Honestly I'm inclined to burn the tape on this week. Too many weird things happened.
My immediate thoughts on yesterday are pretty much to agree with this, and only in part because I drew the collar this weekend.
Some time about midway through the early games yesterday I started to call yesterday Give It All Back Weekend. I don't think there's a person in the world who didn't hear the books bellyaching about the couple of weeks where they just got crushed by favorites (after dogs and unders starting pretty hot right out of the gate, btw).
Funny thing, I haven't heard the books say anything about yesterday, imagine that. Actually, imagine them rolling around in a big pile of money because that's more accurate.
Even heading into this week I heard a lot of, ‘We haven’t had any major upsets yet!’ and “No dog over 7+ has won outright yet!”Well, we sure as fuck have had them now. So congrats for knocking me out of survivor with your jinxes, sports radio chucklefuckers.
Funny thing for me is, had I just stuck with my Pick Club contest plays (and maybe not been afraid to play that over in Baltimore rather than jumping on BAR’s Las Vegas Raiders) I’d have had a good day. But instead I'd bought in on a lot of what I thought would be early line value last week and that turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
Anyway, there were ways to survive yesterday—for example, somehow it didn’t occur to me that New England has seen Sam Darnold many times before, that Sam Darnold may not totally be recovered from that concussion, and why the hell are we not just betting against Sam Darnold purely because he's Sam Darnold. But it is what it is.
What jumped out to me in a number of games is how what appeared to be terrible spots ended up not mattering at all. Tenny was in a bad spot, Arizona was in a bad spot, Denver seemed like they were in a bad spot, Minnesota catching Balty off a bye. To me, that all of these seemed not to matter is an outlier.
To the point of burning the tape, I’d also add this:
Does anybody think that KC game is truly representative of KC’s defense?
Does anybody really think Denver essentially shuts out Dallas if they lined up again next week?
Does anybody think that Jags/Bills game would happen again any time this season?
It just really feels to me like a lot of these games weren’t representative of who a number of these teams are.
What I will say though, is we’re seeing some of the teams who had pretty significant injury issues really early start to rebound a bit.
Denver getting Jeudy back dramatically helps their offense.
Cleveland is starting to get a little healthier and yesterday it showed.
The
Giants, while not healthy, have absolutely proven over the last few weeks that they can play through just a ton of injuries.
On specific teams:
I agree with
@Capaholic, I really thought Tyrod would show up yesterday for Houston.
San Fran is obviously, clearly done. It seems like it’s some combination of injury and coaching attrition, but yesterday ended their season.
There’s still no way you’re going to get me to believe in
Miami.
There is still no way you’re going to get me to believe in the
Jets … although Mike White may make me think about it for second. Just a little.
There’s also no way you’re going to convince me this
KC team right now is any good. And that sucks, I have a ticket on them to win the division, but the SB loss fucked this team up somehow, they’re just not right.
The
Raiders loss doesn’t totally shock me, and I should probably stop doing this thing where I’m like, “The Giants suck, I should bet against them purely on that." I’m pretty sure that’s worked out for me exactly once in the last four weeks. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve been against them in every one of their wins. Ugh.
The
Chargers winning didn’t shock me, that they didn’t win by more surprised me seeing as how I consider them a team that should be able to throw on teams and the Eagles a team that you should be able to throw against. Obviously though, you can run on the Chargers. Which we knew, but man, you can run on the Chargers.
I still believe in
Buffalo even though somehow they are now only a half a game up in the division.
If the season ended today, your wildcards from #4 to #7 would be:
AFC
NFC
This means,
KC, Cleveland, and Cincy would all miss the playoffs. Meanwhile, in the NFC, both the teams in the 8th and 9th spots right now looking in have losing records (
Carolina 4-5, Minny 3-5).
In thinking about it, maybe I felt like this weekend was where we started to see separation happen. But maybe that starts next week. Week 10 means ~seven games left, I feel like it’s time to start seeing some urgency from some of these playoff teams.
Denver and KC are now both 5-4 and have a lot of control over their own destiny—KC in particular has a big game this week at LV (and they just signed Desean Jackson if his IG is to be believed). And Denver gets a pretty weak Eagles team at Mile High. Which Joe should have planned better and attended, but we won’t talk about that.
Cleveland and Cincy are in the same spot, both 5-4, but both on the outside of the playoffs looking in. It’s time to make a move. Cincy has a week off to think about it, but the Browns play a playoff team at NE.
Indy also needs to continue to make a move. They’re at the back of the playoff pack, but it’s doable. And they have Jax in Indy.
I’d say
Atlanta, NO, and Carolina are all in a similar spot despite their records. NO is the leader in the clubhouse in terms of being in the playoffs, but they just dropped a head-to-head vs. Atlanta which is huge. NO also seems to have a QB problem right now. Meanwhile, Atlanta is only a half a game ahead of Carolina, although those teams seem to be headed in different directions. but Atlanta's still only .500.
This makes me think it would be smart to see Carolina make a QB change, though I don’t think that’s happening. But I’d be happy to be wrong as someone who has a small piece of Carolina over 7.5 wins which, if you look at their schedule the rest of the way, good luck with that.
Anyway, I hated this week, but mostly and largely because I lost. Let's see if we can change that this week.
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