'The Football Jones' Week 11 NFL Picks
Posted by Scott Flaskerud on Friday, November 15, 2013 at 12:00 AM
By Scott Flaskerud / November 15, 2013
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Lunch was canceled this week due to bad Qi. So let's get right to the picks.
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But Cutler got another injury in that game, and this week he really and truly isn't going to play (for real this time!), so I'm sticking to my guns here and I'm going with McCown to lead the Bears to a win over the Ravens who are still trying to nap off their nasty Super Bowl hangover.
@ Baltimore: I've heard people say that V-8 works wonders, but I'm a hair-of-the-dog man, myself. Ride the snake, my friends! Feeling good is good enough!
Prior to this season, the Falcons have the second best regular season record over the past five years in the NFL. Only the dark hooded one, Bill Belichick, and the Patriots have been better. Basically, ever since head coach Mike Smith and QB Matt Ryan have been paired together, Atlanta has been the class of the NFC (playoffs, notwithstanding).
The point is, for Atlanta to just completely out of the blue, just completely suck this year... all of those guys in that locker room are confused and bewildered. They don't understand what's happening to them and they have no concept of what they're supposed to say or feel or do. The only thing they know is that they aren't going to win the Super Bowl this year. And after five years of being “this close” to doing so, it kind of takes the joy out of going to work for the rest of this season when they know that everything they do now is meaningless.
Now on the complete flip side, sucking means absolutely nothing to Tampa Bay, who were the original (and for decades, only) football franchise to lose every single game on the schedule one season. When they came into the league back in the 1970’s, their very color scheme was ill-conceived: white and a sickly, non-threatening, pale orange.
And this year’s incarnation of the Buccaneers is very deeply lost at sea, sailing listlessly in a pirate ship that’s preposterously riddled with scurvy and with a captain that has a full-blown imminent mutiny hanging over his head. I mean, he’s already got one foot (if not both feet) on the plank.
Tampa Bay knows they’re not going to the playoffs, nor do they even have any aspirations to. But having just finally broken the seal last week and tasted their first victory of the season, it’s whetted their appetites for more of that good stuff. Suddenly, they’re hungry! In fact, they’re actually playing the game this weekend for a sandwich.
Moral of the story: the Bucs win two in a row!
Baltimore (4 - 5) @ Chicago (5 - 4)
I picked the Bears to beat the Lions last week because I thought Chicago had found the proverbial lightning in a bottle with Josh McCown at the QB helm whilst Cutler was out with an injury (and, as I understood at the time, not ready to return last week). Well, Cutler was, in fact, cleared to play and he did. And the Bears lost, of course.
Atlanta (2 - 7) @ Tampa Bay (1 - 8)
As I was concluding my Week 8 Breakdown, I suggested (to myself, mainly) that maybe Atlanta just sucks. Three weeks have passed since then, and I can absolutely confirm that Atlanta, does indeed, suck. Very much so. But in this NFC South suckfestaroo, there's a powerful distinction between the significance of what each team's suckitude means to them.

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