Nurse the Hate: The Wrath of Zeus or NFL Week 8

 

I went out for Halloween one year as a Roman Centurion.  I was in my senior year of college so I had no budget for a costume.  It has always annoyed me when TV shows would have their special Halloween show and the characters would arrive for the big Halloween party dressed like they fell out of the set of The Wizard of Oz.  Let’s say the show “Friends”…. How the fuck are some struggling young adults in America’s most expensive city going to come up with a legit Tin Man costume?  I was 21 and wearing a sheet, paper helmet and carrying a trash can lid for a shield.   

I remember it was cold that night, the first hint of a long NE Ohio winter.  Of course I had an exposed shoulder and chest as I wanted my toga to look as good as a multi color sheet could look.  I drank about 117 beers wandering around parties and downtown Kent, finally ending up at the Psycho house.  There is a house in Kent that was supposedly used as the model for the Psycho house.  It is perched on top of a hill and I’ll be damned if it didn’t look just like that house in the movie.  I can’t recall Kent having a hill, and I couldn’t find the house now, but I know I walked there.  Some friends of mine had rented it out for the school year and had a party.  I mean, if you have the Psycho house, you might as well have a Halloween party.       

The party was pretty dead when I got there.  It was late.  I was at that point where it just didn’t matter if you had another beer.  You can’t get any drunker.  You are just pouring water into the overflowing jug and maintaining the buzz at that point.  I was standing outside looking at the well done jack o lanterns flickering in the windows while talking to a couple of people I vaguely knew.  “Hey, aren’t you cold?”  I was essentially standing around shirtless in the crispy autumn air.  I wasn’t cold though.  I was like one of the assholes you see in the stands without a shirt at a football game in a snowstorm.  I was numb to it.  After it was apparent there wasn’t any action about to break out at the all but dead party at 215am, I weaved my way back home.

I have been sick before and I have been sick since.  I cannot recall a head cold/fever roaring in with the ferocity of this one though.  There has never been someone that flat out deserved being ill like I did.  If you are going to act like an asshole, completely ignoring consequence for your actions, you deserve whatever repercussions are handed down by an angry and vengeful God.  That fever was a lighting bolt thrown down upon me from a furious Zeus.  I curled in my bed in a fetal position, resigned to my fate, shivering but knowing that the situation was just.

I am now placing myself in a similar position today by betting on the Cleveland Browns -1 against the Raiders.  A powerful wind has blown up from the Lake, perhaps evidence of the mood of Zeus.  How dare I laugh in his face by taking my hard earned money and waving it in these winds, suggesting that Baker Mayfield is going to throw the ball around gusty Browns Stadium heroically like he did last week?  Dammit, I am doing it though.  The Raiders are the very definition of a hot/cold team.  They are almost a mirror image of the Browns.  They are a decent offense that is forced to win with a shaky QB when the opponent keys on their running game.  They have no defense to speak of.  I don’t see any reason to think the Raiders can fly in from Vegas and win, especially since I am choosing to forget Myles Garrett has a gimpy ankle, the Browns can’t cover tight ends, and on a windy day they will need to run the ball and Chubb is still out.  I laugh in your face Zeus.  Cleveland -1

I felt badly for Ryan Fitzpatrick.  Fitzmagic has been playing very well, and has the Dolphins in position to potentially take a share of first place in the AFC East, something they haven’t done since Dan Marino played QB as opposed to shucking men’s diet plans on TV.  For whatever reason the Dolphins have decided to start Tua this week, even though Fitz just led them to a win a couple weeks ago against the hapless Jets.  I have to think that the 3-3 Dolphins see Tua as being clearly the better QB in practice.  They drafted him #1 and they are going to play him no matter what, but why now?  A team sitting 3-3 coming off a bye must feel good about their chances with Tua in the lineup.  Sure, the Dolphins have shown their management  to be inept over the last decade, but they can’t be stupid enough to run out a guy that doesn’t give them a chance to win, can they?  

The Jets are getting 20 points today against the Chiefs.  Twenty.  There is a natural knee jerk reaction to take the points with the axiom of “No one gets that many points in an NFL game”.  Hell, I took the Jets last week and won against Buffalo.  Let me say on the record, I got lucky.  The Bills got in the Red Zone six times against the Jets and only managed 18 points.  As the NFL average is 65% touchdown conversion rate, I got unbelievably lucky.  Here’s a quick fact…. The Jets are the first team in NFL history to lose three games in a row while winning the turnover battle in all three games.  465 times teams have lost three straight.  The Jets are the only ones to manage that turnover battle achievement.  They are a historically bad football team, perhaps in the same paragraph as the 1-15 Browns and winless Lions teams.  (The 0-16 Browns were a special team.  Never forget.). 

The Jets are 1-6 against the spread and they should be 0-7.  There is no reason to think they are going to stay in the game versus the Chiefs in Arrowhead.  Kansas City is 6-1 ATS and just pasted the Broncos.  There is no reason to think they will take the gas pedal off the Jets.  I am going to tease the Chiefs and Dolphins to help mitigate the uncertainty about the Tua situation.  Kansas City -14/Dolphins +9.5.

Season Record:  11-8-1