For the first week of the playoffs this season, three out of the four matchups are rematches of the week before. Normally, you see analysis of a rematch from way back in Week 4 (NE 27- Bal 21), which is so long ago that it really is useless. I mean Wes Welker is out and...ok, the teams are basically the same, so maybe it is useful. Since Yahoo's Pick'Em ended, I'm going to use the Sports Guy for the lines, mostly because I'm too lazy/busy to look them up for myself. Now the Bengals are favored by 2.5 over the Jets, to whom their second string lost 37-0 only six days prior. The Eagles are four point underdogs to the Cowboys after both teams played their starters last Sunday and the Cowboys (what's a good verb here? demolished? creamed? wiped the floor with? annihilated?) displayed their superiority in a 24-0 rout. The Wes Welker-less Patriots (all writers discussing the NFL this week are obligated to mention that the Patriots are playing without the league leader in receptions...seriously, Roger Goodell sent out a memo...you didn't get it? Let me know and I'll forward it to you.) have the standard 3 point home field advantage over the Ravens. I think this means that Vegas would have LOVED to see Welker go down in Week 16 so that they could see the Patriots operate without Welker at least once. Because his absence from the offense just confuses them. And finally Green Bay is currently a PICK with Arizona, which is Vegas saying the Cardinals are at home, but the Packers won 33-7 last week.
Hahaha - this line was extremely well done:
ReplyDelete"and the Cowboys (what's a good verb here? demolished? creamed? wiped the floor with? annihilated?) displayed their superiority in a 24-0 rout"
Are you going to actually give your picks? In these games? Would you actually gamble on any of them? I don't feel confident enough
Also how dare you override my SORO post with your NFL picks post, you scoundrel
Oops? Sorry? I was unaware that you would bring something else up when it was pretty obvious that we would be discussing the NFL playoffs at some time today? Yeah, I'll go with that last one.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty torn about all the games. I really don't see an "opportunity" or a line I like. (I put opportunity in quotes, because even though I did really well picking all the games this year, when I tried to narrow it down to 4-5 games I was confident about, I totally sucked...so in that vein, I am simply going to pick all the games this week [duh]).
ReplyDeleteI am going to take Cincinnati over the Jets because I think Carson Palmer is a better QB than Mark Sanchez...and I can't believe I didn't realize until typing that sentence that this game features two U$C qb's...i hate this game. It will be boring, at a bad time, and have no consequences on later rounds. I feel like this is the Browns-Chiefs of the playoffs.
If the Jets-Bengals is boring and irrelevant, then the Cards-Packers game is its antithesis. Both of those teams are hot sleeper teams that people like to go far, so the winner could be the #1 darkhorse from the NFC now that the Eagles, Saints, and Vikings appear so shaky.
ReplyDeleteI feel like we'll know within 2 quarters of the Pats game whether they are for real or not after Welker. I personally am betting they are for real without Welker and for this short series of playoff games they will seem as good if not better, because it will make them rally into Sports Guy's vaunted "eff you mode". That's my theory.
Dood - what's with the long-ass paragraph. What's your literary style here? Why didn't the English-nazi call you out on this? My head hurts.
ReplyDeleteThe Pack opened as 3-point dogs, which I jumped on quickly (apparently along with the rest of the world). I also took the Bengals -3 early.
I'd like to think it's more a stream of consciousness style, with a little more punctuation. (I'm especially big into parentheses.)
ReplyDeleteI'm taking the Bengals in the "I-hope-the-stadium-blows-up-and-kills-both-teams" Bowl, but I'm not exactly mean or a terrorist, so I'll call it the "I-hope-God-sends-down-a-plague-and-every-player-tears-their-ACL" Bowl.
I'll take the Ravens over the Patriots because I want to disagree with Simmons and Peter King on two games and agree with each of them on two games. That and I think Welker is too important because Baltimore is going to double team Randy Moss on every play.
Then I'll go with the Cowboys (-4) over the Eagles because I think last week was closer to both teams at full strength than Eagles fans and coaches want people to realize.
And finally I'll take the Packers over the Cardinals because I like balance and Green Bay can run, pass and defend both pretty well. That and it completes my "picking two road teams and two home teams, agreeing with half of Simmons and half of King, and my attempt to ignore all the Favre vs. the Packers stories" preference.
Scott, are several smaller paragraphs better for you? I could also break each paragraph into a separate comment. I mean, do you really expect me to be brief?
yeah thats not stream of consciousness this would be more like that since no punctuation can be found in SOC thoughts if they showed up youd have problems defining your writing style as SOC unless of course you wanted to create a new style that somehow introduced punctuation into a long paragraph with no breaks but periods and commas and parenthesis if thats your plan go for it by the way did you know its really hard to type without using any punctuation whatsoever hard enough that i feel sorry for those trying to read whatever this will end up looking like after i hit post comment button below i think im done now
ReplyDeleteSee, with that paragraph there, even if I was trying to exclude the periods and stuff, I would still put "now" in all caps...like, I'm going to hit the Post Comment button...NOW!
ReplyDeleteSo maybe, instead of being Stream of Consciousness (SOC) my writing style would simply be "Long Winded"?
ReplyDeleteMy face just melted from reading you guys' back-and-forth about writing styles
ReplyDeleteScott are you sad that I didn't criticize Aaron's random long winded paragraph, but instead praised it? It's okay, it was kind of funny.
Coincidentally I was JUST having a conversation this morning with C-Mac about how Aaron and I were analyzing our poor writing style at FIWK (C-Mac back me up on this), and comparing it to good writers like Penelope Trunk and Nicole Antoinette and saying how we should improve.
And then Aaron went and wrote The Long-Winded Paragraph.
You win some you lose some I guess. Scott I was able to easily follow your SOC post, although at one point theres an obvious break in the stream where the thoughts didn't keep flowing ("if thats the plan then go for it by the way did you know"). Still, a strong effort.
Are we all getting loopy cause it's Friday afternoon?
Nope - that's really how my SOC went...I was ranting against Aaron, and in the process, my mind noted how incredibly hard it is to write a sentence, let along a string of sentences, with no punctuation at all...hence the "sudden shift" in stream. Apostrophes used for contractions are by far the hardest to avoid, especially in the contraction "I'm".
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read Cormac McCarthy? Author of No Country for Old Men, the Road, etc? Dude writes with almost no apostrophes and minimal punctuation
ReplyDelete1) I think we all do better in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it seems that we're peaking at exactly the same time we are turning our computers off to leave our office and head home for the day. 2) I think we do better on Fridays for the same psychological reason (mentally checking out, spending mental energy on issues not related to work, etc.)
ReplyDeleteWow that Cards-Pack game was crazy
ReplyDeleteSo what did we learn from this weekend? That the Eagles were overrated, the Cards are still explosive, the Ravens can run, and the Bengals sucked?
That the power of FIWK determines which game will be interesting. I put up a Cards-Pack photo and it goes to overtime.
ReplyDeleteNow, do I purposely avoid a Chargers photo because I'd prefer the Chargers run away with it?
YOU LEAVE THE CHARGERS ALONE!!
ReplyDeleteMy day got off to a horrible start - as I was getting out of the car to go into the office, Cousin Sal on Simmons' podcast was talking about our loss to the Jets a few years back when Kaeding missed a late FG. WHY?!? WHYYYYYYY????