Football Picks Against the Spread

In Week 5, our survivor pool pick was the New York Giants over the Cleveland Browns. Gotta love pick against the Cleveland Browns in the survivor pool. We picked against them three times in the first five weeks of the NFL season and it hasn’t missed.

Here’s a summary of the survivor pool picks:

Week 1 – Houston Texans over Miami Dolphins
Week 2 – Cincinnati Bengals over Cleveland Browns
Week 3 – Chicago Bears over St. Louis Rams
Week 4 – Baltimore Ravens over Cleveland Browns
Week 5 – New York Giants over Cleveland Browns

In week 5, the easy pick here is Atlanta Falcons at home over the Oakland Raiders. It should be an easy win at home for the 5-0 Falcons since the Raiders have a lot of concerns in their secondary. Matt Ryan should go off and put up monster numbers. The Raiders offense has been lackluster and should be outmatched by the Falcons defense. The only concern here is that the Raiders are coming off their bye week. However, that just won’t be enough for them to top the Falcons on the road.

Week 6 Survivor Pool Pick: Atlanta Falcons over Oakland Raiders…

In week 5, I came out even. I split my big plays with the Bears and Texans. I split my teasers with Bears/Texans and Vikings/Packers. At first glance, week 6 looks like a tough week. Almost every spread is the 3.5-point variety where I see merit in both sides of the coin. I’m looking forward to Brandon’s college picks. He’s gone 6-2 ATS in the last two weeks. Let’s get after it fellas. Be sure to vote in the poll below.

BALTIMORE RAVENS (-3.5) over Dallas Cowboys — Confidence: 8/10 — The Ravens are typically dominant at home. Buy a half-point if you can and go with the Ravens here. Only concern is that Dallas is coming off the bye week after getting rocked by the Bears and you may see a rebound game from them. However, Dallas is still overrated in my opinion. Ravens should be the play at home. Don’t let the Ravens underperformance last week mess with your head too much. The Ravens can play poorly on the road. They’re a completely different animal at home.

Pittsburgh Steelers (-5.5) over TENNESSEE TITANS — Confidence: 7/10 — The Titans are in shambles. They’ve gotten killed by the Texans and Vikings in the last two weeks, but both games were on the road. They now return home where they beat the Lions 44-41. I don’t think they have enough in them to beat the Steelers. Chris Johnson has got no heart — 2.9 YPC and 0 TD! Pathetic. The Titans should yank that contract from him. I’m going to play the Steelers moneyline so the points aren’t a factor. The Titans are desperate for a win, but I don’t see them beating the Steelers. Mendenhall is back …

Post-Game Thoughts: The forum trolls can bask in glory as the Jets got the cover. The kicker was a 100-yard kickoff return for them in the 3rd quarter that lifted the Jets into the money. I would rather take the Texans and say they should have covered instead of speculating on the Jets solely as a situational play when there’s the prospect of them getting hammered by the Texans.  Overall, a solid week for me thanks to the Bears (-5). I had the Texans in a teaser with the Bears just in case the scenario played itself out that the Texans win, but don’t cover. The teaser mitigates some of the damage there.

Pre-Game Thoughts: I’m reading the thread on the Texans vs. Jets game at Covers.com to see what people are saying. A lot of people over there are liking Jets (+9) on the theory that since they’ve played so bad over the last few weeks, that it’s destined that they’ll show up tonight and cover this spread, or even win outright.

Forget that the Jets performance over the last three weeks has been a complete joke and that they’re facing the best defense in the league — they claim that Mark Sanchez will have a career game (against the best defense in the league)  just because the media is busting his balls. You know who else is getting his balls busted? Michael Vick. But that doesn’t stop him from being a turnover machine and a complete liability every time the ball is in his hands.  The comments there are completely laughable. I’m still waiting to come across somebody stating that the group Jeremy Kerley, Chaz Shillens and Clyde Gates is the most underrated wide receiving corp in the …

Top pick this week was DA BEARS. Bears win 41-3. Enough said.

No pick for Sunday Night. San Diego Chargers @ New Orleans Saints (-3.5) is a toss up to me. If you want to play it, you’re better off flipping a coin. I’m taking the Chargers +3.5 in the pick ’em league, but not putting my money on it.

I already made a killing thanks to DA BEARS and stand to gain even more if I hit on the Texans tomorrow night.

Bet with honour [sic] gentlemen.

…

Your boy Brandon Phillips is back! He had a 4-1 ATS record on Saturday with Utah State, Clemson, NC State, and Notre Dame. He essentially went as far as calling out an NC State upset over the #4 Florida State Seminoles. In the previous week he hit 2-of-3. 6-2 ATS in the last two weeks… well done sir. He could have even went 5-0 ATS this week if he would have hit on Missouri, but Missouri lost their starting QB in the first quarter of the game and their backup was completely worthless.

Last week, my NFL picks went 10-4 ATS, my best weekly record of the season. A lot of home dogs have been spoiling everyone’s picks in the first three weeks, but the road favorites got back to domination last week. I tried sticking with home favorites last week who let me down, and I passed on some road favorites that I wanted to take, but my teaser picks kept me in the game. I then hit back-to-back winners in the night games thanks to  Bears (+3.5) and Rams (+2).  If you would read my writes ups from those games, the key points being made were spot on.

Heading into Sunday, my favorite pick is the Chicago Bears (-5) over Jacksonville Jaguars. When you have the 32nd ranked offense vs. the 3rd ranked defense, the Jaguars should be hard-pressed to score. I expect the Bears to attack the Jaguars like they attacked the Cowboys and the Jaguars offense should be completely shut down. They’ll maybe score 10 points tops. I have faith in Cutler, Forte, and Marshall to take care of business on the road and put this one away in the 3rd quarter …

Week 6 Picks:

1. Utah State (+6.5) vs. BYU: I am just not convinced by the play of BYU so far this year. USt is 5-0 ats so far this year and has been very competitive in every game. Further, this an in-state rivarly game that should bring the best out of USt. USt has one of the best defenses in the country so far this year. BYU is starting a freshman QB tonight, who has actually faired better with the offense so far this year than their regular starter. However, I still think both teams stick to the running game as the primary source of offense. I just think USt is the better team right now and I will take the points here. Play on USt +6.5 for 1 unit. BYU 6 Utah State 3 winner

2. Vanderbilt at MISSOURI (-7): I think Missouri is finally on the right track and are set for a big blowout win. I know most bettors don’t like the term “due,” but Missouri is due. They have talent, have been injured, but are getting healthier each week. I think they had a huge win over UCF last week as they were in a very difficult spot to come away with a win. Their QB is starting to get healthier each week. On the other hand, this is a tough spot for Vandy, a team I believe is on the ropes. Vandy has not scored more than 13 points against any Division 1 school so far this year. Vandy is playing their second road game in as many weeks and have to be beat up after last week’s game against Georgia. I just think this is great spot for Missouri to come out and …

We delivered back-to-back winners on Monday and Thursday Night by going with the dogs. We played the Bears (+3.5) and Rams (+2) to take down some easy wins to build up the bank roll heading into week 5 of the NFL. There’s a lot of road favorites this week that I like. In weeks 1-3, the home dogs dominated, but that all changed in week 4 when a lot of road favorites got easy covers (49ers, Patriots, and Bengals). Is this the week the road favorites continue domination or will we be stunned once again by the unpredictable home dogs? We’ll find out this Sunday. Here’s what’s on tap.

Houston Texans (-9) over NEW YORK JETS — Confidence: 8/10 — The Jets have one of the worst offenses in the league, 28th in yards and 23rd in points to be exact. We saw how terrible their offense was against the 49ers defense. 145 total yards, 9 first downs, 4 turnovers, 23 minutes of possession, 2-of-13 on third down — and they failed to score a single point. It was pathetic. They also lost WR Santonio Holmes to boot.  This should be the exact same story when they face the Houston’s 1st-ranked defense. The only difference is that this game is on Monday Night. That’s not going to be enough to give the Jets a shot in this one as I’m calling a blow out. Houston wins in the ballpark of 27-6 in my opinion.

Chicago Bears (-5) over JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS  — Confidence: 8/10 — When you have the worst offense in the league taking on one of the league’s best defenses in the Bears, I’ll take the Bears every time. The Bengals dominated the Jaguars 27-10 in Jacksonville last week …