Introduction

Week 4 went very horribly wrong against the spread. I was a respectable 7 and 6 again to go 7 games over .500 straight up, but could not pick a spread to save my life. As this is an experiment, I have a couple of hypotheses. First, maybe the NFL is weird with only 4 preseason games and things don’t start to settle down until Week 5 or 6. Two, and possibly more likely, is that I’m not a sharp and I don’t have the time or the inclination to be one.

I’m still going to keep track of picks against the spread to see if things improve over the next few weeks. If they don’t, then my 10 or whatever dollars every week that I plan to bet starting next year will just go to money line bets. I don’t mind throwing money away, but I’d rather have a chance every now and then to win my money back.

A Note About Thursday Night Football

Have I said how much I hate Thursday night football? Not this week in this article, so here goes. Craig texted me at about 8 pm on Thursday with the news that Sony Michel was starting on our fantasy team and he hoped I was okay with that. I didn’t get the text until it was too late to do anything about it, but told him what my plans would have been. Cut to us texting back and forth with updates for every single yard he gained until he got the garbage time TD. All of fantasy is garbage time and I love to hate it. Oh, I picked the Pats. Let’s just say that I pick the home team every week on Thursday so I don’t have to feel bad about missing that deadline.

Week 5 Picks

Another week in just under the deadline, so just the picks, Ma’am.

Baltimore over Cleveland

Kansas City continues to roll against Jacksonville

Tennessee rolls Division 3 Buffalo

Carolina beats the hapless Giants

Denver over the weirdly favored Jets

Vegas has no idea what to do with the Falcons and Steelers. Neither do I, but I’m out on Pittsburgh. Falcons roll.

Green Bay gets another key divisional victory over the Lions

Cincinnati limps into a tie with Baltimore in the division lead after destroying the once heralded Dolphins.

Chargers return Gruden and the Raiders to their losing ways

Arizona hasn’t had their “Hey, we’re an NFL team, too” game like the Bills did against the Vikes, right? Maybe this is it and they beat the 49ers

Minnesota reminds Iggles fans what it used to be like

Jared Goff and the Rams destroy Seattle’s depleted secondary

Houston over the Crybabies of Dallas

Finally New Orleans rolls the Washington Racists

The Verdict

Week 5 isn’t as bad as week 4 was, but it’s a busy weekend for our family. We already spent the better part of yesterday at a local festival and we are scheduled to do so again today. Not that I’m the football fan that I used to be, but there’s nothing here that would keep me home. Heck, after Michel got 20 points the other day, I’m not even going to watch my fantasy team this week.