Gambling With Sanity: Week 9

Friends, Romans, Idiots . . . lend me your ears as we descend deeper into the bowels both of this NFL season and my own hideous psychosis. Last week, I was the perfect picture of pointless mediocrity. Also, I went 7-7. That brings my season total to 52-62-9, which is the mark of a failed man, a sad idiot past the point of relevance, licking the floor for crumbs dropped by his betters in the hopes that one of them maybe dropped some opioid dust or something. Anyway, our lines are courtesy of VegasInsider.com, as usual, and as usual they have ignored my pleas for sponsorship because I’m not a WHITE MALE!!! At least not on the inside, which is what matters. Also, Happy Halloween, may you slip poison and razorblades into the mouths and souls of children everywhere.

Oakland (+2.5) at San Francisco

lololol how sad do you have to be to be an underdog to the fucking 49ers right now? Such is life for the Raiders, but I suppose it’s an appropriate metaphor. After all, these two teams have always represented the duality of the Bay Area. The Raiders, the team of Oakland, have always been wild and always pushed and pulled by the whims of a degenerate slumlord owner. Poor and dirty, they worked their asses off and took what was owed to them back in the day, but then the NFL gentrified and now they don’t have any recourse and just have to take what’s given them, which is almost always shit. Their fans are bikers and tow truck drivers who will stab you in the parking lot.

The 49ers, on the other hand, represent the gentry, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. They were never worth shit until the NFL gentrified and cold-eyed sociopaths like Joe Montana took advantage of it. When I was a kid, they were the team, adopted by posers nationwide as they smiled with clean faces, their fans in their polo shirts sipping wine and wrinkling their upturned noses at the bikers and tow truck drivers.

It would all too easy to say that this is a battle for the soul of the Bay Area, and as such a deeper metaphor for the soul of America, but the reality is that battle is already over. Both teams stink, rotted and ruined by megalomaniacs. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you’re all fucked now. Of course, the poor get it first, which is why Raiders fans are being abandoned – again – so Mark Davis can slither into Las Vegas. I mean, the con isn’t even hidden anymore. Fuck this.

Pick: Oakland

Kansas City (-8.5) at Cleveland

The Browns finally fired Hue Jackson, 17 years too late, but still, it was a necessary step if this team doesn’t want to constantly crumble under the weight of incompetence. It was also kind of an acknowledgement by the Browns that “shit, we tried, I guess it’s on to next season again,” so . . . yeah, that ain’t good at least in terms of the present. The Browns need a plan, dudes and lady dudes. That means they’re gonna have to take a step back and figure this shit out long term. Unfortunately – and trust me, as a Lions fan, I know this – Browns fans don’t have time for that shit. It’s like telling a starving child that he needs to eat better and taking away the twinkie he found half-eaten on the ground. Shit, that twinkie isn’t good for him, but neither is his stomach bloating like an Ethiopian. Hue Jackson was a half-rotten twinkie and no one should be, uh, eating him, but now Browns fans don’t even have that. They just have a new plan, a new idea, a new season . . . which means this season is done and they just have to hope they don’t starve to death before someone can airlift in some goddamn bread.

Pick: Kansas City

Pittsburgh (+3) at Baltimore

The Steelers looked like they were falling apart – or at least like they didn’t have their shit together – at the beginning of the season. Le’Veon Bell was holding out, Antonio Brown was unhappy, and Ben Roethlisberger was still a rapist. The weird thing is that Bell is still out, who knows about Brown, and Roethlisberger is still a rapist, and yet, they seem to have put all that shit behind them and just gotten on with it. I think they just mentally moved on from Bell, they know who Roethlisberger is, and just got down to getting down with who they are and what they’ve got. And that means that they’re, well, they’re the Steelers. They always win this goddamn division. Meanwhile, the Ravens look like they’re ready to finally move on from Joe Flacco, which means that, like the Browns, they have to sort of mentally reset. Good for the long term, but probably bad for right now.

Pick: Pittsburgh

Tampa Bay (+6.5) at Carolina

Man, the fucking Buccaneers are wild this season. Jameis Winston was back and then he was gone by the end of last week’s game, throwing interceptions all over the goddamn place, replaced by Ryan Fitzpatrick, the dude who stepped in for Winston early in the season and ran wild until he threw interceptions all over the goddamn place and Winston came back. Got all that??? And now? Who the fuck knows? Both Winston or Fitzpatrick could throw for a billion yards and beat anyone or they could let their inner Failure Demons overwhelm them again and . . . shit, that sort of wild nonsense is no way to go through life in the NFL. That’s the sort of shit that leads a Heisman winner to steal crab legs and rape, or a fucking Harvard grad to devote his life to getting concussed. It makes no goddamn sense, and neither do the Buccaneers.

Pick: Carolina

N.Y. Jets (+3) at Miami

The Dolphins are probably the worst 4-4 team ever, but the Jets are the Jets, so . . . I don’t fucking know. Leave me alone.

Pick: Miami

Atlanta (+1.5) at Washington

The NFL East is such shit this year. The Redskins are in first place and by a decent margin already. That is fucking sad. This is not a good team. I mean, Adrian Peterson is carrying them right now and he’s 96 years old. He’s so old that he beats his children with tree branches and shit. “Cut me a switch, boy!” That’s something a 100 year old grandma from deep Mississippi would say, not an elite athlete in his prime carrying a fucking NFL team on his back. Peterson is gonna break down. It’s inevitable, and then the Eagles will pass the Redskins by and lol how weird does it look in 2018 to see the word “Redskins” in print? REDSKINS. It is an obscenity. Why not just call them the Savages or some shit? Yeah, I sort of non-sequitured my way through this, but it’s Halloween and I’m already half fucked-up, peeking through the blinds waiting for children to come to my door . . . so I can give them candy! What the fuck were you thinking? You’re sick!!!

Pick: Atlanta

Chicago (-10) at Buffalo

On the one hand, the Bears are “the Bears” and can’t be trusted to cover this. I’d rather trust Teddy K with delivering my mail every day. But the Bills have no quarterback. Or no receivers. Or no running game. Or . . . you get the point. The Bears could score only 13 points and still probably cover this.

Pick: Chicago

Houston (+1) at Denver

How long before Denver cannibalizes John Elway? There is no dumber idea than letting one of your former heroes take control of your team. 99% of the time, you’ll just end up hating the fucker. I’m forever thankful the Pistons never gave Isiah Thomas control of the team. As it is, I ended up hating Joe Dumars and that dude won a championship for the Pistons! The point is that it never ends well. It just ends in acrimony and fans bitching about the dude being incompetent. Even though John Elway has already won with Denver – both as a player and the dude in charge – he’s tanked the team and Broncos fans will forever think of that whenever they think of Elway. That is a tragedy. Sure, it is mostly because fans are unreasonable and ridiculous monsters, but that is life in the big city, Bubba. Still, I want – no I need – the Red Wings to hire Steve Yzerman. We’re all just idiots trying our best.

Pick: Houston

L.A. Chargers (+1.5) at Seattle

Fuck! The Seahawks were supposed to be bad now!!! What the fuck, man??? Sorry, still not over last week. Anyway, somehow, the Seahawks have survived the loss of damn near everyone who mattered – except, notably, Russell Wilson – and Pete Carroll continues to roll along in his Hall of Fame career, which is fucking crazy when you consider that way back in the day he was basically Hue Jackson. The world is so ridiculous and unknowable. That is why the only thing you can do is laugh and get high. Fuck it, there’s no point trying to control any of it.

Pick: Seattle

L.A. Rams (+1.5) at New Orleans

That’s right, the 8-0 Rams are underdogs this week. Meanwhile, the Saints have only lost once all season – to the wild Tampa Bay Fitzpatricks – so who fuckin’ knows? It’s weird because the Saints defense looked like dogshit early in the season and Drew Brees hasn’t thrown for a billion yards, and yet the Saints are 6-1. I mean, all this is relative I guess. Brees is still on pace to throw for over 4,000. It’s just not the 5,000 it usually takes for him to carry this team. He’s also got a 14-1 TD to INT ratio and a quarterback rating of 118.2 so . . . uh, fuck it, never mind my dipshittery. The defense is pretty bad, though, which isn’t exactly good news given the Rams are scoring 33 points a game this season. The difference is the Rams defense is legit. Holy shit, this might be the most actual analysis I’ve done all season.

Pick: Rams

Tennessee (+6.5) at Dallas

I forget sometimes that as powerful as Jerry Jones is (I’ve said he’s basically the owner of the entire NFL) he’s actually a natural-born fuckup. This is a dude whose entire success in the NFL was built on Jimmy Johnson. Jimmy was the Cowboys. He drafted everyone, made all the trades, coached them up . . . he was everything. Of course an egomaniacal fool like Jerry Jones had to fire him. Since then, Jerry has taken control of the Cowboys in every way, and they’ve fucking failed the entire time. He makes horrible, dumbass trades – the Amari Cooper trade was vintage Jerry – and just generally makes dipshit redneck decisions because he thinks he’s smarter than he is. He is America summed up, a braying jackass whose sheer hubris and shamelessness is enough to get him over on almost everyone else (sheer hubris and shamelessness are the two most necessary traits for success in the capitalist world) but he’s still a witless fuckup, and like most rich idiots, he has no idea how or why he’s really successful. He thinks he’s smart. He’s not. He’s just a fucking sociopathic monster. Still, that’s enough for him to lean on the poors, or teams like Tennessee. But when he meets someone who can fight back, he gets fucking fleeced and ends up looking exactly like what he really is: just another dumb fucking hick.

Pick: Dallas

Green Bay (+5.5) at New England

And the ground shook, and the trumpet of the herald cracked and was broketh as the Lord sayeth “What the fuck? This shit wasn’t supposed to happen!” and the Dark One rose from the bowels of hell, feet clad in Uggs, and sayeth “lol owned” as the heavens trembled and wept and a thousand years of darkness ruled the Earth.

Seriously, as much as I talk about Aaron Rodgers being the devil, Tom Brady is the real fucking thing. I don’t even mean this in a negative way. I mean it almost admiringly. I’m impressed. Aaron Rodgers is the devil from the Bible we all know and loathe, the dude who makes life hard on everyone, fucks up everything and still loses in the end because he’s actually a fuckup. He’s like Skeletor or some shit, an evil fiend doomed to be whipped up on by He-Man in the end. Yes, this is how I learned the Bible as a kid. But Brady . . . Brady is something else, something even deeper and darker, a fucking FORCE that transcends our petty knowledge of the universe or our little tales of good and evil, the ones easily understood by simple peasants in the cheap seats of the church, tales told to keep them in line while the rich folk fleeced them. Anyway, Brady is above all that. He is not a comic book villain. (And really, isn’t Satan just the archetype for all comic book villains?) As much as I like to joke about it, he transcends petty evil, living in a sort of amoral realm all his own that only cares about one thing: winning. In the end, when the trumpets blare and the heavens fall, he’ll still be there because he has to be. Because that is the essence of his being. He can’t lose. He wins therefore he is. Gisele is the devil, though. That bitch is evil. You can just tell. Still, I’d like to fuck her.

Pick: New England