NFL Week 9: Can't Call Him A "Sports Guy" If He Doesn't Know Sports

Man, another average week. That’s two in a row. I’m not happy that my records have fallen to this:
Overall: 71-36 (67%)
Vs. Spread: 63-40-4
It’s time to stop taking so many underdogs. Don’t use the following for the basis of any real or imaginary wagering.

SUNDAY
Kansas City Chiefs (4-3) vs. St. Louis Rams (4-3)(-3.5)
1:00 p.m. Edward Jones Dome
Two teams that are mirror images of one another. Neither offense can really be stopped on a good day, and neither defense can do any stopping. The Chiefs (my preseason pick to win the AFC West) get a huge statement win here, stay alive in the division for another few weeks, and then Trent Green gets back and leads them over Denver and San Diego. At least, that’s what I hope will happen.
Pick: Chiefs

Cincinnati Bengals (4-3) vs. Baltimore Ravens (5-2)(-3.5)
1:00 p.m. M&T Bank Stadium
I know I said I’d have to stop going with the underdogs, but these first two games were just too tempting to resist. My faith in a “resurgent” Ravens offense isn’t exactly going to allow me to pick them. Resurgent for the Ravens offense means any game when their quarterback doesn’t look 50-years-old or is named Kyle Boller. Let’s go with the real offense in this one.
Pick: Bengals

Houston Texans (2-5) vs. New York Giants (4-4)(-12)
1:00 p.m. Giants Stadium
C’mon, you know you were excited to see Sage Rosenfelds back behind center. Don’t tell me you weren’t.
Pick: Giants

Tennessee Titans (2-5) vs. Jacksonville Jaguars (4-3)(-9)
1:00 p.m. Alltell Stadium
Nothing against Byron Leftwich, but like I said last season, David Garrard is a better fit for the Jaguars offense than he is. He’s now 5-1 as a starter over the past two seasons. It helps to have a healthy Fred Taylor and talented rookie Maurice Jones-Drew running over a week defense, but Garrard is still the second best quarterback in this division.
Pick: Jaguars

Green Bay Packers (3-4) vs. Buffalo Bills (2-5)(-3)
1:00 p.m. Ralph Wilson Stadium
I’m warning you right now: when the Packers win this game to get to .500, get ready for a whole bunch of Brett Favre coverage in the media this next week. It’s not going to pretty, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Pick: Packers

New Orleans Saints (5-2)(-2) vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-5)
1:00 p.m. Raymond James Stadium
I’ll excuse the Saints poor home performance against Baltimore as a blip on the radar screen (and an example of what happens when one team has an extra week to prepare for a road contest). Nonetheless, this will be another tough and stern test for America’s Team as they roll against Tampa, who looked God awful against the Giants last week. The Giants were certainly beatable on Sunday, but the Bucs didn’t look all that interested in winning.
Pick: Saints

Atlanta Falcons (5-2)(-5) vs. Detroit Fans (1-6)
1:00 p.m. Ford Field
The Tigers lost and the Lions are terrible. And I’m supposed to feel bad for Detroit fans? Oh yeah, boo hoo, it’s terrible being a Detroit fan. The only teams the have to root for are the Tigers (who just won the A.L. pennant), the Pistons (only a couple of years removed from a championship), the Red Wings (ditto), Michigan football and Michigan State basketball. Yeah, must be tough to root for Detroit teams. By the way, my record picking the Falcons: 1-6. My record picking the rest of the league: 70-30.
Pick: Falcons

Miami Dolphins (1-6) vs. Chicago Bears (7-0)(-13)
1:00 p.m. Soldier Field
Two months ago, this game looked fantastic. Now there isn’t a Vegas line available that will stop me from taking the Bears.
Pick: Bears

Minnesota Vikings (5-3)(-5) vs. San Francisco 49ers (2-5)
4:05 p.m. Monster Park
I’d say the result last Monday night was more the result of Minnesota playing terribly than New England playing well. No worries for Minnesota, the get a freebie and a chance to get healthy in Candlestick.
Pick: Vikings

Cleveland Browns (2-5) vs. San Diego (5-2)(-13.5)
4:15 p.m. Qualcomm Stadium
This Shawne Merriman situation, which I said would be end up badly for everyone involved, has gone exactly as I called it. He appealed his suspension just so he could play against the Rams offense, then he takes off a month against four beatable teams. I stand by my statement that he should be suspended a full year. Starting today.
Pick: Chargers, Browns cover

Denver Broncos (5-2) vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (2-5)(-2.5)
4:15 p.m. Heinz Field
The Redskins season has been pretty embarrassing, but at least they didn’t lose to Oakland while only surrendering 98 yards. The Redskins only lost to Oakland last year when Norv Turner was their coach. Ugh.
Pick: Broncos

Indianapolis Colts (7-0) vs. New England Patriots (6-1)(-3)
8:15 p.m. Gillette Stadium
A couple of weeks ago I talked about the hatred of Peyton Manning by seemingly everyone outside of the greater Indianapolis area. The one thing I didn’t discuss, and probably because I didn’t have a good answer for it at the time, was the origin of such hatred towards Manning. I mean, there are plenty of hated athletes. But the hatred of Manning didn’t make sense. The guy seems genuinely likable, as opposed to a Barry Bonds or Terrell Owens. He’s extremely talented, unlike hated players Joey Porter or Rasheed Wallace. He doesn’t play in New York, like his brother or Derek Jeter. He’s not a consistent big winner and therefore doesn’t command others to have an inferiority complex, like say Jeter or Tom Brady. And most importantly, he’s not Alex Rodriguez.

It has gotten past the point of hatred to the point where Manning is simply disrespected. Why would anyone hate and disrespect a talented, once-in-a-generation player who doesn’t complain, bitch or taunt to the media and never showboats on the field? I’m sure plenty of fans hated Joe Montana (fans of Dallas, for example, because the 49ers were always beating them down), but I can guarantee you the fans that didn’t like Montana sure as hell respected and feared him. But I realized the other day where the hatred originated from…ESPN’s Sports Guy.

I’m sure you all know who this douche is. He writes a blog on ESPN that’s supposed to be about all sports and all teams, but usually degenerates to a column about the Red Sox’s pitching rotation (that’s right…time to bash ESPN again!). A while back his articles were pretty funny and clever, but now he’s become a characterization of himself. It got to the point about a year ago where I refused to read his column because he was so full of himself and all things Boston that it was disgusting. ESPN continues to go down this path of covering only teams within a 100-mile radius of Bristol while ignoring the rest of the country. It’s bad enough that I have to hear who Jeter’s dating and what breakfast David Ortiz ate from Boston fanatic and occasional reporter Peter Gammons every time SportsCenter comes on (Another reason I no longer watch SportsCenter…but that’s a topic for another time. And by the way, wasn’t it great this October not listening to Gammons because of his health concerns? We actually got to hear about *gasp* teams not named the Yankees or Red Sox). But the fact that ESPN keeps this no talent assclown employed and on their front page is just too much. He’s nothing more than a fan who got lucky and hit it big.

So my story begins the other day. It had been over a year since I visited his page, which is tough since I do go onto ESPN.com a good deal when I’m bored. Some of my friends still read his garbage and talk about it. I’ve known for awhile that he picks games every week, in a somewhat similar fashion to what I do. Except he’s funnier than I am and I’m more successful picking the games correctly than he is. One of my friends said this year his wife was picking games along side him. And get this…she was doing better than he was. Well, this was too much. I had to go see for myself if this was true. His wife, who the Sports Guy has said knows almost absolutely nothing about sports, has a better record than he does by a significant margin (although both are still waaaaayyyy behind the Predictor). This is hilarious, maybe the funniest thing to grace his page in some time. No, correction, his wife's columns (or at least the two that I read) were pretty funny as well. She picks better, she's funnier...why doesn't she have a job with ESPN instead of her husband

See, while he may be a decent writer, he knows very little about sports himself save for the Red Sox and Patriots. He can’t intelligently talk about any team that isn’t within shouting distance of the River Charles. This makes him a terrible sports writer, but perfect for ESPN. Let me say this for the umpteenth time…picking NFL games isn’t that hard. A fan with just basic knowledge of the game should be able to pick against the spread at a rate slightly above 50%. For all the bloggers and columnists and experts who all pretend to be NFL gurus and pick the games, the only one I could find that had a sub-.500 record was the Sports Guy. And he was well below .500 last season too. At this point, a coin flip has a better chance of picking a winner than this fool. This is a guy who wrote that the Rams were actually going to be the 2006 darkhorse team in the NFC and that Rajon Rondo, who underachieved at Kentucky for years, is going to be an NBA star. Is he on crack? What knowledgeable sports fan would actually have these ideas?

The problem with the Sports Guy is, despite his utter lack of sports understanding, he has a large readership. He probably gets in a day what I’ve gotten over the past year on this site (to be fair however, as I’ve stated before, I really put very little time into this and it’s nothing more than a place to put my thoughts down…a less-homosexual version of a diary). As you can imagine, since he’s in control of content, he can influence what his large fanbase thinks. Since he’s a Patriots fan, he’s obviously a big Brady fan. And that’s fair enough. I imagine I would be too. His problem is he refuses to acknowledge that there are other quarterbacks in the league, let alone that there are more talented ones. Since ESPN has heard of this Peyton Manning guy (I’m not sure how, since he never played in the New York-New England area) and decided to hype him a little, Sports Guy gets incensed. How dare they not talk about Tom Brady 24-7! How dare they not set up an alter on the SportsCenter stage to worship Bill Belichick! The Patriots only get 45 minutes of every hour in SportsCenter…this must be stopped! How can you not talk about New England for the full hour? So instead of blaming his company (which is probably a wise move on his part, seeing what happened to Jason Whitlock), he transfers his rage to Peyton Manning because some dare to compare Manning and Brady. And he puts that hatred in his column. And his readers listen to him, then go to work or the bar and spout off Sports Guy’s thoughts as their own. Eventually, this idea of Manning being a rube in Tom Brady’s universe becomes the popular view in the country.

If we are talking about pure talent, there is no question. Manning is the better quarterback. Proof? Well, it depends what you want. Statistically, Manning is better. Mentally, Manning is better (like I said two weeks ago, how lost do you think Brady would do running the Colts audible offense?). Visually, Manning is better. He’s always in control, always aware of his surroundings. He just looks better. Sure Brady will play some games like the one he did this past week in Minnesota. But Manning plays that way every week until January. Ah, there’s the rub. The only place Brady dominates Manning is in the January win column. But that doesn’t make him a better quarterback, that just means he played on a better team. Plus, there’s still plenty of time for Manning to win a few rings.

So you can believe Sports Guy, or you can believe me. Now, I hear you thinking, “why listen to this Predictor nobody.” And that’s a valid question. Here’s my answer. Using the Sports Guy’s point of view that the only thing that matters - and the only thing that determines a talented quarterback, or shortstop or blogger, while ignoring everything else - is wins and losses, then I’m the clear choice. I dominate him in wins and losses. He owns me statistically in terms of readers and money made and popularity. But I own him in the prediction win and loss column. I’m the Tom Brady to his Peyton Manning. OOOOHHHHH! Nicely done. If you want to read about how Bonzi Wells relates to the Shawshank Redemption and The Raconteurs, then by all means, go read that doofus. If you want to know about football and who is going to win, then keep it here and read on.
Pick: Colts

MONDAY
Oakland Raiders (2-5) vs. Seattle Seahawks (4-3)(-7)
8:30 p.m. Qwest Field
Speaking of The Raconteurs, I downloaded (legally) their CD the other day. While it’s not half as good as anything the White Stripes have done, it was still pretty impressive (Jack, please go back to Meg. She misses you. She needs a job.). While the song “Steady As She Goes” is getting the airtime, the cut “Hands” is the best song on the album. Do yourself a favor and listen to a rock song written the proper way.

Anyway, I’ll talk about this more later in the week, but why is everyone drooling over Tony Romo when Seneca Wallace had a better week? It wouldn’t have something to do with one playing in Seattle and the other playing for the media’s favorite team, would it?
Pick: Seahawks

Bye Week: Arizona, Carolina, New York Jets, Philadelphia

The Redskins try to salvage their pride and have a chance to do so against the brand spanking new Cowboys quarterback. We’ll talk about that and the likelihood the Skins will have to play without half of their lineup as the injury bug continues to bite.