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