Welcome back to The Degenerates Gambit! Once again, please remember that these articles are for fun, and while I love writing them and gambling on football, if you or someone you know is addicted and needs help, please get help or get help for them. The national helpline number is 1-800-522-4700.
Welcome back, degenerates! I’m 99% sure that The Suits at Football Absurdity don’t know that I was even planning on writing an article this week, but here we are. While we’re here, did you notice the trend of Football Absurdity writers getting gigs with big-time fantasy websites? Well, I’m here for the poaching! I’m ready to sell out to Big Fantasy, and sometimes that means writing about the playoffs, too. No days off, right? That’s how I finally leave my job and become a full-time #content guy? I have takes about Kyle Pitts that I’m dying to share if the price is right.
Speaking of being money in the bank, we went 3-1 last week, with all wins at plus odds! Lovie Smith sacrificed his job so that we could soar higher than we ever thought possible, but my god what a way to go out. I’ve decided to do the opposite: I’m going to linger through the playoffs and wear out my welcome with everyone. The fantasy community needs its outspoken masochist, the GG Allin of fantasy football, so to speak. I’m ready to be that guy, but I need my pay scale agreed to in writing before I post videos of me taking the Texans’ moneyline in week 18 while wearing nothing but my underwear, covered in blood.
Maybe we’ll save that one for next season, now that I see what it looks like fully typed out.
San Francisco/Seattle UNDER 42
Seattle snuck into the playoffs thanks to Jamaal Williams and an inspired Lions team in an excellent game to end the regular season last Sunday night. I don’t think they have a chance in this game, and San Francisco has been electric with Brock “Tom Brady but Better” Purdy. Their last meeting ended up hitting 34 total points, and there’s no reason to expect a game that will be taking place in the midst of major California storms to hit 42. San Francisco’s running game is built to withstand the elements, and Seattle can’t stop the run. I expect this one to be a low-scoring bloodbath, with the 49ers controlling the time of possession and the scoreboard.
New York Giants Moneyline
As a fraud myself, game recognize game: the Vikings are frauds. This team has a negative point differential, and really only starts to get good in the 4th quarter. The Giants have an excellent run game, and Daniel Jones embarrassed this defense in their last matchup as well. Football historians also know that betting against Minnesota in the playoffs is a smart play, and there’s certainly precedent for a collapse: Vikings kicker Greg Joseph led the league this season in missed extra points, with 5.
LSPOTW: Jacksonville Moneyline
This one hurts because in the preseason I laid some futures bets on the Chargers winning the Super Bowl. Fellow THfantaC writer Shane is a Chargers fan, so I’m going to include the positive here: the Bolts loss here will lead to some serious changes in the coaching staff, which is sorely needed here. The offense is run like a high school sophomore playing Madden (which I would know since I play my students in Madden all the time), and even though they had a rash of injuries, there is no excuse for some of the decisions this team has made, like keeping their starters in long enough last week to get Mike Williams injured. The Jags win, and Joe Lombardi gets his walking papers that sentence him to a lifetime of being just “the guy that’s needlessly aggressive to service industry workers.”
By lifetime I mean “a couple of months before he gets hired by Houston or Indy or whatever because the NFL has a bigger nepotism problem than the movie industry and the indie rock scene combined.”
Last Week: 3-1
Season: 34-74
LSPOTW: 9/21
