Quick question: What’s better than skipping church, sitting on the couch in a dark room watching the Red Zone channel for 12 hours avoiding all real world responsibilities, and gambling on grown men who probably have CTE? Doing it for the 19th straight week. Welcome to NFL Sunday.
"A boss is like a diaper, Always on your ass and usually full of $*&!" -Oprah Winfrey
The first round of the playoffs is over and wow you can feel the excitement. So wild card weekend is technically playoff football but when the Bills and Jags are basically playing first team to cross the 50 yard line wins, it just doesn’t feel right. Marcus Mariota threw a pass to himself, Cam Newton pretend to get poked in the eye to avoid the concussion tent, and Blake Bortles rushed for more yards than he threw for. It might not have felt like playoff football, but its better than watching the Browns.
Last season during wild card weekend, every game was a blow out and the home team won. It was clear who the better team was and the divisional round shaped up to be very competitive. This season during wild card weekend, all 4 underdogs covered. Which goes to show no one actually knows who’s going to win these games. The most surprising game of the weekend was the Titans as 9 point underdogs, going into Kansas City and upsetting the Chiefs. Most people believed the Titans were the worst team to make the playoffs, but all those people underestimated Andy Reid’s ability to drastically blow leads. The Chiefs were up 21-3 at halftime and somehow lost the game 22-21. That takes a special kind of collapse. I believe Andy Reid is one of the best coaches in the NFL, maybe top 3. I also believe any coach who loses a home playoff game by 1 after being up by 18 at halftime is never going to lead a team to the Super Bowl. The Chiefs would be crazy and stupid to fire a coach as good as Andy Reid, and yet the Chiefs would be crazy and stupid to keep a coach that keeps losing close home playoff games.
The best game of the weekend was the Saints vs Panthers, division rivals who have played each other twice already this season and twice the Saints won. Last Sunday was more of the same as the Saints put up 31 points on their way to the win. But this time around the Panthers were able to cover the spread of +7 which is just as good as a win in my book. However the NFL does not let underdogs who cover the spread but don’t win to move onto the next round. So now the Panthers season is over. Most teams heading to the offseason means vacations and relaxing until the draft, except the Panthers are not going to have the typical offseason. The Panthers owner and founder Jerry Richardson is putting the team up for sale after being accused of being a creepy old man. First off this sets a bad precedent for NFL owners. If all that needs to happen to be fired as an NFL owner is to be accused of being a creepy old man, every owner in the NFL should be worried.
An NFL owner is basically buying 1/32 of one of the biggest organizations in the world, and with this comes a lot of responsibility. The NFL loves its family friendly image, a league with zero issues. When it comes to breaking the law? The NFL will not tolerate any behavior that tarnishes that image. It would be unheard of for an NFL owner to have issues with drug use or get a DUI (unless you’re Jim Irsay.) An NFL owner has to get along with the other 31 owners. NFL owners have strength in numbers. A rich old white person in America, but 32 rich old white men in America united together are near unstoppable. So as an owner it would be detrimental to go against the wishes of the other 31 NFL owners. The worst move an owner could make is to publicly speak out against the other owners or the commissioner (unless you’re Jerry Jones.) With one of these coveted possessions up for grabs the NFL needs someone with a squeaky clean image, someone who won’t speak badly about the leagues issues with concussions or Papa Johns. The NFL needs Oprah, and she needs them.
Last Sunday after football ended there was some movie award show on tv. The type where famous people get dressed up and go to a huge fancy theater to spend 4 hours high fiving, and patting each other on the back for how great they all are. Hollywood movie award shows are a lot like NFL owner meetings. Groups of rich old white men getting together to discuses how much money they have. In Hollywood however they spend more time talking about how much they love diversity and recognizing women, yet the majority of people that attend, are nominated for awards, or host the show; are rich white men. Its almost like there’s a rule that says in order to receive an award in Hollywood you need to get on stage and say something nice about someone who isn’t a rich white man. (in the NFL all you need to do to get an award is say something nice about Papa John).
For whatever reason the person every rich white guy decided to say something nice about to get their award that night was Oprah. Now why was Oprah at an award show for people who make movies? I have no idea. Maybe Oprah was on tv years ago and that’s a good enough excuse to give her an award? I’m assuming when they invited Oprah they told her she would just sit and get complements for 4 hours then walk away with a shiny trophy and if every person that went on stage acknowledged her, then at the end of the night no one would question what the award was about. And that is exactly what happened.
Every person at the award show made some terrible version of the same joke “Oprah you’re such a great person, YOU should run for President.” And everytime the joke was made the whole crowd would cheer, over and over again. Let’s think about this for a second. The American people elected a person President who was rich and on tv but had no actual leadership qualities or political experience. It didn’t take long to realize that was a terrible idea and we all regretted it. Instead of learning from our mistake and electing someone who is qualified to run the country and the government what do you want to do? Elect another person who is rich and on tv but has no actual leadership qualities or political experience. Einstein described insanity as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, and according to Einstein the American people are acting as crazy as it gets.
Why would Oprah want to run for President in the first place? She is a retired billionaire, she can literally sit on her butt all day, have anything she could possibly want brought to her and continue to make millions just based on the fact her name is Oprah. She could walk into any city in America, buy the biggest house in the city, pay the Mayor to give her the key to the city, pay all the citizens to rename the city Oprahville, and demand every day at noon every citizen gathers around her house and sing a song about how great she is. Would someone who has that kind of money ever want to leave retirement to attempt to get the most stressful job known to man. Obama entered the presidency in 2008 looking like the coolest man on the planet. He left 8 years later looking like he aged 25 years. The problem for Oprah is the American people want her to run, and she desperately needs an excuse for why she can’t. Enter the Carolina Panthers.
If Oprah truly wants to make America a better place, but doesn’t want any of the grinding pressure that goes along with being the President, she will write the check and buy her way into the NFL. Oprah checks all the boxes of an NFL owner. Rich, clean record, and more importantly a face that America loves. The last few years the NFL and football in general has come under attack for a number of different reasons. With the power Oprah brings to the table the NFL can have an easy distraction from concussions, domestic violence, and Papa John hating anthem protests. Not to mention everyone forgetting that Oprah would be replacing a creepy old man who is leaving the NFL for being a creepy old man. If all Oprah needs to make it in the NFL is a creepy factor she can tell Cam Newton how good he looks in his (insert whatever stupid outfit Cam Newton is wearing this week). And Cam can tell her she doesn’t know anything about routes.
Divisional Round NFL Picks:
All Lines used from the Las Vegas Westgate Superbook.
Falcons -2.5
Patriots -13.5
Jaguars +7
Saints +5
Falcons -2.5
I spent my Christmas night making my family watch a terrible Raiders Eagles game because I was sweating out the last legs of a few teasers and parleys. Nick Foles tried his hardest in that game to ruin my Christmas which in turn would have ruined my entire families Christmas because I would have canceled Christmas if the Eagles lost that game. After that game I said I am betting against the Eagles no matter what in their first divisional round game. I assumed they would be playing the Panthers or the Saints. Now here we are and my beloved Falcons are at the Eagles this Saturday. Apparently the bookmakers almost had their Christmas ruined by the Eagles too because they made the Falcons a favorite in this game. As a fan I am worried because the Eagles truly do have a great defense and offensive line. They are the number one seed in the NFC for a reason. At the end of the day however the Eagles are starting Nick Foles, and that’s a good thing for Falcons fans.
Patriots -13.5
Death Taxes and the Patriots cover double digit spreads. I could stop here but I won’t. The Patriots offense has been a well oiled machine this season and I fully expect them to drop at least 30+ against Tennessee who somehow are still alive and in the playoffs. This game will probably be a very boring game where the Patriots ho-hum take the play down the field drive after drive pilling up points and at the end of the day Belicheat says “were on to Pittsburgh” and the Titans are just happy their team got to share the field with the Patriots for an evening.
Jaguars +7
Remember in the Movie Titanic when the old captain locks the doors to the control room and waits for the water to crash through the windows dragging him to his death? Well I am that old captain and Blake Bortles is the Titanic. I’ve been ride or die with the Jags since week 5 when they went into Pittsburgh and beat the Steelers and I’ve not about to be a coward and abandon ship now. Like a good captain I will go down with Blake and my ship. The only hope I have is AB is actually injured and is just playing to be a decoy, which is possible. And the Jaguars defense can play at the top of their game which they have showed is good enough to beat anyone in the league. Blake Vick needs a few first down scrabbles and take care of the ball in the passing game and the Jags could shock the world again and take down the Steelers. If not at least I did the honorable thing.
Saints +5
The best game of the weekend is going down in Minnesota Sunday afternoon, site of Super Bowl 52. The Vikings have had a great year. Their defense might be the best in the league and despite a number of injuries on offense they have stayed in the top 10 in points and yards. If Philly crashes against the Falcons Saturday the path for Minnesota to the Super Bowl could all at home in their dome including the big game. The problem? The Vikings always find a way to screw things up in the playoffs. I’m not falling for the trap like I did with the Chiefs last week. Yes the Vikings are the better team but they are the Chiefs of the NFC. They will find a way to screw this game up. The biggest reason I like this game is the spread is all the way up to +5. It should be closer to a 3 point spread as these teams are very even. I’ll take the extra points and hope the ghost of Blair Walsh and Gary Anderson can miss a few kicks to cover for the Saints.
Double COVERage 