Week 12 was once again a winner for me as my weekly record was 8-4-1, bringing my cumulative record against the spread to a very healthy 71-50-1. While I can’t expect this good luck to continue, I can be hopeful that this streak goes one more week.
Actually, my best bets weren’t that great (2-1-1) so I didn’t win the ten bucks as I did last week. You wouldn’t think picking 4 absolute locks would be that difficult but, in this very fluky NFL, it’s proven to be a real poser.
My Week 12 best bets were Washington over Philadelphia getting a whopping 9 points, Cleveland over the Bengals getting 14, Arizona getting 3 vs the Titans (the tie), and Miami over the Bills by 3 (the loser). Terrell Owens made a monkey of me and the Fish in that one. The Bills sure didn’t repeat their fine performance Thursday night against our Jets.
Once again, this winning streak can’t continue so consider that as you bet. There are once again some big injuries and uncertainties. Kurt Warner’s status last week wasn’t solidified until Sunday morning.
Anyway, here’s the Week 13 picks:
Favorite Spread Underdog 4 Best My Pick Reason
Den 4 ½ KCY Den Teams going opposite ways
PIT 14 ½ Oak PIT Raiders give up easy
JAC PK Tex Tex Just can’t pick Jags
IND 6 ½ Ten Ten Titans on a roll, will cover
Phi 5 ½ ATL * Phi This could get ugly
CIN 13 ½ Det Det Bengals won’t win big
Saints 9 ½ WAS WAS Brees will handoff a lot
CAR 6 ½ Bucs * CAR They’re all on notice in Carolina
CHI 9 Stl CHI Bears will take advantage
Chargers 13 ½ CLE CLE Browns cover on SD defense
SEA Pk 49ers 49ers Always on the Niners
Vikes 3 ARI Vikes Who’s better? The Vikes
Boyz 2 ½ NYG * Boyz G-Men just seem beaten already
Pats 4 MIA * Pats Pats embarrassed, win big
The best bets for Week 13:
Eagles – Really unimpressed by Falcons defense combined with Eagles recent narrow victories make me believe McNabb will just score early, late and quite often, DeSean or no DeSean, Westbrook or not.
Panthers – Delhomme’s benching will energize Carolina. Peppers will make himself a problem for Tampa Bay’s linemen. Biggest factor is that everybody from the coach to the special teams knows they’re expendable.
Cowboys – I really hate picking the Boyz but this is a game I truly feel the Giants have already conceded. Everybody’s hurt and now Osi is benched? Doesn’t look good for the G-Men. CC Brown may even play, omigosh, that’s really scary.
Patriots –Just as surely as the Saints kicked their butts last week, you know the Pats will come back loaded for bear, or fish. Dolphins just need other weapons besides Ricky, who will get some yards but not so many scores.
On other fronts, let me just put my two cents in for the “powers that be” in women’s tennis. Their heavy fine ($82,500) of Serena Williams was more than I would have expected but less than what she deserved. I’m really tired of hearing both sisters talk about “moving on”. I’m not ready to move on yet. I may never be.
On Tiger’s situation, I just want to voice my surprise that, amid all this speculation about how many girlfriends he’s had, nobody has speculated about what club Elin used to break the windows in the caddy! C’mon people, this is GOLF. When you watch a match, all you hear is what club they’re selecting. (My guess is a low iron, probably a 3).
I’m a little concerned about my Mets. What the heck are they doing? Blanco? With so many needs all over the place, I wouldn’t have expected the first move to be a totally nebulous one….cryptic even. Let’s see…the Braves pick up Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito and we get friggin’ Blanco, who hits way less than Omir Santos, the incumbent.
Yeah, it’s great that Johan Santana recommended him, he’s supposed to be good with pitchers, blah blah blah, but who’s running this team anyway? Oh, and we let Placido Polanco go on to the Phils. I guess we’ll be hoping Luis Castillo still has one more good year. Good luck. Good grief!
Meanwhile, I actually heard a Mets fan call in to complain about Matt Holliday’s lack of range in left field. Gimme a break. Yeah, let’s go all out for Endy Chavez, he’s got LOTS of range.
On the basketball front, which I’ve been studiously ignoring so far, I see Allen Iverson has landed with the Sixers. Good for Allen, good for the Sixers and good for the league. It’s hard to keep LeBron out of the news, not to mention Kobe, but I hope they won’t make him practice. PRACTICE?
Meanwhile, the glow is only now fading from the Saints’ pulverizing of the Pats on Monday Night Football, for all the world to see. I foresaw something like it in last Friday’s column, speculating that the Saints had the pure motivation on their side. Drew Brees and company, Colston, Meachem, Moore, Shockey, et al really gave it to them.
But it was the defense that really came up big, and to see McAllister and Mike McKenzie play the way they did, after just having had joined the team, was fantastic. Kudos to all the Saints, Pierre Thomas too. This is a team you have to root for to go all the way.
Back to the Giants, as they are playing this weekend, I wish I had something nice to say. I’ve been picking on defensive coordinator Sheridan all year and I still suspect he is the biggest problem of a whole slew of them.
Let me end this by wishing all you fantasy players good luck in Week 13 that in most leagues is the final week of the regular season. I need a win and another Brees and Saints week.
Showing posts with label Colston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colston. Show all posts
Friday, December 4, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
A Lost Sunday
It was a lost Sunday. For the Giants and Jets, that is, and anybody silly enough to root for them. I knew the Giants would be in trouble, facing Drew Brees & Company with somebody named C.C. Brown at safety and, well, I never put much faith in Dockery. The Jets were a surprise flop though, losing in miserable fashion to one of the worst football teams in the league.
Mark Sanchez has regressed a lot from the quarterback he was against New England. It’s a shame really. He’s aiming the ball. He’s doing almost everything required of a quarterback badly. He even made Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Bills horrible quarterback, look good, a feat I would have thought was impossible before yesterday.
For the Jets, the game wasn’t the only bad news. They also lost Kris Jenkins, their huge defensive tackle, to a fairly serious knee injury. So there goes the run defense for the rest of the season too.
And it’s easy to second-guess but I would have got Sanchez out of there. He was clearly dazed and shaken, and not likely to come out of it, which he didn’t. He seems to have lost any confidence he may have had, and clearly, it’s time for a change. At the very least, it’s time to institute some rules, like Joba rules, in a way. Three picks and he’s out.
Not that it even makes a difference anymore. Any team that could lose so easily to one of the worst teams in the league cannot be expected to win many more. Forget the playoffs, forget even mediocrity, this team is bad, bad, bad. Of course, any team with a bad quarterback will be bad. We can only hope that the regression of Sanchez isn’t a reflection of the coach’s ability. Most people like Ryan, and I do too, but maybe he shows too much confidence in people? It’s optimism gone amok.
I have to admit that, while the Giants clock was being cleaned, I was enjoying every bit of it as my fantasy team roster includes Brees, Colston and Shockey. They all had their way with the Giants, especially Colston, who seemed to just outduel anybody covering him for the ball. I knew he was good but I didn’t realize he was great.
The Giants made every Saint look great though, so it’s hard to tell how really good Colston may be from yesterday’s game. I have to think the result would have been much different if there had been any kind of coverage at all. All I saw was guys in blue running with guys in gold, but when the ball was in the air, the guy in gold went up and got it. The blue guy stayed cemented to the ground.
Just about everybody who could have caught a pass caught one. Not just Colston and Shockey, but Meacham, Moore….Well, seven different players scored touchdowns for the Saints. It was pretty much a massacre.
It was sad to see Eli do so badly in his hometown. Equally as sad was to see him lose his cool with running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who zigged when he should’ve zagged on one play, resulting in horrific pressure on Manning and ultimately, an interception.
There is hope for the Giants though. The Saints may be the best team in the league, and they had an extra week to prepare for this game. They exposed every Giants weakness, quite often actually. But the Saints offensive line did its job pretty well too, keeping what had been a fierce defensive front in check all day. Even a hint of defensive pressure up front could have made a big difference.
I’ll try to take solace in the fact that, as bad as the locals were, there were some other teams that looked just as bad or worse. The first team that comes to mind is the Eagles, who lost to the awful Raiders, but the Titans were absolutely humiliated by the Patriots and the hapless Redskins lost to the previously winless Kansas City Chiefs.
The most revealing statistic of them all might be the fact that the Redskins had faced a winless team in each and every game they’d played this season but had only won two of them. Harried Skins head coach Jim Zorn was relieved of his play-calling responsibility yesterday and quarterback Jason Campbell was finally relieved at halftime in favor of Todd Collins, who at least led the Skins to some field goals.
What happened to the Eagles at Oakland is beyond me. I knew Oakland was capable of fielding a very decent pass defense, what with the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL residing in their secondary (Asomugha got hurt), but I didn’t realize they could stop the run. Evidently, it was not a big part of their game plan.
The Eagles did lose their offensive tackle, Jason Peters, in the first quarter, which probably doused any Eagle thoughts of running. But McNabb was sacked six times, indicating some really big problems up front. And Akers missed two field goals, McNabb called a timeout he didn’t have, and they still should have won that game.
The Cowboys had their bye week and got to watch everybody else lose. Not too shabby. They’re coming off two fairly good weeks of play, having lost a close one to the undefeated (for now) Broncos and having beat the Chiefs by six in Kansas City. They get an extra week to prepare for the very tough Atlanta Falcons next week, and they seem to have found a wide receiver they didn’t know they had.
The Yanks had the day off after beating the suddenly sorry Angels and seem a 50-50 chance of winning still another at 4PM today, Pettite vs. Saunders. Arod’s been great; he saved the game Saturday.
The Phils killed LA behind Lee to go up 2-1. They’ll face Wolf tonight behind big Joe Blanton. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dodgers tie the series.
Mark Sanchez has regressed a lot from the quarterback he was against New England. It’s a shame really. He’s aiming the ball. He’s doing almost everything required of a quarterback badly. He even made Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Bills horrible quarterback, look good, a feat I would have thought was impossible before yesterday.
For the Jets, the game wasn’t the only bad news. They also lost Kris Jenkins, their huge defensive tackle, to a fairly serious knee injury. So there goes the run defense for the rest of the season too.
And it’s easy to second-guess but I would have got Sanchez out of there. He was clearly dazed and shaken, and not likely to come out of it, which he didn’t. He seems to have lost any confidence he may have had, and clearly, it’s time for a change. At the very least, it’s time to institute some rules, like Joba rules, in a way. Three picks and he’s out.
Not that it even makes a difference anymore. Any team that could lose so easily to one of the worst teams in the league cannot be expected to win many more. Forget the playoffs, forget even mediocrity, this team is bad, bad, bad. Of course, any team with a bad quarterback will be bad. We can only hope that the regression of Sanchez isn’t a reflection of the coach’s ability. Most people like Ryan, and I do too, but maybe he shows too much confidence in people? It’s optimism gone amok.
I have to admit that, while the Giants clock was being cleaned, I was enjoying every bit of it as my fantasy team roster includes Brees, Colston and Shockey. They all had their way with the Giants, especially Colston, who seemed to just outduel anybody covering him for the ball. I knew he was good but I didn’t realize he was great.
The Giants made every Saint look great though, so it’s hard to tell how really good Colston may be from yesterday’s game. I have to think the result would have been much different if there had been any kind of coverage at all. All I saw was guys in blue running with guys in gold, but when the ball was in the air, the guy in gold went up and got it. The blue guy stayed cemented to the ground.
Just about everybody who could have caught a pass caught one. Not just Colston and Shockey, but Meacham, Moore….Well, seven different players scored touchdowns for the Saints. It was pretty much a massacre.
It was sad to see Eli do so badly in his hometown. Equally as sad was to see him lose his cool with running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who zigged when he should’ve zagged on one play, resulting in horrific pressure on Manning and ultimately, an interception.
There is hope for the Giants though. The Saints may be the best team in the league, and they had an extra week to prepare for this game. They exposed every Giants weakness, quite often actually. But the Saints offensive line did its job pretty well too, keeping what had been a fierce defensive front in check all day. Even a hint of defensive pressure up front could have made a big difference.
I’ll try to take solace in the fact that, as bad as the locals were, there were some other teams that looked just as bad or worse. The first team that comes to mind is the Eagles, who lost to the awful Raiders, but the Titans were absolutely humiliated by the Patriots and the hapless Redskins lost to the previously winless Kansas City Chiefs.
The most revealing statistic of them all might be the fact that the Redskins had faced a winless team in each and every game they’d played this season but had only won two of them. Harried Skins head coach Jim Zorn was relieved of his play-calling responsibility yesterday and quarterback Jason Campbell was finally relieved at halftime in favor of Todd Collins, who at least led the Skins to some field goals.
What happened to the Eagles at Oakland is beyond me. I knew Oakland was capable of fielding a very decent pass defense, what with the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL residing in their secondary (Asomugha got hurt), but I didn’t realize they could stop the run. Evidently, it was not a big part of their game plan.
The Eagles did lose their offensive tackle, Jason Peters, in the first quarter, which probably doused any Eagle thoughts of running. But McNabb was sacked six times, indicating some really big problems up front. And Akers missed two field goals, McNabb called a timeout he didn’t have, and they still should have won that game.
The Cowboys had their bye week and got to watch everybody else lose. Not too shabby. They’re coming off two fairly good weeks of play, having lost a close one to the undefeated (for now) Broncos and having beat the Chiefs by six in Kansas City. They get an extra week to prepare for the very tough Atlanta Falcons next week, and they seem to have found a wide receiver they didn’t know they had.
The Yanks had the day off after beating the suddenly sorry Angels and seem a 50-50 chance of winning still another at 4PM today, Pettite vs. Saunders. Arod’s been great; he saved the game Saturday.
The Phils killed LA behind Lee to go up 2-1. They’ll face Wolf tonight behind big Joe Blanton. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dodgers tie the series.
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