Nurse the Hate: Sisyphus, American Oak Barrels, Childhood and NFL Week 8

I have decided to make some more wine, this time giving myself a bigger challenge.  I have secured some Walla Walla tempranillo grapes, the same type of grape used in Spain's most celebrated wines in Rioja.  I am going to try to take an Americanized spin on traditional Spanish winemaking.  The Spanish have a long tradition of aging their reds in American Oak barrels, so I had to go out and buy a new oak barrel, which isn't A) cheap or B) largely available.  I found a reasonably good quality option at a wine making supply shop in Erie PA, so I made a drive out to Erie to pick it up yesterday.  The low hanging dark gray and blue clouds reminded me of my childhood.  There is a consistent backdrop to Erie Autumn Life of those oppressive cloud covers.  I even took a swing past my boyhood home where the houses all seem to have shrunk, the yards gotten smaller, and the trees much larger.  I don't think I have seen that house in 36 years.  A skinny little tree that I remember helping to plant as a nine year old is now a mammoth twisted presence in the backyard.  Revisiting something from that long ago that is so familiar yet so oddly off in small details from your old memory is like having a disorienting dream.   

I spent the drive home listening to a four album set of early albums from The Jazz Butcher as The Brit slept in the passenger seat.  Heck, she had been a gamer to endure four hours in the car to get a barrel, so she earned a good nap.  The mid 1980s snarky Jazz Butcher records were a perfect soundtrack to driving away from The Past.  I had tried to find many of those elusive records back in college, back when listening to these surprisingly literate yet playful songs was somehow "subversive".  Pat Fish, aka "The Jazz Butcher" suddenly passed away a couple weeks ago.  The news of his passing brought him back to my attention and I was surprised to see these re-packages of the first 8 full lengths existed.  I think I always liked him because he couldn't play very well, couldn't sing exceptionally well, yet made these records that always had a few songs that popped you in the nose.  Fish and his always revolving cast of characters made music to primarily entertain themselves, and that seems to be where the best material is born.  Check out "Partytime", "Southern Mark Smith" and "Drink" and get on board.  It's great stuff.

I tried listening to some football talk, but I couldn't get past the Gritty Baker Mayfield saga of this fool playing with a broken shoulder.  Sample caller:  "I haven't seen anything this gutty since Bob Avellini bled out on Soldier Field while losing to the Vikings in 1972!!!  You know why?  DO YOU KNOW WHY?  BECAUSE HE RESPECTED THE GAME!  THAT'S WHY!  THAT'S FOOTBALL!!!!"  I think I am just not zoned in right now.  I am not on the same wavelength.  I have been getting KILLED in the NFL this season.  It's easily the worst I have done in a decade.  I am going to keep pushing that rock up the hill though, like Sisyphus.  One foot in front of the other...           

I am placing faith in Geno Smith, and that is no place to find yourself on a Sunday wager.  It's like betting "Alex Kintner" over "shark" on a Memorial Day Weekend swimming wager.  Here's the situation I see in Seattle.  They are 2-5, Russell Wilson is out and has been saying for a couple of years "these guys aren't giving me help".  The vultures are starting to circle Pete Carroll.  He's 70 something, and despite being a very youthful 70 something, the war drums will start to beat to replace "the old coach that let the game get past him".  If the Seahawks are 3-5, they can cobble together a season when Wilson comes back.  If they are 2-6, Wilson probably starts trade demands.  Seattle HAS to win.  This is their season. 

Normally I don't bet on teams that are in must-win situations.  The narrative is too clean to cling to, that everyone that finds their chips down will somehow rally to victory.  As we all know from our personal experiences filled with public embarrassments and painful defeats, that does not always happen.  In fact, it rarely happens, so when it does, it becomes the stuff of legend.  However, this week the Jacksonville Jaguars roll into town.  If there was ever a team to "get right" on, it's Jacksonville.  Yeah, the Jags are coming off a bye, but I don't picture Urban Myer slaving over film coming up with ways to "solve Geno Smith".  That guy is probably sniffing around on that LSU job.  The Jags aren't playing for anything, their winless season off their backs last week, while Seattle has EVERYTHING to play for.  I think the Seahawks find a way, even with Geno Smith.  Good God is that terrifying to type.  Seattle -3.5

Denver looked like absolute shit against the Browns 10 days ago.  Bridgewater is playing on mannequin feet.  They have no legit receiving threat, and their running backs are crap.  The once feared defense is riddled with injuries.  However, as opposed to the Browns very good offensive line, this week they get to play "The Football Team" from Washington, an organization in chaos without a legitimate starting QB, and defense that ranks towards the bottom in all categories.  No one has been more disappointing than The Football Team, except the Dolphins.  They were supposed to contend for the NFC East, but instead they play low scoring shit games on regional TV.  The Football Team has lost 3 in a row, getting soundly defeated by the Packers, Chiefs and Saints.  Does that seem like a team that is going to roll into Denver and get a win?  I'll roll the dice and hope Denver got healthy with their long break.  This is a game that the Broncos have probably put on their "we probably win" list.  Denver -3.5

I will likely be morning the death of Baker Mayfield at 4pm when he loses his arm and bleeds out in front of a stadium full of people in Cleveland, so I won't watch the Bucs v Saints game.  The Saints have gone from a high scoring offensive machine that was fun to watch to a "grind-it-out-don't-let-Jameis-toss-a-pick" team.  Sean Peyton has come up with great game plans to stall out Tampa's offense, and I think he can do that again, especially with some of the injuries the Bucs are dealing with in Gronk/Antonio Brown.  I think the Saints dink n dunk, and the Bucs try to get a lead and then grind clock.  I would be greatly surprised if this turns into a track meet, especially at New Orleans.  Bucs/Saints UNDER 49.5.      

Season record:  8-16

Nurse the Hate: The Iceman Cometh and NFL Week 7

I was walking the bassets in the park last weekend.  Sunday mornings are for two things.  The bassets take care of business, sniffing the entire perimeter and shitting like mad apes.  Meanwhile, I pick up their feces in a small green bag and look for some kind of edge in my phone on the ever-shifting circus of mirrors that is the NFL.  I am so ice cold, I look forward to Netflix releasing a documentary on my NFL gambling thus far this season called “The Iceman Cometh”.  It’s been a long terrible road thus far, but I believe in The Process.  Trust in The Process.  Believe in The Process.  It’s all I have left.

 

I think a key to winning is making bets that make you uncomfortable.  If it was possible to counter select yourself, you should do it.  The problem becomes if you try to bet against your urges, you will pretend that you like something you don’t like just so you can make the bet your urges demand you make.  “I bet I won’t like this chocolate cake.  Welp, I better counter select myself and eat that cake.”  The mind just isn’t strong enough.  You have to buy low and sell high in the NFL. 

 

This week the Texans are getting 18 versus the red-hot Cardinals.  The Cardinals just lit up the Browns, and the Texans somehow lost 31-3 to the lowly Colts.  The Texans may never win again.  Ever.  They are the ugliest dog in the pound.  Yet, this is exactly the type of bet that you have to make to have a winning season.  Sure, it’s hard to imagine the Texans scoring.  It’s even harder to imagine them stopping the Cardinals.  You might even want to pretend you want to bet the Texans, but you don’t really.  They’re awful.  I can’t think of any reason they can stay in this game and not be shrouded in shame by halftime.  I’m doing it though.  Houston +18.  Teaser Houston +24/Under 54.

 

While I was walking the dogs last Sunday, I saw a family of four changing into matching plaid shirts.  There was a mother browbeating her husband and her two boys, approximately 10 years old, into changing into the special matching plaid shirt outfits she had painstakingly planned out.  The husband, obviously harried, was barking at her.  The boys, blissfully oblivious to the conflict, chased each other around the family minivan.  It looked like a nightmare.  Little did those two kids know that this moment, about to be captured by the discount photographer grimly smiling and waiting nearby, would haunt them forever.  They had no idea that when they were in their early 20s, bringing their potential fiancée home for inspection, they would do so under a framed photograph of this moment with their 10-year-old misshapen teeth, matching plaid shirts and fucked up haircuts.  I could see that future so clearly, yet those boys were blind to what was coming at them with the certainty of a freight train running downhill.

 

Those kids should have been focused on the Philadelphia Eagles +3.  I have not and do not believe in the Raiders.  Last week the Raiders circled the wagons and beat a shitty Broncos team.  Gruden is gone, and that fiasco must still be a distraction.  The entire coaching staff must be divided into two camps.  There is the “OMG they are going to clean house after the season, and we are going to have to move again.  We better sell the house.”.  There is also “I better show that I am indispensable before this season ends, so I’m going to put on a show for the front office, so they keep me.”  If you have ever worked at a place where everyone is managing up or looking for a lifeboat, you know it doesn’t scream out “success”.  I think after that win last week, they exhale.  Sure, the Eagles suck too.  I know that.  We all know that.  But I think this is the sort of game where the Raiders, who can’t move the ball except big plays, won’t be able to wrangle big plays.  Each season the Raiders year goes wrong, and this feels like a perfect time for it so do so in 2021.  I am fading the Raiders with an Eagle team I don’t believe in.  Philadelphia +3

 

Season Record:  8-13

Nurse the Hate: Hate Jon Gruden and NFL Week 6

Last Sunday Jon Gruden was coaching the 3-1 Raiders for a share of the AFC West lead with a $100 million dollar contract, endorsement deals, and was a leading personality in the NFL.  By Tuesday he was out of a job, out of the NFL, his name removed from Tampa Stadium’s “Ring of Honor”, and was being furiously scrubbed out of Madden 2021 by the video game manufacturer.  In two days!  His head must be spinning like it has been some terrible dream.  There have been some very public falls from grace, but the swiftness of this got my attention.  Hell, OJ Simpson still has his name on Buffalo’s stadium, and he killed a couple people (allegedly).  The machinations from being removed from society today are very swift indeed.

 

It should be noted that I am not a Jon Gruden fan.  In fact, I have been shouting about how shitty of a coach he is for a couple years.  His “intense” personality always made him seem like a demented gym teacher that takes joy in bullying kids.  He’s kind of the guy from the asshole jock lunch table that picked on weaker kids to get laughs from his douchebag buddies.  The emails that sunk him to me read like the loudmouth shit talk of a 15-year-old boy in a letterman jacket, not an educated adult male.  I do not like what I have seen of Jon Gruden the man, and I’m sure if I ever spent time with him, I would dislike him even more.  You just know he has terrible taste in music, my guess is a heavy lean towards the bad 80s hair metal he rocked out to with his Boyz (with a “z”) in his acid washed jeans years.  However, does this punishment fit the crime?

 

Jon Gruden wrote in a 2011 email that DeMaurice Smith had “lips like Michelin tires”, in another called Roger Goodell a “faggot” and “an anti-football pussy”.  I think we can all agree that these are bad.  Really bad.  The emails were uncovered during an investigation into the mess that is the Washington Football Team and a workplace misconduct incident involving Washington’s Bruce Allen, who is one of Gruden’s Boyz.  I have no doubt that Gruden and his Boyz talk to each other like this all the time, especially in 2011 when these emails were exchanged.  I think it is reasonable to assume that the machismo world of professional football will have some attitudes and language that might be lagging behind the rest of proper society, especially magnified if we look ten years back.  Not only did I instantly think that Gruden had sent them, but I could also hear his voice reading them.

 

I don’t understand how a guy that wasn’t employed by the NFL at the time, that sent an email to his friends ten years ago, and now loses his life’s work.  His very existence is being scrubbed out of anywhere he’s been.  He didn’t say these things publicly.  He didn’t take action that resulted in any of the individuals suffering injustice.  He didn’t say it while employed by the NFL.  He loses everything because of a conversation he assumed was private amongst friends a decade ago.  Meanwhile some people are howling that the NFL needs to be “more transparent” and let everyone comb through everyone’s emails to see if anything upsets them.  Setting aside the fact these are private businesses and not public institutions, what gives anyone the right to scour communications across a decade to see how the ideas and language used at that time holds up to a public magnifying glass in 2021?  How about we take a look at Bank of America?  What about Doctors Without Borders?  The Peace Corps?  Could anyone survive that kind of scrutiny?   

 

Free speech is messy.  I am very socially liberal, and I routinely disagree with most points made by the Far Right.  Still, they have the right to have ideas I don’t like and express them.  People can believe what they choose to believe.  That’s the basis of free speech.  It runs both ways.  You have to listen to ideas and words that might upset you.  It’s the cost of doing business in a free society.  I don’t agree with what Gruden said in his emails, but I also understand the context of his high school cafeteria bluster language.  I’m sure he’s said all kinds of things that are way worse, but he’s a loudmouth jock douchebag, and that’s what they do.  I think it’s a dangerous turn of events when anyone can be crushed in 48 hours just because they expressed something that upsets our current barometer of what is acceptable.  Gruden is an asshole, but damn.  There wasn’t even a trial.  The court of public opinion is an avalanche now.

 

I am given to wonder now if I have transitioned into becoming like my grandfather.  I remember in the late 1970s my grandfather was telling me a story from the late 1940s after WWII.  In the story he mentioned how he got off the train and a porter assisted him with his luggage.  He used the word “darkie” in describing the porter, something it never occurred to him might be offensive.  I was so shocked hearing the word, I can’t recall the hook of the story he was telling.  My grandfather had no idea that he had committed this language faux pas, as I’m sure he and his well-heeled Chicago friends used all kinds of language like that (and much worse).  Society and culture had evolved, and no one told him.  Those guys were still in 1948.

 

I remember when I discovered the word “retard” was no longer permitted in polite society.  This is a word I probably heard 117 times a day growing up.  I remember a teacher telling a kid at a blackboard “you see that retard mistake you made?” and we all laughed as the word’s usage was equivalent to “absentmindedly stupid”.  It wasn’t malicious and even the kid in the crosshairs didn’t take it that way.  The word had evolved new meaning over years of constant usage in our little world.  There are entire generations out there that have been called and called people “retard” daily.  Then one day, years later, I was telling a story about someone at a retail store that couldn’t understand what I was asking them, and I used the word “retard” in describing them.  The room got cold.  I had this split-second realization that I just been my grandfather using “darkie”.  I was that old man at the dining room table saying “Orientals” and his niece coughs up her soup to admonish him “Grandpa!  The term is Asian American!” as he looks on perplexed at what he did wrong.  I was suddenly 87 years old.  Language had moved on me, and the word I used for “stupid” had become loaded and I didn’t know it.  I have made the move onto the word “nimrod” which has been going OK so far. 

 

Society moves quickly now.  I wonder if I am my grandfather on this Gruden thing.  Maybe I am looking at it wrong.  Maybe I fell behind on the seriousness of this particular language and I don’t know the latest set of rules.  Maybe there are some things you now cannot say regardless of context or intention, even in private.  That doesn’t seem like a country dedicated to free speech to me, even if that speech is considered inflammatory by many.  I think people should let rip with whatever is on their mind.  I can take it.  Not everyone can, as the Dave Chapelle current wildfire attests.  Oh well, the real question is how it impacts this week’s Raiders line…

 

Suffice to say, I’m not touching that Raiders game.  I have been ice cold.  I am not seeing things clearly right now.  I have been bad so far this year.  The last thing I am going to do is wander into trying to interpret how the Raider players feel about the organization, how the new coach commands the sidelines, or how distracted the Raiders are in general.  Denver has lost two straight, and this looks like a spot to “get right” with a Raider team in a shit storm, but I’m not touching it.  Too many unknowns.

 

Against all better judgement, I am going to take Jacksonville over Miami in London.  No one was happier about this Gruden thing than Urban Myer.  At last, someone to get the heat off Urban and he gets to hide out from the press in London all week too.  However, this isn’t so much a bet on Jacksonville as it is one against Miami.  Miami has somehow avoided being lumped into the pile of shit teams of Jacksonville, Jets, Giants, Falcons.  They might be worse than all of them even if they were healthy.  Instead, they are going to rush Tua (who sucks) back in at QB with his fractured ribs because Brissett has been such a disaster.  They are dead last in offense, and Tua isn’t going to help.  Jacksonville heads over to London every year.  It’s a road trip that differs from other team road games, and they should have it down as an institution.  Jacksonville won’t win many games this year, but this better be one of them.  Jacksonville +3.  

 

You know what they say.  “No better way to turn around a losing streak than to bet on the Texans”.  Yes, the Texans are terrible.  They’re 1-4 and Davis Mills isn’t exactly DeShaun Watson.  However, let us consider the 1-4 Colts.  I do not think the Colts are much better than the Texans, much less not 10.5 points better.   The Colts have one win this year, against Miami.  They have been in most of their games, they just haven’t won.  I don’t see how that translates into them covering a double digit spread on anyone.  I have no intention of watching a second of this game.  Houston +10.5

 

I think the Bills are the best team in the NFL.  I think the Packers might be #2.  I am going to assume the Bills handle an injury ravaged Titans, and the Packers outscore the offensive challenged Bears.  Sometimes it is important not to overthink it.  The two good teams will beat the two average teams.  Buffalo money line.  Green Bay money line.  Buffalo/Green Bay parlay.

 

Current Record:  6-10 (ouch)

 

Nurse the Hate: Florida Discussion and NFL Week 5

 

I have really missed scuba diving during this time of The Great Plague.  I want to see scary sea monsters up close.  Sure, I suppose I could have gone diving off Florida and had some disappointing dives off Key West on an overcrowded dive boat filled with Rubes.  I do not care for Florida in general as I don’t trust most Floridians.  I have a theory that just like a carton of orange juice, the silt of American society comes to rest at the bottom.  When you’ve run out of places to run away to, you settle down in the Florida Keys and hope no one finds you.  It’s Grifter Central down there, a community of tax dodgers, child support eluders, and white collar criminals living with purchased identities, yet they have somehow already been donned with new nicknames like “Spider” and “Fingers” by their new sociopath pals at whatever shitty tourist bar they patrol like hyenas.  It’s a region of the country where everyone is trying to steal your credit card number, your wallet, or your identity.   
 
Florida is a place where air conditioning is always blasting on you like the frozen food section of a Piggly Wiggly.  The restaurants all cater to tourists, serving them wildly overpriced seafood that somehow is never as fresh as it should be, or Italian food that seems like it might be a frozen Stouffers entrée.  Meanwhile the chance of your server bringing the correct order is almost none because they couldn’t hear the order you placed over the roar of the air conditioning that has effectively brought the temperature of your dining experience down to 58 degrees.  Chances are some Jimmy Buffet or Gloria Estefan music is also raining down on you.
 
Florida is place that exists for the Disney corporation to turn the population of middle America upside down and shake out their last nickel after building them up with relentless marketing for their entire lives that not taking their children to Disney is essentially parental abuse.  Families believe that this sterile corporate experience is a high point in their life, while it is just the ultimate misdirection, a colorful bauble swinging on a chain while Mickey picks their pocket.  It costs more money to go to Fake France at Disney than it does to go to real France, but then again the benefit is to not come in contact with anyone French that might shake their brainwashed notion that USA! USA! USA! Is #1.
 
So what use is Florida?  Ah, I’m glad you asked.  It exists to occasionally bet on the Miami Dolphins, a team that no one in Miami really cares about and the rest of the country thinks about only with a foggy memory of a film clip of Don Shula being carried off the field in the undefeated 1972 season.  Look, I’m not really sure who is on the Dolphins now.  I think Jacoby Brisset is playing QB, which likely gives them a better chance to win than Tua.  Is Mark Duper still a starter?  I don’t know.   I do know they are getting 10 points against Tampa, a team that has to be giving themselves an exhale of relief after a brutal week of hype and then the game vs New England in the pouring rain.  Tampa is about as high profile as you can get, winning after a Brady schmoozefest on the second highest rated Sunday night game of all time.  I had to look up who the Dolphins played, and it turned out they got smoked by the Colts.  Let’s buy low on Miami +10.
 
I am going with that same premise of buying low and selling high with San Francisco over Arizona.  I am as surprised as anyone by how well Arizona has been playing, and they are the last undefeated team left standing.   Arizona is splashy.  They’ve got the #1 offense, an ESPN highlight machine QB, and are scoring tons of points.  San Francisco is going to have to run out Lance at QB this week, and he isn’t ready.  I am choosing to look at this QB situation as a positive.  The 49ers will have to completely shift their offensive approach to play to Lance’s strengths, and that means Arizona has no tape on what’s coming.  I think Shanahan is a very good offensive coordinator (but maybe not a head coach).  San Francisco should get some big plays on gadgety bullshit and weird formation mixups.  The Niners are a good team with losses to an elite Packers team at the bitter end, and Seattle last week despite outplaying the Seahawks and losing Jimmy G during the game.  I think this line is too high, and I will take my chances with the points.  San Francisco +5.5
 
I am going to uncomfortably take the Browns this week.  Baker Mayfield isn’t right, his shoulder or whatever the fuck is going on with him making him unable to complete easy throws.  I listen to quite a few Xs and Os podcasts while walking the bassets during the week.  I heard a very compelling discussion about how this Browns team is a horrible matchup for the Chargers.  The Browns are the best rushing team.  The Chargers are #29 against the run.  Apparently, the Chargers need a couple monster defensive tackles to make their scheme work, and they don’t have them.  The Browns have no left tackle, which is bad news for a QB with a fucked up left shoulder, but I think they run Chubb between the tackles all day long.  This is one of those picks that makes me uncomfortable, so it must be pretty good.  I’ll wait and see if this goes to 3, but if it went off right now I’d take Cleveland +2.5.
 

Season Record:  6-7       

Nurse the Hate: Hate 80s Hits and NFL Week Four

I was at a local brewery today.  I haven't been there in a couple of years what with the Covid Pause where I spent most of 2020 watching Netflix and trying to get someone/anyone to come over to my house to do landscaping jobs I definitely could have done on my own.  It's an odd thing the way it works trying to hire someone to do a job that you don't want to do yourself.  I reached a point where it was obvious I was going to overpay for shoddy work, and just should have done it myself.  Yet, to have gone outside with a shovel would have been an admission of defeat, and instead I pressed on trying to track down landscapers that are like ghosts.  None of those assholes follow up.  At least not in 2021.  I was like Dog the Bounty Hunter without the mullet.  Times do change though.  Let me go on the record and say that I look forward to at some point in the future totally fucking over a 100% innocent landscaper as petty payback for my 2020-2021 dealings with the various fuckwad landscapers I attempted to give my money to for 18+ months.  Sorry.  It's just something I need to do to balance to cosmic scales.  You will just be collateral damage.

I was disappointed to see the brewery had removed the jukebox, one of those internet numbers where customers can place almost any song they can think of on the house sound system for a dollar.  The last time I was there I was with an associate of mine that noted how crowded the room was and thought out loud, "Do you think we can clear this room?".  The answer we would soon discover was a resounding "yes" as we pummeled the patrons of the brewery with songs like "Ghostbusters", "It's Raining Men", "Spanish Flea", "We Built This City", and "Disco Duck".  I like to think the brewery learned a lesson from our show of power, but I can't be sure unless I ask the owner, and if I do I will have to admit turning a 100+ person cash rich Saturday night into a sullen 15 people in about 20 minutes.  Regardless, they now have an in-house sound system with a music service playing bland 80s hits from Genesis, The Police, and Men At Work.  

It is hard to believe where there was once a time when listening to The Police of Men At Work was considered "subversive" by the Culture Police.  I knew a guy that almost got strung up in 1981 for enthusiastically sharing his love of The Ramones.  You could find yourself the center of an ugly towel snapping incident by telling a gym class locker room of wrestling team members that you thought The Stray Cats were cool, a band the wrestling tribe had deemed "fags".  It is interesting that a group of guys that liked what was evolving into gender twisting hair metal thought the Stray Cats were "fags".  These boys also grappled with other young men in singlets and thought Rob Halford of Judas Priest was macho, but that's the way it was in 1982.  It was an odd time.

I was sitting in my stool allowing a wash of "I Come From The Land Down Under", "In The Air Tonight" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" transport me back to Erie PA in the early 1980s, when it struck me that many of my initial ideas of universal truths have turned out to be right on the money.  For example, Toto's "Africa" is a piece of shit song that exists only to fill the air of retail establishments like aural wallpaper.  Girls that went to all-girls Catholic schools turn out either morally ambivalent nymphomaniacs or sexually repressed judgmental monsters.  Perhaps most importantly is to never bet on the New York Jets.

The Jets drafted Zack Wilson second in the draft, certain he was the key piece of the puzzle.  He would replace Sam Darnold and the team would arise from the ashes with this latest savior.  Here's a quick stat for you.  In the last 15 years there have been 259 players that have taken at least 200 snaps at quarterback.  Zack Wilson is ranked #259, dead last.  That is fucking incredible.  Think of some of the names above him.  Nathan Peterman (#258 by the way).  DeShone Kizer.  Jimmy Claussen.  JaMarcus Russell.  Zach Mettenberger.  It boggles the mind.  Until I see that Wilson can play at least as well as DeShone Kizer, I will bet against him and the Jets.  Tennessee -6   

I am going to also tie the Jets into more money making opportunities.  Lat week the Browns were at home versus the Bears with rookie (and future bust) Justin Fields at QB.  The Browns were favored by 5.5.  Now they go on the road to play a clearly uptick in competition in the Minnesota Vikings.  The Browns are favored by 2.  Taking away the Browns 2.5 home team boost to last week's line, you're telling me that the Vikings are only 1.5 better than the Bears?  Shit, the Bears played one of the worst pro football games I have ever seen last week.  How about teasing the Vikings to +8 and Tennessee -1 against the Jets?  That line is out of whack. Vikings +8/Titans pick em

Pittsburgh looks terrible.  Big Ben looks like he is in his mid 60s with the quickness of a beached manatee.  The entire Steeler wide receiving corps is hurt, which hardly matters as Roethlesberger is unable to get the ball to the wideouts anyway.  Defenses know this and are stacking the box against the Steelers, making it almost impossible for the team to run the ball.  Their defense has been left to try and keep them in games, which has been brutally ineffective.  Now the red hot Packers roll into Pittsburgh fresh after a prime time thrilling win over the 49ers, a vindicated Aaron Rodgers shaking his groovy long hair for the cameras at every opportunity.  Look, there is no reason to think the Steelers can hang in this game.  I haven't heard anyone suggest they can even be competitive.  Historically this is when Tomlin finds a way, especially at home.  Pittsburgh +6.    

95% of all tickets are allegedly on Tampa.  It's the game everyone is waiting for, Tampa at New England.  The narrative is that Tom Brady is going to finally teach Lord Vader a lesson, and The Hoodie will shrink back into darkness after the player vindicates his boss.  I mean, once again, I have no idea how the Patriots can even compete.  They look very average, like The Colts in different laundry, but with a rookie QB that seems to be a future trivia question.  

The one thing I have always made money on is zigging while others zag.  The books have barely moved this line because they DO NOT want exposure on this from the sharp money.  I will take New England +7 just for the reason I always do on picks like this and Pittsburgh.  The Public are a bunch of dumb fucks and there is money to be made exploiting them.  New England +7.   

Season Record:  5-4