A weak Week Seven

I’m on a short week, since I am going out of town on Friday, and because of an outrageous amount of homework, I was unable to post earlier. So I will just combine two columns into one. So here are my week seven NFL picks, along with some random thoughts.

Week Seven

Is it just me, or is the NFL purposely matching up horrible teams to make if difficult for people like me to make picks. My strategy for the survival pool is usually find the worst team playing on the road and pick against them. (Go back and look at my history of survival picks, every single one of my picks were home teams.) But this week the NFL offers us pathetic matchups like Green Bay at Miami, Detroit at the Jets and worst of all, Arizona at Oakland. Are there any crap teams to pick against? And the league can’t expect people to tune in to these games. I’d rather watch YouTube videos of the Miami-FIU fight or the Dennis Green press conference from last Monday night.

Anyways, here are the picks. My record from last week was a horrible 6-7, but we all have a bad weekend now and then (Just ask Rex Grossman). For the season I’m 55-32.

My picks in bold

San Diego at Kansas City

Green Bay at Miami

Detroit at New York Jets

Pittsburgh at Atlanta

Philadelphia at Tampa Bay

New England at Buffalo

Jacksonville at Houston

Carolina at Cincinnati

Denver at Cleveland

Arizona at Oakland

Minnesota at Seattle

Washington at Indianapolis

New York Giants at Dallas

Since I took eight of 13 road teams, it will be difficult for me to make a survival pick. So I will go with the New England Patriots to go in to the snow and defeat the Buffalo Bills.

Random Thoughts

1-Monday night’s Bears-Cardinals game was one of the craziest, most absurd and heart-pounding football games I have ever seen. At times, it looked like the score would end up being 40-0...Cardinals. But then at other points in the game, you wouldn’t think Arizona could score a touchdown if they were facing a high school team. The Bears showed heart and determination, as well as the value of an amazing defense. Brian Urlacher was a mad man out there, making play after play until the Bears finally got the lead. And thank goodness former Illinois kicker Neil Rackers is the second coming of Mike Vander-jag, a kicker who can nail 57 yarder’s in 31-7 games but couldn’t make one from 35 with the game on the line if his life depended on it.

2-Yes, the win put the Bears at 6-0 heading in to this Sunday’s bye. But this team is far from perfect. Rex Grossman showed on Monday night he still has a long way from being a consistent threat in the pocket, and Thomas Jones must have decided not to make the trip to the desert. The O-Line was shaky at best, allowing multiple sacks, a couple of fumbles and was called for at least three penalties. And now with Mike Brown out for the year,(A HUGE loss) rookie Danieal Manning and second year man Chris Harris are going to have to step up at safety and be the backbone of the Cover-2.

3-Moving over to college football, it is looking more and more that the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 18 will take home the Big 10 title as well as a spot in the National Title game. Currently I’ve seen one full game from each team, (OSU @ Texas and Mich. @ Penn St.) and I have to say that I thought the Buckeyes were more impressive. There offense is damn near unstoppable with quarterback Troy Smith, tailback Antonio Pittman and receivers Ted Ginn and Anthony Gonzalez. I understand UM has a great D, but it will be tough to beat Jim Tressel’s squad in Columbus.

4-The team that the winner of that game is going to play in the title game will be difficult to figure out. Currently USC is in that position, but I expect them to lose to Cal, Oregon or Notre Dame, three teams all with one loss each. Let’s say Cal defeats the Trojans. Then how do you figure out the rankings of all the one-loss teams? You would put Cal in front of USC, but Tennessee beat the Bears, so they go on top of Cal. Florida beat the Vols, so move the Gators to the top of the list. But UF’s one loss was to Auburn, which elevates the Tigers. In front of them would then be Arkansas, the team that handed Auburn their only defeat. But who did Arkansas lose to? Yep, that would be USC. Like I said, it’s going to be tough to sort though this mess.

5-Turning to baseball, you may have heard that the Cubs hired a new manager. Sweet Lou Pinella is the new man in charge, and to be honest, I’m not too excited over this move. I think Pinella is a perfectly fine manager, a guy who can turn a good team in to a great one. The problem is, the Cubs are not a good team. There not even an average team. If Lou happened to see any of the North Siders last year, he would know that just changing skippers is not going to be much help. Sure, the Tribune Co. has promised to increase payroll, but if they do that by signing more Jacque Jones’ and Wade Miller’s, it won’t make much of a difference. Sign a couple of big hitters, about three starting pitchers, and hope to re-sign Juan Pierre. Then the man in charge might start to make a difference.

6-The stupid thing about the Pinella signing was the announcement that pitching coach Larry Rothschild was staying on board. How could this possibly be? Rothschild was responsible for more injuries then Mike Tyson and Lawrence Taylor put together. He ruined young guy, experienced veterans, whomever he could get his hands on. With this guy next to the Cubs manager for another year, look forward to more Double-A pitchers taking the Wrigley Field bump while the MLB starter has his arm in an ice bucket.

7-I had to get this off my chest before I’m done. Last week, high school senior Eric Gordon of Indianapolis announced that he would be attending Indiana University next fall. No big deal, except for two little bits of info. One is that Gordon is the best shooting guard in the class of 2007 and two is, he had already announced that he would be attending to the University of Illinois. Now I am a big time Illini fan, so I am obviously upset, but even if I didn’t have a rooting interest in the matter, I still find this to be a horrible aspect regarding all of college athletics. How is it that a player who already declared to a school was still being recruited by a rival program? How is it fair to the first school, in this case U of I, (Not to be mistaken with IU, the school Gordon will attend) who spent all this time recruiting the player, to suddenly have to fill a spot with only a limited number of prospects left? If Gordon had announced last February that he was opening his recruitment back up, that would be OK, because then Bruce Webber and his staff would have all summer to look for a replacement. But now with almost everyone worth signing already signed, the Illini are stuck. I already disliked the Hoosiers before this, now I hate them on a level previously reserved for Florida State Univ., the St. Louis Cardinals, and New Trier High School. Thanks Eric.