18.10.03
Pro Football: I never posted my pro picks for this week. Here they are:
- Minnesota beats Denver. I figure that Minnesota hasn't given me a reason to pick against them, and they're at home, so Denver doesn't get help from the thin air.
- St. Louis and Green Bay are two teams who have done well the last couple of weeks. I figure that if this game were at Lambeau, in the cold, on natural grass, that Green Bay would have a good shot. But since it's in St. Louis, on turf, in the climate controlled Edward Jones Dome or whatever they're calling it nowadays, you have to figure that St. Louis, with their team speed, has an advantage.
- The Giants and Eagles are two teams who haven't fared nearly as well this season. Both are 2 games out of the division lead, and neither has really impressed me at any point with their play. I'm picking the Giants solely because the game is in New Jersey.
- Washington gets picked simply because they're the team I root for. More substantive reasons may be the utter lack of an offence in Buffalo, or the fact that they got shellacked by the pathetic Jets last week.
- Carolina, especially its defence, is too good for Tennessee. Sure, Tennessee has Steve McNair, but Carolina shut Peyton Manning down last week. Until they actually lose a game, I'll probably end up picking the Panthers. It doesn't hurt that the game is in Charlotte rather than Nashville.
- Baltimore beats its former defensive coordinator. After all, Marvin Lewis does coach the Bengals.
- Cleveland wins. San Diego sucks.
- Dallas beats Detroit. It makes my skin crawl merely to type those words, but there it is. Am I supposed to pick a team which has beaten only Arizona, and which lost arguably its best receiver in practice this week? Against one which has beaten two divisional opponents, and one which hired Bill Parcells as head coach? Think again.
- Miami wins on the strength of playing at home. Playing on the road is always tough in the AFC East. And New England just isn't good enough to win many road games.
- Atlanta wins. Don't tell me you think that New Orleans will win two in a row. I don't think that anyone believes that particular fiction.
- Tampa Bay wins at San Francisco. San Fran hasn't played particularly good football, whereas Tampa beat the crap out of Washington last week, handing the 'Skins their first loss of more than 3 points.
- Seattle wins. Don't tell me you think that Chicago can beat them.
- Will the Jets win two in a row? Since Pennington's not playing, no. Expect Houston to win at home.
- I know that Monday Night's game is a divisional rivalry, but don't tell me that you think that Oakland will keep it close (even at home) against Kansas City.
College Football: I am watching an ESPN.com Gamecast of Texas Tech at Oklahoma St. About 2 minutes left, neither team has timeouts, and Texas Tech is driving, needing only a field goal to cap off a monster comeback. When I saw this score earlier, it was 48-21 at halftime, so I figured that (1) Ok St was doing what NC State did to them, and (2) B.J. Symons, while putting up good numbers, may (or may not) be able to lead a team. Texas Tech has made a huge comeback, though, coming within 2 points as I type this (51-49). Whoops. Ok St just intercepted the pass with about 70 seconds to go. Guess that's over. Other thoughts:
- I watched the Florida-Arkansas game. Some quick thoughts:
- Florida ran the ball well early, before they went entirely predictable with the run.
- Arkansas, according to the broadcasters at CBS, is winless when Matt Jones attempts more than 20 passes.
- Chris Leak looked good, and if he develops, would be a quarterback I'd hate to face in 2 or 3 years.
- As soon as Arkansas scored to make it 33-14, I thought of the UF-Miami game, where UF blew a huge lead. It didn't escape me that UF had 33 points in that game, too.
- A major difference of Spurrier and Zook (or Zaunbrecher): Spurrier wouldn't care if he ran it up. Zaunbrecher, when he got a big lead, started playing entirely too conservative offensively. Rushing the ball twice for 2 yards a pop and passing incomplete only burns about a minute.
- Late, when Arkansas was driving toward what would be their final touchdown, Florida only rushed 3 against Matt Jones. But a receiver (actually the tight end, I think) found a huge hole in the zone about 15 yards up, on the right side. If you're dropping 8 into coverage, everyone should be covered, one would think.
- That roughing the passer call at the end of the game was right. I'm not so sure that it was out of bounds, but the hit was high; the defender left his feet. But Leak made a huge mistake on that play, not throwing the ball away or (perhaps even better, considering that it would burn clock) just running with it, even if it does cost him a couple of yards.
- I had a thought before Arkansas scored 21 straight: if Florida can win at Arkansas by the same margin by which Georgia beats Vanderbilt, then it's liable to get ugly in Jacksonville in two weeks. I just had another thought: if Florida builds a big lead, will conservative playcalling allow the Dawgs to come back, like conservative playcalling did Miami and (almost) Arkansas?
- I caught the Notre Dame game in progress, early in the second quarter. I didn't watch too much of it, but enough to learn that neither team had been stopped to that point (they had combined for 5 drives, all resulting in touchdowns). I saw SC pick up their 4th td (putting them up by 2 tds), and heard Pete Carroll say at halftime that they needed to pick the defence up or they wouldn't win. Huh? They led by two touchdowns. But they apparently did pick the defence up, because Notre Dame didn't score again, and SC routed Notre Dame.
- I listened to the Wake Forest game. Carl Franks had something to build on: his team out-everythinged Maryland, leading in many statistical categories for that game, last week. Turns out that Wake also had something to play for: they got beat by Ga Tech last week, and didn't want it to happen again. Wake absolutely whalloped Duke at Duke's homecoming.
- If Va Tech wins on Wednesday at Morgantown, then the Miami-Tech game will be the last regular season contest of the year featuring undefeateds (it could happen in a bowl). I caught the last few minutes of the Temple-UM game. I saw some runner (I forget the guy's name) running through Temple's defence like a knife through hot butter. Okay. He didn't look that bad, but Tech's JV team could probably beat Temple.
- Texas A&M got shellacked at Nebraska. And I thought that was an impressive win for Va Tech when they beat them. It's looking less impressive. I made the comparison of that game to the '99 game against Clemson, when Tech was threatened in the 4th quarter, but pulled away late. Perhaps the more valid comparison would be to the '98 game, when Clemson finished 3-8 (and sent Tommy West packing).
- Syracuse fans, apparently, derisively chanted "A-C-C" at Boston College. Uh, okay. Apparently Syracuse didn't take fan input into account when they were in the original plan to leave for the ACC.
- FSU is up early on Virginia. I picked UVa to win the game, because I figured that UVa is good enough to win the game, the game is in Craphole (Charlottesville, Ryan, Charlottesville) and I figured that FSU would still be focused on last week's loss. Perhaps I forgot about the fact that UVa would still be focused on their loss against Clemson (or, as a friend of mine from that part of the world calls it, Climp-son). There's plenty of ballgame left to be played. Suffice it to say that there will be many Seminole War Chants done around Blacksburg, and even a few Tomahawk Chops. Mine will be among them.
- Navy picks up its 5th win. They need 2 more (I think) to be bowl eligible. They'll probably have to get 3 or 4 more to get to a bowl.
- Army lost. Sucks to be them. Air Force lost too, but on Thursday.
- I'm 3-1 on my picks (I won with Purdue, Mich St, and Ohio St; lost with Texas Tech). I'm losing the FSU game (but there's plenty of game left to be played), and Mizzou rolls into Oklahoma for OU's homecoming. Even without the World Series, it should be an interesting night.
Zuletzt: Here it is. Not that funny. It sucks to see the Yankees win. Th-u-u-u-u-u-h Yankees Win! It really sucks.
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