Dispatches: Friday Night Lights

Here’s the scenario: It’s fourth-and-inches in overtime, you have over two minutes left in the game, you’re down by three and you have a quarterback with a $250 million contract. What are your options? You could run a quarterback sneak and get a first down; you could kick a field goal and rely on your stingy defense and the horrible offense you’re facing to grind out a tie; or you could make the worst possible decision and you could throw a pass to try and end it right there. That’s how the end of the Thursday night game shaped up when Russell Wilson flung an incompletion at the end zone, and my oh my was it pathetic. A riveting game in which each team turned it over several times and neither scored a touchdown. Maybe Seattle was right to move on from Wilson, as Geno Smith has been otherworldly (read more on that below).

For those of you who read our picks, I couldn’t have cared less because I was on the under the whole way. I bet the game when the total was still 43.5 and urged everyone else to hop on even after it came down to 42. Did I start to get incredibly anxious when every weirdo at the bar started talking about how the under was complete lock? Of course I did, but I let it ride. When the smoke cleared after three hours, both teams managed to combine for 15 points. Easy money.

Let’s not talk about old stuff though. It’s an absolutely massive weekend for sports: baseball playoffs, college football, NFL, and NASCAR. Get those accounts loaded up and let’s get locked in.

Friday Night Delight

My weekly six-pack of plays can be found here, but I have a few Friday night specials that I’ll also be on. I will be the first to admit that my college plays have been trash, and if you value money you should probably just move on from looking to us for any insight. If you’re like me, however, and use money to suspend existential dread and stave off depression then maybe keep reading because Friday is chock full of games and it would be a tremendous waste to let these opportunities go to waste. The six-pack explains why I like taking over 57.5 points in the Houston/Memphis game, so I won’t belabor it here. The other two games I like are what makes life exciting. Three games to bet on is great stuff (yeah, I’m ignoring San Jose St./UNLV, even I have limits).

Take Nebraska -3. Yeah, I know you’re thinking, that’s the team that lost to Georgia Southern, and you’re correct. Do not be fooled by the mediocre record of Rutgers at 3-2. They are not a good team. The Scarlet Knights offense is complete trash and they are almost completely unable to move the ball through the air. Nebraska doesn’t exactly have a great defense, but they should be able to key in on this terrible offense. Nebraska will score through the air and get stops. That’s the formula.

Play the over 44.5 in the Colorado State/Nevada game that I will be hate-watching later. As someone who hold multiple degrees from the University of Nevada, this game will be tough for me. It may also be tough on m liver as I self-medicate. This means it will be tough on my sleep schedule because we record the weekly radio show at 6 a.m. PST. Jay Norvell rebuilt the Nevada program and raised us back to respectable. Then he took a job at Colorado State, leaving the program in absolute shambles. Am I upset by this? Tremendously. Does it have a lot to do with the boosters and administration at UNR being just terrible? Of course. Anyways, Nevada struggles to stop just about everyone and has tended to play in shootouts against bad teams, which Colorado State most certainly is. This is a low total, and seeing some scoring will be the only thing that makes me feel better about watching this. I write this while manically consuming a Gatorade. It is never too early to start hydrating. Tonight is a blackout game for the Wolf Pack. I may not be wearing black, but you get the gist.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐀 𝐃𝐀𝐘.

See you all tomorrow at Mackay ⚫

🎟️ https://t.co/rmeG3OslWu#BattleBorn | #PackMentality pic.twitter.com/hYgqL5zHAd

— Nevada Football (@NevadaFootball) October 7, 2022

The Geno-aissance

If you ever think to yourself, football is stupid and I always lose when I bet it, players like Geno Smith are the reason why. This year feels extra ridiculous in terms of parity in the league with a bunch of teams that are good-not-great. Then there’s Geno Smith who happens to be the best quarterback in the league per PFF. If you aren’t a Geno Smith true believer, maybe you’d prefer looking at different analytics, like Football Outsiders, where he ranks just behind Mahomes and Herbert as the third best quarterback in the National Football League. The point of this is, the NFL is extremely fluid at times, and it’s important to be able to shed some of our previous assumptions about teams now that we’re a quarter of the way into the season. Seattle is not as terrible as we thought they would be, and whatever Geno Smith is doing up there is elite. Don’t be shocked if they make a sneaky push towards the playoffs.

Also, don’t come at me about Trevor Lawrence’s analytics on those sites. He’s still a work-in-progress. I am absolutely not giving up on my guy. If Geno can do it, T-Law can do it.

#GenoSmith has been outplaying #RussellWilson this season so far 😳 pic.twitter.com/kQvz47Nh0J

— Floyd (@Floyd914) October 3, 2022

#NascarNate

Not an awesome week for longshots as the guys head to the Bank of America 400 to do battle on the “roval” in Charlotte. This is a really weird track where part of it is a standard oval featuring the left turns we’ve come to love and expect in NASCAR racing. Now, the other part of this track is a road course constructed in the infield, which means we get multiple turns in both directions more like you’d see in Formula 1 racing. There are clear guys who tend to do well on the road courses scattered around on the NASCAR schedule, and the betting markets and sportsbooks all know who they are. Guys like Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick are awesome on road courses and their odds are low for exactly that reason. They have the best shot at taking this thing down. Probably the longest I would go is on our absolute boy, Chris Buescher, who has already cashed us a 100/1 ticket. He’s not that long in this race because he tends to run well on road courses, but he’s worth a look in the 25/1 range.

The Charlotte ROVAL begs to eliminate four more drivers.

The #NASCARPlayoffs continue Sunday on @NBC. https://t.co/LnGFFbt9VX

— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) October 4, 2022

October Baseball

This is the section where I should be talking about how exciting the playoffs are and what a stud Aaron Judge is for breaking the homerun record or whatever. The truth is, it’s still football season. The only sport I’ll divert any attention to for a while is going to be NASCAR. By “divert attention,” I mean, “Sit in a sportsbar and loudly start talking about how not one single TV is playing NASCAR, while frantically trying to find the race on the Peacock app which inexplicably never seems to carry the race.”

Most of your beloved staff writers on this godforsaken site are Astros fans anyways, so I’ll spare you all of my tremendously lukewarm takes for a week where I’m not thinking about all of the football games scheduled on a Friday. Donny Diamond, our lead baseball analyst, tells me he has spent the time in between the end of the regular season and start of the playoffs deleting beers and uploading copious amounts of weed into his system to get his mind right for the playoffs. Stay tuned to this site for his frenetic breakdown of the Wild Card games.