Christmas Past and Netflix Football.

I am cooking a leg of lamb for Christmas.  I used to have this dish every Christmas Eve when my family would go to Tarrytown NY to visit my Aunt Rose and Uncle Jack.  As far as I know, that leg of lamb is the only thing that was ever successfully prepared in that house.  The powerful combination of East Coast Catholic historical cuisine, general lack of interest in cooking, and living in New York all but guaranteed that any homecooked meals there would be bland and horribly over/undercooked.  My Uncle Jack knew how to cook that lamb though.  Rose was too busy holding court and smoking cigarettes to offer much help.  After she turned 50, I don't think Rose ever finished a meal as she was too distracted by conversation.  They're all gone now, my cousin Nancy passing away this summer unexpectedly.  It doesn't seem that long ago, but now when I think about that long table of people, only Krusty, my NY cousins and I are left.  Sigh.  

Christmas is quiet for me now, but I kind of like it.  The bassets doze by the fire.  I open some good wine (Grand Siecle Champagne No. 25 in this case) and gamble on football.  It's sort of a second shot at Thanksgiving, by any rational argument America's finest holiday.  After my stupid heart procedure I didn't even set up any decorations.  That bummed me out a little bit last week, but now as I think of all the teardown I avoided I couldn't be any more pleased.  The day will ease past and I can count on the most important things in life: cooking a good leg of lamb, opening an aged Bordeaux, and winning some money betting football.

I'll come back with regular Sunday action, but I wanted to loop you in on today's plays.  I am fucking red hot.  I have hit 13 of my last 14, and that little Vegas trip swung my overall season numbers richly in my favor.  Today's games are complete bullshit, but I think there is a way to get at them and maintain mild interest during the sure to be amateur Netflix broadcast.  When these digital companies overbid on these games, I bet the last thing they thought when they got these matchups is the games would be almost meaningless, and would feature three third-string QBs.  That's the way I got at this today.  With the spreads, there is too much to chance as you can't tell how motivated Dallas or Denver is to pile on.  I decided to roll all three teams into a moneyline parlay.  Dallas/Detroit/Denver moneyline.  

You can run up to the window and put money down on Josh Johnson, Max Brosmer or the "Area Youth" that is lining up for Kansas City, but I am not getting into that business.  I have seen Josh Johnson play, and he's not great.  He's exactly what you think you're getting in a journeyman 3rd string guy.  He's probably awesome in the film room, brings bagels, and agrees with everyone about everything in the building.  He's not going to lead a shitty Washington team to a win over the Cowboys though.  

Brosmer has been really shitty when he has come in, like enough so that Viking fans are hoping that piece of shit JJ McCarthy gets back in the lineup.  That's a bad sign.  I think Detroit coming off that loss will be max motivated as they got sort of fucked last week v Pittsburgh and are still in theory alive for the playoffs.  Dan Campbell teams after a loss have been great.  Although I see this as the weakest of the three legs of this parlay, I think Detroit gets it done.  

The Chiefs dynasty came to a thudding end a couple weeks ago, then Minshew blew his knee out three minutes into the following game leaving some guy to play QB that was universally reported to be "really fucking terrible".  That guy gets to play against a brutal Denver defense coming off an embarassing asskicking at home from the Jags.  Denver wants to get the #1 seed, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind kicking KC when they're down along the way.  KC put four (4) players on the IR this week and for all intents and purposes have closed the book on the 2025 season.  If Kansas City were to win this game, I would consider that to be the biggest upset of the last decade.  It's inconceivable to me that Denver loses this game.  By tying all three together moneyline, I got it at -123.  I'm down with that PLUS it gives me something to watch while the lamb slowly cooks away, I sip on my wine, and I reminisce about the ghosts of Christmas past.

Season record:  31-28          

 

Las Vegas Report and NFL Week 16

 

I went on a quick hit trip to Vegas last weekend to get out of the cold and enjoy a Sunday of NFL gambling with Krusty.  I stayed at the MGM Grand, not because I particularly like the MGM Grand, but because the room rate was really cheap.  I don’t know when the last time was that you went to Las Vegas, but at this point all the Strip properties are owned by three companies.  It sort of doesn’t matter where you stay unless you are concerned about restaurant choices or location of the property.  As far as I can tell the only difference between the MGM Grand, New York New York and the Excaliber are only if you care about if the place has a paper mache castle or has a giant gold lion statue.  They are all pretty much just big metal sheds that are made to keep you contained while they drain your bank account at every turn.  It’s not very different than just staying at the airport and eating all your meals there.  I spent $17 on a bottle of Desani water and a magazine to read on the Frontier direct flight home.  A bottle of Heineken was $10.84 which I rounded out to $12.00 to give the bartender a tip.  I ate a $34 chicken cutlet that came with a cucumber salad the size of my palm, although that might have been a negligibly better deal than the $28 bowl of noodles I ate for lunch when I arrived.  

Those nostalgic stories you hear about “The Old Vegas” are right on the nose.  I remember going out there and eating cheap as the hotels would make the basic meals a loss leader, kill you on the high end dining, and make sure you were good n’ drunk with free flowing booze to keep your decision making skills dulled.  It used to be only Caesar’s that employed the practice so accurately described by an old college roommate as “pounding it up your ass with a stick”.  Now gambling anywhere on The Strip is an exercise in stupidity as the games are all tweaked to make winning impossible.  The only potential way to make any money in Strip Casinos is in the sports book or I suppose the poker room if you know what you are doing and get lucky enough to find a table full of people that don’t know what they are doing.  It makes me bitter.  Thus, I have really enjoyed taking money from “The Lion” (as we call the MGM) at every opportunity when I’m there.  I don’t play even a quarter slot machine in those places, walk great distances to avoid eating meals there whenever possible, and leap at the opportunity to make good sports bets at favorable lines.  The most bleak scenario is to have to hand over your money to a place that is pounding it up your ass with a stick with $12 beers and $34 chicken cutlets.  The last thing you want to have happen is to “feed the lion” by losing money in rigged up table games or playing juiced up vigs.  The rooms are fine, but I don’t even buy a coffee in there now.  I’m out of the MGM Grand business.  

It was an odd vibe in the hotel because it was filled with honest to God cowboys in town for the annual rodeo.  The music on the overhead speakers had been changed to fit the clientele with absolutely identical country songs with laughably predictable choruses played.  I could not identify one artist but it didn’t matter because they all sounded the same.  It was shit like this every time I made the two mile walk from my room to get out the door.  “I got an ice cold beer and a shot of crown, ain’t gonna let nothing get me down, my honeysuckle rose got her bluejeans on, and that country music is playing all night long”.  The songs have the EXACT same arrangements.  I don’t know why people like it.  It’s fucking brutal.

One thing I have to say though, every one of those cowboy hat square toe boot boys was polite, courteous, and well behaved.  Everyone looked sort of the same, guys with thick necks and trimmed beards under enormous cowboy hats.  The women all looked like Erica Kirk.  Nobody was visibly drunk, yelling across public spaces, or using their speaker phone.  Yes sir, no ma’am.  That rodeo crowd is fine by me.  As someone said, “They’re all really nice as long as you don’t let your conversation drift into politics.”  It was odd seeing so many cowboys walking around, like if an Amish community took over the hotel and you were the only one not in town to put a barn up.  In an America that is very homogenous, these people live on a different planet than I do.  There must be a much larger sense of certainty in your ideas when everyone looks the same as you do, likes all the same things, and has the same shared values (and I say that from my suburban bubble neighborhood with an army of blonde Moms in Lululemon workout pants driving their kid to soccer practice in their enormous SUVs, none of whom I can differentiate from the other much less match a name/face).  We all have our tribes I suppose.  

I spent a good majority of time down at Circa for a couple beneficial point spreads and their great sportsbook set up.  From there we would venture out to some truly dodgy casinos like the one in The Grand or over at The Californian with its thermostat set at 76 degrees to keep their Hawaiian clientele comfortable in the “cold” of December Las Vegas.  We were friggen whales in those rooms.  Quick word of advice, those downtown casinos have two sections in them which are “Smoking” and “Heavy Smoking”.  I will probably be fighting lung cancer next week after sitting next to a woman that aggressively smoked cigarette after cigarette down to the filter, but the beers were only $4 in the sad little sportsbook so there was a reasonable trade off to watch the Cowboys lose in prime time.  I just like it better when the joint is with a 52/48 house advantage not a 65/35 Fuck You Stupid set up. 

I was stuck in EST sleep patterns, so I would wake up at 430am and wait around until a good coffee place was open in a location that would force me to make a long walk.  Early morning walking The Strip is a great place to see some lost souls, mentally ill, and the occasional Mexican drinking something blue from an enormous plastic globe talking shit to his buddies.  These are where one can pick up the best sports gambling tips as one can be certain that whatever these guys think is about to happen in not only the NFL but the world in general is completely wrong.  This is my “fade the public” strategy that has proven to be very profitable long term.  It’s not 100% certainty as the old adage of “even some of the people some of the time” is correct, but for the most part a guy drinking a 120 oz alcoholic blue drink from a globe is a guy that has made and will continue to make bad choices.  Fade that guy.  

I had an absolutely monster weekend of winners out there, so let's see if we can keep that rolling this weekend.  After my historic "Sunday Turnaround" I am back to being profitable for the year so I'm feeling it.  Let's see if the mojo continues with getting on the UNDER in the Saints v Jets game, an NFL contest which might set the record for the least amount of interest.  Look, the Jets are starting an Area Youth at QB and that hasn't been going very well.  That young man tossed three INTs last week, scaored only 10 versus the shitty Miami D, and is the 46th ranked QB this year.  He is firmly into the "Did you hear that Brady from sales used to play in the NFL?  Yeah, he started three games!" camp.  The Saints meanwhile have been playing hard, which is a key for defensive results.  They are playing a dink n dunk offense which has failed to produce a pass of over 20 yards for five weeks, which seems impossible.  Unless the area youth tosses some brutal pick sixes, I like New Orleans/Jets UNDER 40.5.

I watched Phillip Rivers play last week, and I have no idea why Seattle chose not to blitz the immobile overweight middle aged man.  I do believe that Robert Salah, a horrible head coach but very good defensive coordinator, will watch the same game that I did and reach the same conclusions that I did.  Rivers, and let's hand it to him, did everything he needed to do to provide the Colts with a chance to win last week.  Good for him.  Now let's see how his 44 year old body does a week after playing his first NFL game in four years trying to replicate that feat.  Based on what I could see, Rivers is very limited physically with what he can do, and the 49ers saw the same shit I did.  San Francisco -5.

I think all those teams in the NFC South sorta suck.  Carolina is Atlanta is Tampa.  I won a nice sum of loot betting against Carolina last week because they "had to have the win" versus New Orleans.  These teams all sorta blow.  Tampa goes to Carolina this weekend basically for the right to get smoked in the playoffs.  I would normally bet on Mayfield here, but he's doing his 'wounded warrior" thing, and if he's limited physically he's got a real problem.  It's not like I love Carolina, but a divisional game with the home team getting points?  Carolina +3.

I am on Jacksonville +3.5 over Denver.  It is very difficult to take money and say "I'd like to invest in Trevor Lawrence in this important football game" but here we are.  There is some stat about teams that have won 11 games in a row only cover 33% over their next start that dates back to 1990, and Denver fits that bill.  Do I think Jacksonville wins?  No.  But I do think this will be that game where Bo Nix plays sorta shitty and then at the very end leads a good drive down the field and they kick a late FG to win by 2 points.  Cut to a shot of Trevor jogging off the field excited to call his girlfriend and set up their big afternoon at the corn maze on Monday.  Jacksonville +3.5   

I think the Raiders are the worst team in the league now, which is saying something with the Browns and Jets running around out there.  This is the point in the season where some teams have given up, or ownership has made it clear that there will NOT be a Merry Christmas at their coach's homes this year casting a pall on the team.  The Browns, Raiders, Jets, Miami and probably Cardinals are all getting blown up in a few weeks and everyone in those buildings is spending half their day doing their job and the other half making calls to their friends around the league looking for their next landing spot.  Who has no hope, no motivation, is in a bad spot this week, and just wants this to be over?  Cleveland/Raiders/Washington.  How about some nice little moneyline parlays of Philadelphia/Buffalo/Houston and Buffalo/Houston as a little stocking stuffer?  Unless it's really windy I am taking Buffalo -10 (which might tamp down scoring) as the Browns have zero (0) healthy offensive linemen this week.

Current record:  25-28

Disturbing Appearances and NFL Week 15

 

“Do you know who that is?”  I stared at the skeletal woman with massive amounts of plastic surgery that had an appearance that ceased to be identifiably human.  She was like some sort of animatron from a 1970s movie about “The Future” or like an early attempt at some rubber sex doll, lifeless and creepy.  Her eyes were sunken into her head but were the only feature that betrayed that this thing was indeed alive.  “That’s Kelly Osbourne”.  Jesus.  Wasn’t she a round faced bratty teenage girl just a few years ago?  Why does she look like a senior citizen version of Angelina Jolie’s skeleton now?  I don’t know.  It’s a fashion I guess?

The preponderance of “Mar A Lago Face” is a real momentary cultural glitch.  Every day on the news I see this army of mid-market looking TV weather girls with exaggerated lips, eyes and cheekbones with hair extensions that are allegedly the Directors Of Very Important Departments.  This is a weird time in history when clearly incompetent government officials are in their jobs because the 80 year old CEO of the USA thinks plastic surgery disaster chicks are hot.  The rest of us are just extras in this movie.  It’s a tough break to be sent to some Salvadorian gulag because the old weather gal from FOX-TV in Tulsa decided that you were an Enemy Of The State.  Meanwhile, we are all expected to take moon faced looking hate robots like Laura Loomer seriously because some dork that stumbled into being a Congressman in Indiana believes she can keep his flabby ass in that Congress seat.  Can we stop pretending that these freaks are legitimate human beings?    

It hit me the other day that these odd looking people are modern versions of the Court of Versailles.  Instead of pancake makeup and fake moles pasted on, you have billionaire wives like Susan Dell willingly transforming themselves into looking like wooden puppets because that’s what everyone else is doing in her social circle.  If you don’t look like a surprised Mr. Potato Head, that signifies you aren’t a player in The Big Game.  I think this is all a riff on that annoying Baby Boomer trait of pretending that they aren’t aging, forever young, as if we need to all embrace the willing suspension of disbelief that Paul McCartney still has a full head of boyish brown hair and Donald Trump is an active athletic fella with a healthy looking tan despite the fact they were both around while Hitler was alive and full of his suddenly re-popular ideas.  History is just a loop that goes around and around and around.

History is getting ready to repeat again as New England plays Buffalo in December for the AFC East title.  Buffalo somehow managed to milk a mere three years of post-Brady bliss as undisputed AFC East kings before Bob Kraft assembled a good team again.  If you question Bob Kraft’s skill as an executive, just remember that he got caught on film at a strip plaza massage parlor getting a handjob, and no one remembers it at all.  Poof.  He made that disappear during the height of the Me Too movement while that Aziz Ansari comedian guy had a date that went south and never worked again.  Bob Kraft gets things done.

The Patriots are still lurking in that spot where the public hasn’t completely bought in.  They’ve won 10 games in a row, an amazing accomplishment in the NFL despite the fact it seems like they only play the Browns, Jets and Titans every week.  Hey, a win is a win though.  While they beat Buffalo earlier this year, it is widely accepted that Buffalo is the better team.  I don’t know if that’s true.  I have no idea who the better team is really as Buffalo has plenty of warts and imperfections (unlike Susan Dell).  History does tend to repeat though.  This has all the makings of one of those Josh Allen games where he decides to take the entire game onto his shoulders and will try to pass, run, and maybe even kick them to victory on his own.  I think this game is a back and forth scoring affair with whoever has the ball last wins.  Buffalo/New England OVER.

There are quite a few shaky as fuck QB situations this week.  The Jets are starting their third string guy.  I think his name is Brady Cook or something like that.  He looks like a college kid that is very polite to his parents’ friends.  Last week Krusty sent me a text when that guy went in saying “I’m on the wrong side on this Jets game.”  Then he sent a photo of the guy I just described with a mock local newspaper headline.  “Area youth plays in NFL game.”  It’s tough to see the Jets winning a game with an undrafted QB that is an “area youth”.  Then you consider the Colts are either starting their third stringer with his fucked up knee or tossing 44 year old actual grandfather Phillip Rivers in after a four year absence from the NFL against a vicious Seattle defense.  That can’t end well.  Or maybe if you’re feeling up to it you can toss some money on the Raiders with Kenny Pickett under center against a desperate Eagles team.  I’m toying with the idea of just doing a moneyline parlay betting against all those guys with a Seattle/Philadelphia/Jacksonville ticket.  Oddly enough, the grandpa seems like the most likely to win one of those games.  The Colts are still sorta good but just have NOBODY to play the most important position on the team.  That is a good game to bet the Taylor over on carries as they will want to keep the ball out of their QB's hands.  They might be able to hang in there if they can get the running game going despite Seattle clearly being the better team.  I'm not betting on it though unless I see Rivers is starting.  Father Time has never lost.  If I look at the "unlikely victory" column, the Jets winning in Jacksonville seems the most insane.  I feel no sense of confidence in the Jags but I have even less with the Area Youth at QB.  Jacksonville straight up has to win.  I think the second least likely team to win is the Raiders going on the road to play at 1pm in Philly with Kenny Pickett.  Is there anything in that sentence that makes you feel like the Raiders can pull an upset win?  You gotta think Philadelphia wins but somehow by less than you figured.  Seattle might make sense by tying in the Raiders where you go Seattle -7.5/Raiders +18.5.  When did Philly last beat someone by 19 points?  Dallas in 2024 I think.  That was a long, long time ago.  I suppose I'll have to wait and see what the Colts QB situation is, 3rd string guy with a knee brace and horse tranquilizers shot into his knee or 44 year old out of shape Phillip Rivers.  

The Carolina Panthers have not won a game in which they were favored for years.  While it is true they aren’t favored very often, they still are 0-11 straight up as a favorite to show you show shitty the Panthers are as an organization.  They have the Saints this week, and unlike the Browns, the Saints don’t seem like they are tanking.  They seem to think Slough might be their QB of the future, which I don’t, but as long as the Saints do that means they are playing hard and trying to make this thing work.  New Orleans is getting 1.5 at home, which makes me uneasy as I am getting ready to cash the massive season under win total bet I made on them in August, so it seems counterintuitive to sprint up to the window and say “Gimme some Saints!”.  The one thing I do like is the public narrative is “The Panthers have to win since the Bucs lost on Thursday.  This is a big game for them!”, as if that makes any difference in that piece of shit NFC South chase.  I’d like to tease the Saints up if I can find a likely partner on it.  Denver is getting points at home despite winning ten games in a row, sort of a different version of the Patriots.  I get an excellent defense at home with more than a TD and I need the fucking Panthers to be the Panthers.  Denver +8/New Orleans +7.5.

I really like the Rams this week.  The Rams are playing Detroit and the book is dangling out a 6 point spread just to lure you into betting Lions.  Here’s the thing though.  I think the Rams are the best team in the NFL, and not by a small margin.  They were good in October and they are better in December.  Detroit seems like a team who has a rapidly closing window.  All those Stafford draft picks they morphed into a core of an excellent team now have some mileage on them.  The receivers are all a step slower, the routes a little less crisp, and the offense is much less explosive.  The “we are going for it all the fucking time on 4th down!” mentality now seems reckless as opposed to aggressive.  The Eagles gave the Lions offense a beatdown, and I don’t know why the Rams can’t do the same in LA.  LA has been winning with margin for six weeks now.  This is a game where they assert their dominance and casual fans will go “Hey, the Rams are really good”.  Rams -6    

I'm heading out to Vegas this weekend, and dammit I am going to get after it and win $52,000.  I was absolute shit last week, but hey, I just had a friggen heart operation.  I'm back now baby and getting ready to be The Whale with Krusty at some piece of shit Sportsbook we have identified off strip.  Running out of time to turn this thing around! 

Bleak Current Record: 20-27        

The Path Forward and NFL Week 14

 

After an exciting week of what I guess was "recovery", I had my follow up appointment with the cardiologist who gave me the stamp of approval to "go back to whatever it was you were doing" which, though it sounds dismissive, is about the best news you could ever hear while in that position.   Honestly, it's like nothing ever happened.  I have a tiny mosquito bite scab from where they accessed my artery and that's it.  I feel like I did before but with the added benefit of not being concerned I am on the precipice of an out of the blue heart attack and death.  I am very anxious to leave medical talk behind, but feel a sense of foreboding that I have walked into a new world where I now get to compare what pills I'm on with others in my demographic.  I don't really want to be a guy that perks up when a pharmaceutical ad comes on TV.  "Hmmm Nividan... now with 40% less anal bleeding... that sounds pretty good...  Ask my doctor if Nividan is right for me you say?  Hmmmm.  I might just do that!", yet this might be my future.  

I feel like I have been on a pause for November as my Australia plan got scuttled, I haven't got any new music to fruition, and I lost weeks of wine exam study.  It's been a total bust.  This week I have been getting back on it, resuming the frivilous things I do that give me purpose.  I don't necessarily want to write a paper on viticultural strategies for addressing heat and drought, but it's good to be able to do so with a clear mind.  If you can imagine how challenging it is to stay focused on that topic in general, try doing it when in the back of your mind is the quiet voice of a sleep demon saying things like "you're going to get your chest ripped open in an operation and your current quality of life is OVER".  Suddenly your interest in what farmers are doing in Etna plummets pretty fast.

I also felt somewhat introspective over the last month and it occurred to me how trivial almost all the various dramas in our lives are.  All my devices are screaming at me "Don't miss the exciting new series streaming on some platform you've never heard of!" or "This band you've vaguely heard of is coming to town to play some kind of retread music that sounds vaguely like Seals And Crofts!"...  You better not miss this shit!  Meanwhile I'm looking at it thinking, "But I've already seen that exact shit in different wrapping paper before and I don't WANT another re-run".  I also sure as shit am not going to another sad ass 1970s band cash grab tour as skeletal 80 year old guys wearing hair pieces juiced up on ozempic  pound out songs about doing cocaine and chasing pussy all night loooo-oooo-oooo-ng.  And no, I don't want to hear about how at your job Kevin From Corporate came in and is changing the comp plan and now Brittany swears she's going to leave.  I don't give a fuck about Brittany, Kevin, the comp plan or that piece of shit corporation.  It's all bullshit.  All of it.  And I'm sick of it.

I am retreating back to what I want to do.  I am going to finish writing this next batch of songs and get whoever the hell is healthy enough on the team to wrangle together a record that I'd like to listen to if someone else put it out.  I'm right back to where I was in 1995 surrounded by uncertainty, bored by my surroundings, and ready to do something about it.  This winter has all the markings of a full on soul crushing 1979 style November to April gray skies icy pavement cold wind Siberian hellscape.  I'm going to get out of here as often as I can, and get this thing back on track ASAP.  This bleak ass winter has the potential to make people crazy in a way they forgot about, burrowed in their warm dens staring into their devices getting their brains broken by social media for a half a year.  I'm getting out of that game.

The only things that matter now are writing four more good songs, and putting together a good week of NFL wagers.  I had a GREAT week over Thanksgiving.  Had I not been chock full o' anesthesia working out of my system I would have given you winners on Green Bay, Dallas, Kent State, Mississippi and the Bears but that's all shit talk as far as you're concerned.  My Sundays have not been great, but I'm going to keep swinging.  Let's talk about maybe the biggest piece of shit football game to come along in the last half decade, Tennessee at Cleveland.  There's no way of getting around how bad Tennessee is not only on the field but organizationally.  The ownership there is like when a car dealership goes from the generation that built it over to The Kids, and because they kids were born into it they think they not only know as much as Dad did but actually wayyyyy more because of the internet or something.  Those geniuses at the Titans ran Mike Vrabel out, put Bill Callahan's kid in as head coach, and covered one game ATS from Labor Day to November.  They are 1-17 in their last 18 games straight up.  It's grim in Nashville.

The Browns are the Browns, doing Browns things from now until the end of time itself in their effort to remain Brownsy.  The Browns are 3-15 in that same 1-17 stretch Tennessee has been on.  I think you could make a logical argument that the organization tanked the game against SF last week when they Keystone Kopped that 4th and 2 on their own 30 down 10-8.  If someone can get Kevin Stefanski out of Corporate Babble for just a minute maybe he can explain why they did that one week after punting on a 4th and 2 on the Raider 29.  As Browns fans argue about Shedeur Sanders v Dillon Gabriel, sort of like arguing about if the AMC Pacer or Gremlin is the superior car, the Browns have somehow decided to revive the Zombie sex deviant Deshaun Watson and get him back into the mix too.  It's all very Browns.  The bottom line is neither the Titans or Browns can score because their offenses lack any of the components one needs to be successful, so the under is in play.  Both teams have scored more than 20 points only twice all year, almost an impossible feat in the NFL.  Tennessee has the dead last offense playing the Browns #2 ranked defense.  The Browns counter with their second to last offense run by a coach that is risk averse while operating on a directive to lose from his owners.  I see this as a game between a team that doesn't want to win versus one that can't win.  I don't see any reason to expect either team to try and put points up, something they can't do anyway, and in conditions that will be cold, snowy and windy.  Tennessee v Raiders= 30 points.  Tennessee v Texans= 29 points and 26 points.  Browns v Raiders 34 points.  Browns v Pittsburgh= 29 points.  The only outlier games are that Jets game where the Browns gave up all those special team points.  I'm going Browns/Tennessee UNDER 34.5 with a hedge of potential rookie QB big mistake Defensive TD Yes +290.  

The AFC North always comes down to Baltimore v Pittsburgh, it's just odd that it's coming together this year with both of them sort of sucking.  I don't like to bet unders because it's just not very fun hoping TDs get called back and yelling at pass interference calls.  However, this game is 1-9-1 to the over in the last 11 meetings.  On top of that you've got two injured QBs, one of which looks every day of his 62 years of age.  Rodgers wasn't very good before he broke his non-throwing hand, and he's sucked since.  5 passing TDs in November total.  Yikes.  The other side of the coin?  Teams that see Lamar twice a year tend to play Lamar very well, and his mobility is compromised.  Lamar has been trending to run just in Big Games the team is facing.  Before Lamar got hurt, he ran for 70 yards against Buffalo, 48 yards against KC.  Now with the hole they dug themselves, every game is a Big Game and Lamar has run for 10, 11 and 27 yards in his last three games.  On top of that he has one (1) passing TD in November.  This feels like one of those rock fight games.  Pittsburgh/Balt UNDER 43.    

Speaking of teams that suck, let's talk Saints.  I think we can all agree the Saints have seen enough from Tyler Slough to conclude that they will not have a competitive team as long as he's the starter.  He's put some numbers up lately, but it's all come in garbage time.  That's a team that wants to lose, can lose, and will lose.  The problem is they play Tampa at a time when Baker is doing his "injured warrior" thing.  When Mayfield is hurt, he loses that portion of athleticism that allows him to compete in the NFL successfully.  Nobody can question that guy's heart, but when he's limited he sorta sucks.  Tampa now finds themselves in that spot where they are good enough to beat the bunnies on the schedule but not good enough to beat high quality opponents.  The good news is the Saints stink and are happy to lose.  The Saints have won on the road twice in the last two years, and I somehow was on the wrong side both times.  That win they had in Carolina is one of the most mystifying games of the year.  I can't see them pulling a win out here but the spread concerns me.  Tampa moneyline.     

Krusty and I call a game that looks too easy "an eel".  If I forced you to bet on this Colts v Jags game and told you the Colts have lost 3 of their last 4, their QB is playing on a broken leg, they haven't won in Jacksonville since 2014, Jacksonville has won 4 of their last 5, and the Jags are getting 1.5 points at home, I am guessing you are betting Jaguars all day long.  What's to think about, right?  This is an eel,  I know it is an eel.  You know it is an eel.  I know even before betting this game I am going to lose because it is A GODDAMN EEL.  Yet, I'm powerless to stop myself.  I need someone to talk me off of the ledge because I am about to bet Jacksonville +1.5.  Please... I am begging you... someone stop this...

Current record:  19-24