundra of Lambeau Field seems especially insane.  That's why it is probably the safest play on the board.  I'm on Cleveland +10.5 

Season Record:  5-6