Week 2

5-3-1

Anyone still laughing at my Cincy pick now?

Anyone still laughing at my Jets pick now?

Cut Flowers

First off…

What is this, kindergarten? No tripping people! It’s not nice.

After a game like the Giants’ tepid performance in their opening week home loss to the Jaguars, it’s easy to give a “stock up, stock down” take (Eli Apple was fantastic against receivers you couldn’t name 10 minutes after the game was over, Ereck Flowers may not even make a team of nightclub bouncers at this point, etc.) and hope for the best next week. It’s a winnable game after all.

Well fuck… that…

Let’s take a step back and look at the year of decision-making that led up to this alleged comeback year for New York, as they have bucked just about every league trend. They’re up against the cap with a middling team in a tough conference, drafting RBs high, trading away offensive line depth when no one has offensive line depth and will be negotiating an 8 figure per year deal with a box safety. These are organizational decisions that cannot be blamed one player, or in my eyes even a coach. The Ereck Flowers problem was one your organization inherited as a result of tolerating bad teams and bad drafting over a period of years, and the new decision-makers who have this problem in their lap are OBLIGATED, if they wish to distinguish themselves from bad predecessors, to develop multiple contingency plans for his failure to develop.

I understand keeping him on the roster, as it makes some football sense. Drafting a left tackle prospect is safe because you can always try him at another position if he fails. He has a controllable, economical contract that makes him worth sticking with. None of these pros are things the organization can take credit for and stand behind, as they are built into the socialized system of talent procurement this league put them in. Bill Walsh, in his posthumous book “The Score Takes Care of Itself” would emphasize moments where he wasn’t prepared, and developed multiple contingency plans in advance of games that the great coaches still carry on to this day.

A modern example of this is Super Bowl 51, where the Patriots had developed multiple 2 point conversion plays in preparation for the game. They were going against a historically prolific offense, and if they were down multiple scores at some point late in the game (say, I don’t know 25 points in the third quarter) that they would have the plays ready to go to keep the emotions of such a comeback from interfering with decision making in the moment. As magical as it seemed on TV, Belichick was prepared to be down big in the game, and to say that Patriot team was the only one prepared enough and valiant enough to make that comeback and win the game in OT is an understatement.

But this wasn’t a moment, rather this was NINE FUCKING MONTHS of Ereck Flowers staring you in the face with zero evidence he would even pan out into an NFL-caliber player, much less a long-term answer at right tackle. Not only did I have to endure a summer of Gettelman and Shurmur commenting on how solid he appeared in practice and camp, but for Gettelman to offer NO BACKUP PLAN for Flowers’ continued shitting of the bed, especially when he hired Drew Rosenhaus with intent on being released or traded, is such a fundamental lack of preparation and organizational failure in evaluating your own talent that it almost isn’t even worth saying. Hey Dave! Wanna swing your dick at Ereck for not showing up to minicamp? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT WITH A ROSTER MOVE. And if you’re too sick to do the job, take your dick out of that, too, and pass it to someone healthy enough to fully prepare the team. What an absolute  Dolanesque mess.

Week 2 Picks

Chargers (-7.5) at Bills – This is free money as far as I’m concerned. I know road favorites with double-digit spreads are impossible to reasonably draw up in Week 2, but the Rills are trotting out an unprepared rookie against a real pass rush and the spread is only a touchdown? Tee-hee.

Colts (+5.5) at Washington – Another road team? Andrew Luck didn’t look bad at all once he got his warmups in through the first quarter, and was a few completions away from a newsworthy comeback win at home in his return to form. I would take the Colts in every situation like this in 2018 as an indictment of the other team. Washington beat up on arguably the worst team in the NFL indoors last week and that has inflated this line past the 3-3.5 it should be. Take the points.

Patriots (PK) at Jaguars – ANOTHER road team? People want the Jaguars to topple the Patriots, but it’s just not going to happen. Getting this as a basic money line game is almost a gift. If Gronkowski is healthy, take the Pats offense over a good defense anytime.

Broncos (-6.5) vs. Raiders – A precursor to the firesale that is about to happen in Oakland. The short-sighted view of the Gruden era is that he is an out-of-touch disaster waiting to happen. The long-term, and true view of the Jon Gruden era is that Oakland bought a house cleaning when they gave him this contract, and he will have every opportunity to build and shape this team in his image from scratch. That means he’s going to piss off a ton of people early and have full liberty to turn the roster over. If I were a rebuilding GM, I would be a vulture watching these games every week. With cracks already showing in the infrastructure, a short week, and Denver’s altitude against a Bronco team that’s playing it’s 2nd consecutive home game in that altitude to start the year, Oakland has no chance.

Chiefs (+6) at Steelers – ANOTHER road team? These two teams are NOT, N-O-T, 6 points apart, and even if they were Tomlin would find a way to keep them in it. I need to see this Steeler team do more than survive a six-turnover joyless scrum against the Browns before I favor them this heavily without LeVeon Bell. Take the points, take Andy Reid building an early lead, and hope their defense isn’t asked to do too much.