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Author: Neil Keefe

Blogs • Giants • NFL • NFL Picks

Oct 31, 2019

NFL Week 9 Picks

The season has become a one-month season at best for the Giants for all but one of the last seven years. Combine the Giants’ losing with a 5-10 picks week like last week and I wonder why I even watch this sport.

It’s been three years since the Giants played a meaningful game after October. Sure, last season they weren’t mathematically eliminated as far as December, but it was going to take the biggest miracle of all miracles for them to reach the postseason and that miracle certainly didn’t happen.

The NFL season has become a one-month season at best for the Giants and Giants fans like me for all but one of the last seven years and it’s miserable. Combine the Giants’ losing ways with a 5-10 picks week like last week and I wonder why I even watch this sport. Maybe the young and exciting, but very inconsistent Rangers will give me something to do after the holidays to get through the dark days of winter until March Madness and Opening Day. because once again, it won’t be the Giants.

(Home team in caps)

San Francisco -10 over ARIZONA
A 10-point line to open the week isn’t the greatest when you’re coming off a five-win week and need to start putting together a lot of Ws to dig out of a 10-games-under-.500-hole. I know taking the points on the road on a short week goes against everything I know about the NFL, but I can’t talk myself into the Cardinals.

JACKSONVILLE -1 over Houston
Flip a coin. I’m going with the Jaguars in their second home of London against yet another overrated Texans team. (I hate this game.)

BUFFALO -10.5 over Washington
Dwayne Haskins’ first career start is coming on the road in Buffalo against the Bills’ defense. That’s all.

Minnesota -4.5 over KANSAS CITY
I trust Kirk Cousins as much as I trust Pat Shurmur to challenge a play worth challenging. So needing Cousins to cover four points at hostile Arrowhead isn’t exactly an ideal situation. I’m banking on the Vikings’ defense being able to shut down a Matt Moore-led offense, and if they can’t do that then the Vikings are even bigger frauds than I think they are with one of their six wins being even remotely close to solid.

New York Jets -3.5 over MIAMI
If the Jets can’t beat the Dolphins then Adam Gase needs to be fired immediately following the game. I mean immediately after the team leaves the field. No ride home with the team on the plane. Fired. In the same building he was fired from a year ago.

PHILADELPHIA -4.5 over Chicago
As long as Mitch Trubisky is starting games for the Bears, I will be picking against the Bears.

Indianapolis -1 over PITTSBURGH
For some reason I like this Colts team. I continue to pick them to cover and win, bet on them and put them in teasers. They’re not that good if they’re even any good at all, but for some unknown reason I continue to trust and back them. I can’t explain it, but there’s very little that can be explained with regards to anything in this league.

CAROLINA -3.5 over Tennessee
As long as Ryan Tannehill is starting games for the Titans, I will be picking against the Titans.

OAKLAND +2.5 over Detroit
I’m done picking against the Raiders. Even though they’re not “good”, they’re good enough to keep screwing me over in parlays and teasers, and the only answer is to now starting picking in favor of them.

SEATTLE -4.5 over Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay shocked everyone when they went across the country and beat the Rams earlier this season. There’s a difference between being play a road game against the Rams and their “fans” and one against the Seahawks and their fans.

Cleveland -4 over DENVER
Baker Mayfield has regressed in his second season in the league, which isn’t what you want from the No. 1 overall pick and your franchise quarterback. Between Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen, the supposed great quarterback draft class of 2018 is look anything but that. The Browns are bad and I enjoy watching them lose, but even these Browns should be able to win in Denver against a quarterback making his first NFL start.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS +4 over Green Bay
I still think the Chargers are good. No, they’re not going to win a championship, but they’re good enough to be a playoff team and win a playoff game like they were last season. At some point though, they’re going to want to actually start putting wins together in order to be a playoff team and win a playoff game.

New England -3 over BALTIMORE
Two teams I hate and one of them has to win. The Patriots don’t usually play well against the Ravens, but it’s hard to pick against this Patriots defense right now, which looks the way it did in the early years of the dynasty.

Dallas -6.5 over NEW YORK GIANTS
When the Giants scored a touchdown on their first possession of the season against the Cowboys, I thought this season might amount to something. It didn’t. The Cowboys aren’t very good, but the Giants suck, and I can’t see a scenario where the Cowboys don’t convert third downs all game against the awful Giants defense.

Last week: 5-10-0
Season: 55-65-1

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Blogs • Rangers

Oct 29, 2019

Rangers’ Roster Should Better Reflect Rebuild

I don’t know what to make of this Rangers team, and unfortunately, neither does the front office or coaching staff. The Rangers’ roster is being managed and their games are being coached with no real plan.

I really thought the Rangers were going to turn it around after Thursday’s impressive win over the Sabres. I really did. It’s not that I thought there wouldn’t be other losing streaks this season or that the Rangers would go on the kind of run they want on in early 2015. But I did think we would see consistent, full-game efforts from the team moving forward. That optimism lasted a little more than one period.

I didn’t expect the Rangers to necessarily beat the Bruins, even without Tuukka Rask playing. I did, however, expect them to play a competitive game, considering the Bruins had played at home the night before. The Rangers were barely competitive on Sunday night and barely looked like they were from the same league as the Bruins playing their second game in as many cities in as many nights. The Rangers might have led 1-0 after a period on a Micheal Haley goal of all goals, but the score was no way indicative of how the first period went. It was a game straight of the Henrik Lundqvist era as Number 30 played like it was 2011-12 and the defense gave up high-percentage and quality scoring chances like it was as well. To think Rangers fans would long for the overhyped defense of Lundqvist’s prime whose bad contracts led to this rebuild in the first place.

The Bruins dominated the first period and their domination paid off 11 seconds into the second when they tied it up on a call which I will never understand how it wasn’t goalie interference. Fifty-seven seconds later they had the lead and by the end of the period they were up 4-1 and Lundqvist’s night was done after essentially playing a game of Rebound for two periods. Fourty-three seconds into the third, Zdeno Chara welcomed Alexander Georgiev to the game with the Bruins’ fifth unanswered goal and the rout was on. The Rangers lost for the sixth time in seven games and lost by three goals for the fourth time this season. It was the type of game you could expect from a young, inexperienced team against a team that came within one win of winning the Stanley Cup, but not when you remember how the Rangers played and looked on Thursday against Buffalo.

I don’t know what to make of this Rangers team, and unfortunately, neither does the front office or coaching staff. I didn’t expect them to contend for a championship or necessarily even compete for a postseason spot a year and a half after they said they were going to move any tradeable asset and start over. But after opening the season with back-to-back wins and after seeing the type of game they are capable of playing against Buffalo, I thought we would see more of that. I thought we would see a young team grow and gain experience, while being fun to watch. I didn’t think 2019-20 would be a continuation of 2018-19 with no progress.

The Rangers’ roster is being managed and their games are being coached with no real plan. Players who are the foundation of the rebuild are having their minutes given to less deserving players and players who need and deserve NHL experience are having their roster spots given to less talented players for unknown reasons. Rather than go full rebuild and put the most talented team on the ice, no matter how young or inexperienced the team might then be, the Rangers are more worried with playing veterans even if those veterans aren’t part of the future and even if those veterans are playing out of position.

It would be one thing if this strategy were working, if the Rangers were winning with a head-scratching bottom six, while letting first-round picks with nothing left to prove in the AHL continue to need to prove they have earned their shot, but they’re not. The Rangers aren’t winning with their current roster and lineup construction, and their choices are coming at a cost of stunting the growth of their high-end prospects. With each game that comes off the 2019-20 schedule in which the team isn’t giving roster spots and ice time to the players they expect to be the architects of this rebuild, they’re hurting themselves for 2020-21 and beyond.

Maybe so much shouldn’t be made of the Rangers’ impressive four-goal win over the Sabres and that game should be viewed as the type of anomaly that can happen in a salary-cap league over 82 games, especially since it was sandwiched between a five-game losing streak and the worst effort of the season. But it’s hard to act like that game didn’t happen and now wonder how the Rangers can duplicate that effort moving forward.

This rebuild was always going to be a true rebuild and wasn’t going to happen on the fly. The Rangers miraculously acquiring the second overall pick and landing the offseason’s top free agent wrongfully sped up the timeline in the eyes of fans and altered the expectations of many. After nearly a month of play, the expectation for success for the Rangers this season is returning to where it should have been all along: none.

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Blogs • Giants

Oct 28, 2019

Giants-Lions Week 8 Thoughts: Another Disappointment

Another game and another loss for the Giants. Losses have become expected for this team and expectations are being met every week.

I expected the Giants to lose on Sunday because that’s what the Giants have done for the last seven seasons: lose. Because I no longer expect the Giants to win from week to week and because I expect them to either get embarrassed, blown out or collapse, it’s made watching them easier. It hasn’t been enjoyable, it’s just been stress-free and care-free not expecting them to win the way they used to eight-plus years ago. It’s relaxing to watch the Giants play and not care about the outcome of their games since the outcomes for their games for the rest of the season don’t matter and because the outcomes of their game are mostly losses.

When Daniel Jones thew a backwards pass to no one that the Lions were able to pick up and run in for a touchdown, I laughed. When the Giants subsequently went three-and-out and the Lions converted a third-and-15 for a 49-yard pass, I laughed. When Aldrick Rosas missed an extra point for a chance to tie the game at 14, I laughed. When the Giants turned it over on downs twice later in the game and did just enough to nearly complete the two-score comeback, but still lost, I laughed. I did a lot of laughing watching the Giants because that’s all there is to do at this point. Laugh at an organization that’s become a joke.

A week after not being prepared for the Cardinals despite a 10-day layoff, the Giants dug themselves a 14-point deficit in the first quarter. The offense put up 19 points (and it would have been 20 if not for Rosas’ miss), which was the second-most they have scored this season, only having scored more in their Week 3 win over the Buccaneers when they put up 32. The defense allowed another quarterback to throw for over 300 yards against them (342).

It was another winnable game for the Giants that they lost. It’s a theme that become all too familiar over the last few years for a team that simply doesn’t know how to win. The Giants are now 2-6 this season and 7-17 under Pat Shurmur, the biggest loser of them all. And even though their second-half schedule is much easier than their first, I don’t expect the team to suddenly change its culture or identity and start winning. Not with this head coach.

The loss to the Lions was another game off the schedule. Another game gone in this miserable season and another game closer to next season when maybe the Giants will have a new head coach. For the rest of this season though, expect more games like Sunday: winnable games that slip away.

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Podcasts • Rangers

Oct 25, 2019

Rangers Podcast: Tom Poti and Adam Herman

NHL veteran Tom Poti talks about his career and Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter talks Rangers’ rough start.

Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter joined me to talk about the Rangers being unsure of whether they are trying to compete or rebuild, expectations for this season, why David Quinn’s first season-plus has felt like Alain Vigneault, wasting the fourth line on players without a future and the defensive issues under Lindy Ruff.

At the 20:59 mark, former Ranger and 14-year NHL veteran Tom Poti joined me to talk about growing up a Yankees fan in Massachusetts, choosing Boston University, leaving college for the NHL, getting traded to the Rangers, the highs and lows of his time with the Rangers playing for Bryan Trottier and Glen Sather, why he left for the Islanders in free agency, joining the Capitals on the rise and the injuries that ended his career.

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Blogs • Giants • NFL • NFL Picks

Oct 24, 2019

NFL Week 8 Picks

Unfortunately, it’s going to be a long, uneventful, meaningless final two-plus months of the season once again.

The Yankees’ season is over and the Giants certainly aren’t going to carry me through the holidays. That means the Rangers, who have lost five straight since back-to-back wins to open the season, are going to have to pick up the slack of the Giants yet again to make the winter less miserable. It’s not exactly a great position to be in as a sports fan.

Things could be worse. There are plenty of fans who don’t have the luxury of being a fan of the most successful franchise in the history of professional sports, and who have losers across the board in all of the major sports. Thankfully, I have the Yankees because with the Rangers in the middle of a rebuild, though one with a lot of promise, it’s still a rebuild, and with the Giants looking like they are several years away from competing, let alone contending, the Yankees at least provide winning regular seasons and lengthy postseasons even when they fall short of a championship.

The Giants are headed for another losing season and what will be their sixth in the last seven years. They’re most likely a five-win team for the second straight year and headed for a Top 6 pick in the draft for a third straight year. Forget trying to reach the postseason this year, changing the losing culture that has grown on this franchise over the last seven years should be the goal. And the only way that goal can be achieved is by Daniel Jones getting game experience, the young defense showing progress and Pat Shurmur not being the head coach after this season. That’s all that’s left in this Giants season. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a long, uneventful, meaningless final two-plus months of the season once again.

***

(Home team in caps)

MINNESOTA -16.5 over Washington
You’re never supposed to take the side of needing to cover a three-score game in the NFL. But I think that old rule goes out the window when you’re dealing with some of the teams we’re dealing with in 2019 like these Redskins and the Dolphins. Maybe the Vikings don’t go cover and I start the week with a loss. I’d rather accept that than taking the Redskins only to see them have trouble moving the ball over the 50 once again.

LOS ANGELES RAMS -13 over Cincinnati
Last week I wrote: What’s the best cure for a three-game losing streak? A game against the Falcons. It was indeed the best cure for the Rams’ rough patch. The Rams won by 27 points on the road to get back in the win column for the first time since Week 3 and now they welcome a winless Bengals team before their bye week. This one is going to get out of hand.

ATLANTA +6.5 over Seattle
I don’t believe in these Seahawks and I certainly don’t trust them. Sure, I trust the Falcons even less than the Seahawks and less than any team not from Miami, Washington D.C. or Cincinnati, but with the Falcons on the brink of tearing their entire franchise apart and starting over, I feel like they will finally deliver an adequate performance. If they can’t … start the demolition, and start it with Dan Quinn, even if it’s nearly three years late.

BUFFALO -1.5 over Philadelphia
The Eagles suck. Congratulations, they overcame an early 17-point deficit to beat the Redskins in Week 1, beat the Jets with their third-string quarterback and somehow pulled off a win on the road against the Packers. Their losses, a loss in Atlanta, which is the Falcons’ only win, a loss at home to the Lions, an 18-point rout at the hands of the Vikings and an embarrassing 37-10 blowout in Dallas far outweigh their one good win, and while they might make the playoffs because they play in the worst division in the league, it doesn’t change the fact that they suck, and teams that suck generally lose to good teams.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS -3.5 over Chicago
Like the Eagles, the Bears suck. Two franchises who went into the season with Super Bowl aspirations couldn’t be farther from looking like contenders as we near the halfway point. I don’t know what it will take for the Bears to realize Mitch Trubisky isn’t a starting quarterback, but unfortunately, it’s most likely going to take a mediocre season and a free-agent signing or trade. The Bears’ defense might be the best in football, but when it’s on the field for the majority of games, only getting a break on the Bears’ three-and-outs, it won’t be able to sustain its performance all season.

DETROIT -6.5 over New York Giants
I’m done picking the Giants to cover for the rest of the season aside from their games against the Dolphins and Redskins. What I watched last week was the worst Giants performance of the Pat Shurmur era and one of the worst I have seen in my life, and when you lose as much as the Giants have in recent years, that’s saying something. This team will continue to lose as long as Shurmur is head coach and against the league’s better teams, like the Lions, they will lose big.

New York Jets +6.5 over JACKSONVILLE
The Jets are a joke. J-O-K-E, JOKE, JOKE, JOKE! I thought they could cover against the Patriots last week, keep the score close and possibly even pull off an upset win. What a fool I was. Sam Darnold played what better be the worst game of his career as he completed just 11 of 32 passes for 86 yards with four interceptions and one lost fumble in the 33-0 loss and the Jets never had a chance. For as bad as the Jets were last week, I still think they will rebound, go on a run and reel their fans back in. If they can upset the Jaguars, they have the Dolphins, Giants, Redskins, Raiders, Bengals and Dolphins again to follow. The Jets will be part of the postseason picture at the beginning of December. Then they will inevitably let their fans down again.

NEW ORLEANS -10.5 over Arizona
The Saints are 5-0 with Teddy Bridgewater as their starting quarterback. 5-0! And that’s not an empty 5-0, that’s five wins against the Seahawks, Cowboys, Buccaneers, Jaguars and Bears. There’s been no cupcake games against the Giants, Redskins, Bengals or Dolphins. Bridgewater continues to add to his future earnings when he gets a chance to be full-time starter in the league and the Saints continue to let Drew Brees sit out and get completely healthy for the second half of the season. A Saints-Patriots Super Bowl is going to happen.

Tampa Bay +2.5 over TENNESSEE
A Ryan Tannehill-led Titans team pulled off a nice home win against the Chargers last week after the Chargers couldn’t get into the end zone in the final minute from the 1. Even with the Titans’ defense being as good as it is, the Titans are still starting Tannehill. One miracle win isn’t going to rewrite his career.

INDIANAPOLIS -5.5 over Denver
I have been a Colts believer all season. I still have no idea what happened at home against the Raiders in Week 4, but I’m going to count that as an anomaly and just a weird game in a league built on weird games. Since that unacceptable loss, the Colts have gone on to win at Arrowhead, where no team wins, and beat the Texans at home by a touchdown. The Colts are for real. Not “for real” as in they can win the AFC since the Patriots are going to win the AFC, but “for real” as in they can reach the playoffs for a second straight year even though their franchise quarterback retired and then lose in the first or second round.

Carolina +5.5 over SAN FRANCISCO
I’m a Kyle Allen fan because I love quarterback controversies and I especially love a quarterback controversy that leads to Cam Newton not being a starting quarterback. Newton can sit out as long as he wants and the Panthers can keep his injury status unclear for as long as they want, but everyone knows it’s only a stalling tactic, so that their once-franchise quarterback isn’t benched even though he deserves to be.

NEW ENGLAND -12.5 over Cleveland
I’m sure the Browns think they were able to tread water at 2-4 prior to their bye week and now that they’re well rested they can go on a run and live up to the hype that was wrongfully created for them prior to the season. The only problem with that is you never want to come out of your bye needing to desperately win a game and have to go to New England to do so. The Browns will be 2-5 after Sunday and then have to go to Denver and then play the Bills. Their season is over.

Oakland +7 over HOUSTON
I can’t believe I’m picking the Raiders to cover. But in a battle of teams, and mostly coaches, who can’t be trusted, taking a touchdown with a team coming out of their bye is the smart thing to do.

Green Bay -3.5 over KANSAS CITY
If Patrick Mahomes were playing, this game would be a lot more interesting and give people a reason to stay up for Sunday Night Football and be tired for work on Monday morning. Unfortunately, he’s not.

PITTSBURGH -13.5 over Miami
I won’t be picking the Dolphins to cover for the rest of this season. Well, maybe against the Giants in Week 15, but that’s it.

Last week: 8-6-0
Season: 50-55-1

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