Sunday's Divisional Round Picks

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: which will we see from Flacco?

Woohoo! 6-0! To hell with modesty. I’ve never picked the first 6 games of the playoffs correctly before, & my perfection may well end today, so I’m going to savor this for a moment. Alright, enough of that. Besides I’m a more pedestrian 4-2 against the spread so hopefully any advice you’ve taken from my picks has been used to make bets with your friends rather than your bookie (Because I assume if you’re reading this you’re an addictive gambler, as all good football fans are). Anyway today I put my surprising streak of near omnipotence to the test, & oh what a test it will be.

NFL Wild Card Picks

Can Calvin Johnson & the Lions dive past the Saints?

The NFL playoffs start today, which of course, means it’s time for my wild card round picks. Now before I get to them I’m going to offer a bit of honesty. I love to talk about how I have correctly predicted 3 of the last 4 Super Bowl teams in the pre-season & nailed the Packers over Steelers-coming within 6 points of the actual score & saying: “Rodgers asserts himself as a truly elite quarterback & Green Bay wins the Super Bowl in Brett Favre’s last season (I think).” However what I don’t like to mention is how terrible I am at predicting playoff games. Despite going a solid 6-5 last year my combined record over the last 3 years is an embarrassing 13-20. In fact last January was the first time I managed to avoid an 0-4 weekend. Hopefully this year will be different but, just in case, I’d like to apologize now for picking your team.

I would also like to add, before getting to my picks, that Sunday will mark the anniversary of the shooting that robbed 6 people of their lives, including 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green, and injured Representative Gabriel Giffords and 12 others. While I stand by my original position that one of the best ways to honor the victims of that day is to cherish every moment of our lives, and if your like me that means watching football this weekend, I think it would benefit us all if we took at least some time out of our weekend to think about and pray for the victims, the shooter, and their families, as well as thank God that that day was not worse and for the blessings that are our lives and the people we love . And I think we should all strive to “[re]commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of [Christina’s] gentle, happy spirit.”

10 Terrible Predictions & the AFC Playoff Picture

Tim Tebow's blowing up my 5-11 Broncos prediction.

Thanks to my inability to manage my time I’ve been on hiatus from the blog for about 2 months, & haven’t posted anything about sports since September 24, well it’s time to rectify that. In order to atone myself for the many horrible predictions I made in my NFL Preview I’m going to now correctly* predict how the last 4 weeks will unfold and who will make the playoffs. First though, for a good laugh, let’s take a look back at some of my horrible predictions.

*Yea, I don’t really believe that either but it’s possible. I got the Super Bowl right last season!!! Remember? You don’t? Well it happened, & I’m going to cling to that till the day I die.

My 10 worst predictions in descending order:

10.  Prediction: Bears 6-10

        Reality: They’re 7-5 & with the injuries to Cutler & Forte they’re unlikely to finish strong, but before that this was the third or fourth best team in the NFC & the biggest threat to the Packers undefeated season. This team was much better than I expected.