Blogs – Page 127 – Keefe To The City

Oct 23, 2018

I Have Never Rooted So Hard for a Non-Yankee Than I Am for Clayton Kershaw

No matter how well Clayton Kershaw does, it’s never enough. Unfortunately, the only way to get his idiotic critics to shut up will be for the Dodgers to win the World Series, and even then, he will still have critics.

Whenever I need a good laugh, I go to Clayton Kershaw’s Baseball Reference page. The career stats of the lefty make me nearly cry with all of the bold and italicized numbers, detailing the seasons he led the league in wins, win percentage, ERA, games started, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, strikeouts, ERA+, FIP, WHIP, hits per nine innings, strikeouts per nine innings and strikeouts per walk.

In 2016, many of my friends who are Dodgers fans thought Kershaw had a down year after back injuries limited him to just 21 starts. His numbers? 12-4 with a 1.69 ERA and 11 walks in 149 innings. In 2017, it was much of the same as Kershaw’s ERA climbed to an embarrassing 2.31 as the left-hander only went 18-4 and unforgivingly walked 30 in 175 innings. This season, I heard from many of them that Kershaw was finished as his ERA ballooned all the way to an unacceptable 2.73. It didn’t matter that he once again had back problems or that the he earned a loss or no-decision in 10 starts in which he went at least six innings and allowed two earned runs or less.

Dodgers fans have unnecessarily worried about Kershaw the last few seasons because they have come to expect him to win every five days, and not just win or shut down the opponent, but actually shut them out. He has created ridiculous expectations from the baseball world in which anything less than perfection is unsatisfactory.

I was at the Dodgers-Mets game on July 23, 2015 at Citi Field with my fiancée Brittni (a Dodgers fan from Los Angeles), a game Kershaw started. His line: 9 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 11 K. It was possibly the most dominant pitching performance I had ever seen in person and many expected him to actually throw a perfect game going into the game. And he nearly did. It wasn’t until Curtis Granderson singled to right field on an 0-2 pitch in the seventh inning that the Mets got their first baserunner. There were a lot of groans and upset fans, who had expected a Kershaw perfect game before first pitch and who were now let down that they would have to settle for a three-hit, complete-game shutout.

Kershaw has been so dominant for so long that expecting something as improbable as a perfect game when he pitches doesn’t seem so improbable. While the rest of baseball operates on the idea that a “quality start” is six innings and three innings, a quality start for Kershaw is eight shutout innings. It’s unfair, but when you’re dealing with greatness, people want greatness every fifth day. And when you’re dealing with the best pitcher in the history of baseball, people want near perfection every fifth day.

A lot of people would disagree with the idea that Kershaw is the best pitcher in history for a variety of reasons, whether it’s the time period in which he pitched, the division he has pitched in, the league he has pitched in, the hitters he has faced, that the game isn’t what it used to be or some other poorly-formed reason. But no reason will be used against Kershaw more than the idea that he hasn’t been good in the postseason or that he hasn’t won a World Series, as if a championship in baseball can be the product of one person.

So Kershaw had a few bad postseason starts against the Cardinals in his career. Who cares? Mariano Rivera blew Game 5 in the 1997 ALDS, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series and Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS and he’s still the best postseason pitcher in history as well as the best relief pitcher in history. Kershaw might have laid a few eggs against the Cardinals in 2013 and 2014, but the majority of the time in the playoffs, he’s been the Kershaw with all of the bold and italicized numbers on his Baseball Reference page.

Unfortunately, the expectations of perfection Kershaw has created in his career have carried over to October, where it’s not good enough for him to give his team a chance to win or to actually win, he has to dominate. When he two-hit the Braves over eight scoreless innings in the NLDS, people wanted to know why he had only three strikeouts. When he allowed one run over seven innings in Game of the NLCS to put the Dodgers up 3-2 in the series, people wanted to talk about his lesser start in Game 1.

This has been a theme throughout his postseason career. In 2017, he allowed one earned run over seven innings with 11 strikeouts in Game 1 of the World Series and pitched four scoreless innings out of the bullpen in Game 7 on two days rest. But all that mattered was that he lost Game 5. In the 2016 NLCS, he shut out the Cubs for seven innings to win the first game of the series, but that was quickly forgotten when he pitched poorly in Game 6. No one thought to bring up that the Dodgers were shut out in that Game 5 loss and that you have to score at least one run to win a baseball game. When he got the final two outs of Game 5 of the 2016 NLDS against the Nationals, serving as the closer for the series, even though the Dodgers were advancing to the NLCS for the first time, the talk was about why Kershaw hadn’t pitched well in Game 4 and not the bullpen heroics or his Game 1 win. In the 2015 NLDS, three earned runs and 11 strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings wasn’t enough as his offense only scored once in Game 1 and four days later when he gave up one earned run over seven innings for the Game 4 win, it didn’t make up for his series-opening performance.

In the two postseasons against the Cardinals in 2013 and 2014, he had the two clunkers (Game 6 of the 2013 NLCS and Game 1 of the 2014 NLDS). But he also took a loss in Game 2 of the 2013 NLCS when six innings and no earned runs couldn’t get himself or his team a win thanks to an error in a 1-0 loss, and when three runs in six innings (all three runs coming on one swing) was too much for his anemic offense to overcome in a 3-2 loss.

Despite all of this and despite allowing two earned runs or less in 10 of his 22 career postseason starts (in four of those, he took the loss or a no-decision), the perception is that Kershaw can’t win in October. The Dodgers’ two NLDS losses, two NLCS losses and World Series loss since 2013 weren’t the fault of ownership, the front office, the manager, the other starting pitchers, the bullpen, the offense or the defense. They were all the fault of Clayton Kershaw.

No matter how well Kershaw does, it’s never enough. Unfortunately, the only way to get his idiotic critics to shut up will be for the Dodgers to win the World Series, and even then, he will still have critics. If the Dodgers win and he isn’t near perfect in his starts, the Dodgers will have won in spite of him. If the Dodgers win and he’s not the MVP of the series, they won’t have won because of him. If the Dodgers win and he pitches the way he’s expected to and he’s the MVP of the series, well, he will only have won one championship in his career. Even if the Dodgers win, Kershaw can’t win, and if the Dodgers lose, it will be his fault. When it comes to the Dodgers, Kershaw isn’t only the best player in the team’s history or the face of the franchise, he is viewed as the entire franchise. Though he affects only 33 games at most in the regular season and a handful of games in the postseason, the end result of any Dodgers season falls solely on him.

When video emerged of Kershaw alone in an empty Fenway Park on Sunday pretending to throw pitches in the bullpen in preparation for his Game 1 start in the World Series, I became that much bigger of a fan of his and that much more envious of Dodgers fans who get to call him theirs, even if only complete-game shutouts from him satisfy them. As a Yankees fan, I have never rooted as hard for another team than I am for the Dodgers in this World Series. As a Clayton Kershaw fan, I have never rooted so hard for a non-Yankee to win.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 23, 2018

Giants-Falcons Week 7 Thoughts: I’m Sick of the Giants

The Giants lost again, and if you thought things were bad with the 2017 Giants under Ben McAdoo, the 2018 Giants under Pat Shurmur might actually be worse.

The Giants were finally going to show everyone their offense on Monday night in Atlanta. Between their new-look offensive line, their healthy receivers, a Falcons defense which hadn’t allowed fewer than 29 points in the last four weeks and which has been the 31st-worst defense in the red zone this season, the Giants were going to put on an offensive display. And they did. They put on an offensive display of ineptitude.

None of the other five losses this season were as bad as the Giants’ sixth loss to the Falcons. It was possibly the single-worst Giants game I ever watched. The loss to the Eagles had been bad considering it was a short week, the Giants’ season was on the line and the Eagles had to travel on the short week and still embarrassed the Giants, but this was even worse. The Giants had nearly 11 days from the end of the Eagles loss to kickoff on Monday night to plan for the Falcons, and their game plan produced three first-half points.

The Giants were unable to get into the end zone against the second-worst red zone defense in the league until the game was nearly over. In typical Garbage-Time Giants fashion, the offense quickly put together two touchdowns near the end of the game to lose 23-20, tricking those who didn’t watch the game in full into thinking it was a close game, the same way they have done in prior losses this season. The new-look offensive line might have been the worst of the three we have seen this season as Eli Manning was sacked four times and pressured and hit so often it felt like five Ereck Flowers were blocking for him.

Pat Shurmur, who is completely lost as a head coach, called unsuccessful play after unsuccessful play in the red zone, failed to score on fourth-and-1 on the goal line and then inexplicably went for a two-point conversion despite potentially making it a seven-point game with 4:47 left in the fourth quarter. Odell Beckham dropped the two-point play and after the game Shurmur defended his decision, citing a 50-percent increase in chances of winning had the play been successful and had the Giants scored another touchdown later. They did score another touchdown later, but it was only after the defense let the Falcons go down the field and only after yet another kicker drilled a miracle field goal against the Giants.

Shurmur once again talked about “battling” in his press conference, as if this Giants team has battled at all this season. The offense doesn’t produce until the game is over and the defense can’t get a big stop or prevent any points from being put up when needed the most. He also mentioned how the team “isn’t going to do the math” but how they are instead going to “get ready for the Redskins” on Sunday. He might want to do the math. The math says the Giants are 1-6 and if winning 10 games gets you in the playoffs, which it doesn’t always, the Giants have to go 9-0 to reach the playoffs. Do the math, Shurmur. Your season is over.

This season essentially ended when Graham Gano’s 63-yard field goal handed the Giants their fourth loss of the season, but the true optimists still believed. Most of those optimists gave up after the Giants were run out of their own building four days later by the Eagles. Now, if there’s anyone who still calls themselves a Giants fan, who believes this team has a 9-0 run in them, what are you doing? Go out. Call a friend. Date. Binge-watch a show. Pick up a new hobby. Do something that’s not sitting around thinking the Giants are going anywhere other than the top of the 2019 draft.

The Giants are now 4-19 since the start of last season for a .174 winning percentage. If you thought the 2017 Giants were bad under Ben McAdoo, the 2018 Giants might actually be worse. Those Giants at least lost a few close games early in the season before injuries destroyed their depth and the team gave up. These Giants aren’t playing close games, have been mostly healthy all season and if they haven’t given up yet, it’s going to be scary to watch what it’s like once they finally have.

Blogs

Oct 22, 2018

Dodgers Have to Win World Series

Thankfully, the Dodgers won the NL. The Brewers would have served as a red carpet for the Red Sox to a championship. The Dodgers, however, have a real chance to win the World Series and save Yankees fans.

Sometimes I will randomly think about Dave Roberts stealing second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS and I try to envision him being called out.

What if Joe West had gotten the call wrong and punched Roberts out at second base? There was no video review back in 2004, and while Terry Francona would have gone out to argue with West, nothing would have come of it other than Francona likely being thrown out in the last inning of the last game of his team’s season. There would have been one out in the inning and no one on, and if Bill Mueller still singled on a ground ball up the middle in his at-bat, it wouldn’t have tied the game.

When I see a replay of that stolen base, so many awful memories come rushing back as I watch Derek Jeter put down a tag that is just late and dream about if only Jorge Posada’s throw could have been there a fraction of a second earlier. Unfortunately, for at least the next week, Yankees fans are going to be seeing that play a lot.

The Dave Roberts Dodgers are going to the World Series, and now I’m forced to root and root hard for the man I have hated for the last 14 years. The man who saved the 2004 ALCS for the Red Sox and whose stolen base changed the course of history.

The Yankees couldn’t take care of their own business and the Astros were flat-out embarrassed, so now it’s up to the Dodgers. The Dodgers are Yankees fans’ last chance at preventing the Red Sox from winning the World Series.

My fiancée, Brittni, who has made quite a number of appearances in blogs on this site over the last nearly six years, is a Dodgers fan from Los Angeles, and the Dodgers have never won a World Series in her lifetime.

Last year, we were one Yankees win away from our relationship potentially being destroyed by the outcome of a Yankees-Dodgers World Series. Instead, our relationship was saved by the Yankees’ inability to hit Justin Verlander, Charlie Morton and Lance McCullers Jr. in Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS and the Dodgers faced the Astros.

Brittni thought she was going to get that elusive first championship when the Dodgers returned home for Games 6 and 7 of the World Series, up 3-2 in the series on the Astros. But after losing Game 6, the organization decided to start Yu Darvish over Clayton Kershaw in Game 7, only to then bring Kershaw in for four innings (four scoreless innings they would be to pour salt on the wound) after the game was out of hand, the Dodgers lost and she was crushed. I watched her dream of experiencing a Dodgers championship fall apart and watched tears roll down her face as the final outs of Game 7 dwindled away.

For most of this season, it looked like she would have to wait at least another year for a chance at a World Series win. The Dodgers were 10 games under .500 over a month into the season and just about a month ago they were in third place in the NL West. They didn’t clinch a postseason berth until the final weekend of the regular season and needed to play a tiebreaker game to win the division. They ended the regular season with a 92-71 record, but their plus-194 run differential projected them to be a 102-win team as they played 10 games worse than their expected record. After all that, they trailed 2-1 in the NLCS and had to pull off a 13-inning win in Game 4 to even the series before eventually winning Game 7 on Saturday. But they made it. They’re back in the World Series.

The Red Sox could sweep the Dodgers and I still won’t understand how the Red Sox won 108 regular-season, beat the Yankees in four games, eliminated the defending champion Astros in five games and then won the World Series. Their success hasn’t made sense. More than half of their lineup is crap, they have one trustworthy starting pitcher and their bullpen is full of high WHIPs and a closer who seems to have lost his ability this postseason. I have no idea how this team has gotten this far and how they continue to win. It makes absolutely no sense and it makes me sick.

Thankfully, the Dodgers won the NL pennant and not the Brewers. The Brewers would have served as a red carpet for the Red Sox to a championship as the Brewers’ success reminds me of the Red Sox’, both very puzzling. The Red Sox never get a worthy opponent in the World Series and the Brewers would have been their latest cupcake matchup.

The Dodgers, however, have a real chance to win the World Series. Aside from the Astros, they are the one team that has true starting pitching depth in this postseason. They have a deep lineup with powerful right-handed hitters to combat Chris Sale and David Price, they have Manny Machado, who both hates and owns the Red Sox, and they have a solid and reliable bullpen. Thanks to the off days on Sunday and Monday, they can set up their rotation accordingly for the series, and could potentially pitch Kerhsaw three times in the series, if the team learned from their mistakes in last year’s World Series and is now willing to pitch him on short rest.

I told Brittni if the Dodgers lose to the Red Sox in the World Series I will never root for them under any circumstances for the rest of my life (aside from playing the Red Sox again in future World Series), the same way I will never root for the Cardinals or Rockies in any scenario that isn’t them playing the Red Sox in the World Series. I will go to great lengths to root against the Dodgers if they lose this series. I will hate the Dodgers if they lose this series.

This feels like it for Brittni. If the Dodgers can’t win the World Series, when will they? I highly doubt there will ever be as weak of an NL playoff field as this year and with how fleeting success can be in baseball, it’s unrealistic to think the Dodgers will continue to be a contender with the threat of underperformance and injuries and the complete crapshoot that is the MLB postseason format. If Brittni can’t get her championship this year, I don’t know when it will come. I don’t know if it will come.

Brittni has to get her World Series this year. I need her to get her World Series this year. Every Yankees fan needs her to get her World Series this year.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Blogs • NHL

Oct 19, 2018

These Rangers Are Fun to Watch

The Rangers picked up five of a possible eight points against some very good competition over seven days, but more importantly, they proved they will be fun to watch this season.

When the Rangers lost the first three games of the season, it was expected. The only expectation for the Rangers this season is that there are none. It’s an 82-game tryout for the organization to determine who will be part of the team in 2019-20 and beyond, all while Henrik Lundqvist wilts away like the rose in the glass case in Beauty and the Beast waiting for a surrounding team of contender-worthy players that’s never going to show up to save his career.

In those first three losses, the Rangers lost a one-goal game to Nashville, a team that could very well win it all this season. Then they lost in Buffalo, scoring just once against a Sabres team that is improved, but nowhere near a team that goals should be hard to come by against. Then the next night, they scored five goals against Carolina to prove they do have some scoring ability. Except they gave up eight in Lundqvist’s first night off of the season.

I didn’t care the Rangers were 0-3, pointless and sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference in the first week of the season. Losses and a lot of them should be expected this season as players with little to no NHL experience gain just that and the Rangers improve their chances at landing Jack Hughes or another franchise players next June.

After those three very different losses, the Rangers beat the Sharks, a Cup favorite, in overtime at the Garden, lost a tough one to Oilers on a late Connor McDavid goal, beat the Avalanche — a playoff team last spring — in a shootout and took the defending champions to overtime on the road on the second night of a back-to-back. The Rangers picked up five of a possible eight points against some very good competition over seven days, but more importantly, they proved they will be fun to watch this season.

I’m sure that fun will fade away as we near the trade deadline and the team is closer to the bottom of the conference than they are to the playoff bubble, and I’m sure it will fade even more when they move some of the only remaining tradable assets they have left following last season’s firesale. But until, I expect Rangers games to be enjoyable as each win feels like a major accomplishment and each game feels like a playoff game since this team has absolutely no margin for error and can’t afford the kind of losing streak they endured to open the season if they want to shock the hockey world.

The problem is the best-case scenario for the Rangers would be to miraculously sneak into the postseason as a bottom seed or just miss the playoffs. In reality, that’s actually a worst-case scenario. Every point the Rangers accumulate is detrimental to their goal of rebuilding and getting to pick at the top or near the top of the 2019 draft. This team isn’t supposed to win. It’s not that the players aren’t trying to do so, it’s that they’re not supposed to. This is supposed to be a complete rebuild and any winning creates an obstacle to that goal.

The biggest obstacle for the Rangers is in their own net. Lundqvist won’t settle for anything other than greatness and every night he’s in goal, the Rangers have a real chance to win, especially with the way he has played early on. As long as Lundqvist tries to single-handedly will this young and inexperienced group to wins, the rebuild is in trouble and the dream of landing a potential superstar in June slowly deteriorates.

Unfortunately, for Lundqvist, his best won’t be enough to keep these Rangers relevant through the winter and into the spring. For as fun as the last week was, the Rangers are still only 2-4-1 with a minus-6 goal differential and haven’t won a game in regulation.

The expectations haven’t changed with the Rangers and that is that there aren’t. But win or lose, for the time being, these Rangers are fun to watch.

Blogs • Giants

Oct 18, 2018

NFL Week 7 Picks

When it comes to the picks, it’s been a pretty blah season. Well, it was a pretty blah season before last week’s 3-11-1 embarrassment. Thankfully, there’s a lot of time left to chip away at the deficit.

It’s been a week since the Giants’ season ended and with 11 weeks left of regular-season football and then the playoffs and Super Bowl and the cold, dark days of January and February inching closer, it’s been hard to handle. All of that coupled with the Yankees’ playoff loss to the Red Sox, who are likely going to win the World Series, and the Rangers playing for nothing this season has me looking to pick up some new hobbies. What do people who don’t like sports do for fun? That’s a question I need to answer and answer fast because the next meaningful game I will watch will be the Yankees’ first game in 2019.

When it comes to the picks, it’s been a pretty blah season. Well, it was a pretty blah season before last week’s 3-11-1 embarrassment. At least I finally got a push to create a tie column like so many teams in the NFL this season. Unfortunately, the Giants were routed, the Vikings didn’t cover by a 1/2 point, the Buccaneers blew a late chance to not only cover but win, the Browns reverted back to the Browns on the West Coast, the Panthers proved to be frauds, the Titans couldn’t score a single point in an NFL game in 2018, the Jaguars should have forfeited and saved the trip to Dallas and the Packers struggled against the C.J. Beathard. When you put together all of that, you get a 3-11-1 week. That’s going to be one big hole to climb out. Thankfully, there’s a lot of time left to do so. It’s time to starting chip away at the deficit.

Denver -1 over ARIZONA
The Cardinals are my biggest enemy this season. Why? Because they pose the biggest threat to the Giants for the No. 1 pick in the draft. I can’t believe the Giants are really going to be picking at or near the top again in the 2019 draft, but here we are. After last year’s 3-13 disaster, the team is already 1-5 this season. And even though the NFC East is as a weak as it’s ever been, the Giants would have go on either a 10-1 or 9-2 run the rest of the way to win the division. Yeah, that’s not happening.

Tennessee +7 over LOS ANGELES CHARGERS
When I first saw this line, my initial thought was “Charges in a teaser!” But then I remembered that this game is in London. The Chargers usually have enough trouble switching time zones in the United States and historically struggle when they go to the Eastern Time Zone. Now they are going past the Eastern Time Zone and across the pond to play a game that will be eight hours ahead of their internal clock. The Titans aren’t good by any means, but they are good to stay within a touchdown of a team that can’t handle jet lag.

Buffalo +7.5 over INDIANAPOLIS
If the Cardinals are the Giants’ biggest threat to the No. 1 pick in the draft, well, the Bills and Colts are their next two biggest threats.

I just had the thought that if this quarterback class turns out to be weak, the Giants could potentially use the top or near-top pick and turn it into a bunch of lower picks and try again with this same group, but slightly revamped in 2019. For those who think it’s time move on from Eli Manning (not me), this is their worst-case scenario. The second worst scenario for them would be to use the pick on a non-quarterback, which I think is what will actually happen.

New England -3 over CHICAGO
It’s crazy to see a line that has the Patriots as only a 3-point favorite over the Bears. It just looks wrong.

I bought into the Bears last week when I teased them to win in Miami. This Bears defense against Brock Osweiler just to win?!?! is what I thought. That didn’t go so well, and that’s all I need to jump off the 2018 Bears bandwagon for good.

PHILADELPHIA -5 over Carolina
Eff’n Panthers. All they had to do was go to Washington and beat the Redskins and keep the NFC East clustered together and improve to 3-0 against the division. Instead, they lost and they put a huge dent in my dream of a team winning the division at 7-9, or maybe even 6-10. The Panthers are the team everyone continues to think is good, but they aren’t. They will let you down with their inability to score and their overrated defense.

Unfortunately, Carson Wentz looks better and better each week since returning and I have a feeling the Eagles’ road rout of the Giants on Thursday Night Football will send them off on a run that returns them to the playoffs and destroys my preseason prediction that they would miss the playoffs. (Either that or that’s one great reverse jinx right there.)

MIAMI +3 over Detroit
I don’t care that the Lions are coming off their bye week and I don’t care who the Dolphins quarterback will be in this game. I will no longer pick against the Dolphins at home in what should be a close game.

Minnesota -3.5 over NEW YORK JETS
I will be in attendance with Brittni at this game, and the only thing that will keep me from going into depression over the Giants is if the Jets are the Jets. At 3-3 with a rookie quarterback, they are anything but the same old Jets right now, and that needs to change. I need a Vikings blowout on Sunday. I need it.

TAMPA BAY -4 over Cleveland
Everyone all set with the Baker Mayfield hype? OK, good. I’m not going to lie, I started to buy into the Browns as a good team in 2018, but last week proved they have a long way to go. While the Chargers are certainly better than the Buccaneers, it’s going to be a while until I can trust Mayfield to not destroy a game.

JACKSONVILLE -4.5 over Houston
That Jaguars debacle in Dallas last week? Yeah, I wagered on the Jaguars -3. The bad news is I lost. The good news is the game was over so fast I didn’t have to waste my afternoon into the early evening hoping for a miraculous cover or even a push.

The Jaguars are now 3-3 as the AFC South competes with the NFC East for the worst division in football. And the Jaguars’ loss to the Cowboys was both embarrassing for them and costly for the Giants, who lost another tiebreaker. What am I saying? Why do I even care about records and tiebreakers? The Giants season is over. O-V-E-R. They suck. It’s hard to have many tiebreakers with one win.

But back to the Jaguars. They are returning home to play the only team the Giants have beat in the Texans. The Texans haven’t lost since their loss to the Giants, but I don’t buy them getting hot at 3-3 now. They are still the Texans and they still can never be trusted. Give me the Jaguars at home coming off the humiliating loss to the very bad Cowboys.

New Orleans +2.5 over BALTIMORE
The Saints’ slow start to the season appears to have been a fluke and they look every bit like the team that should have gone to the NFC Championship Game if not for the greatest game-winning play in the history of football. Normally, I would be against picking the Saints outside against a strong defense, but if I’m right about the Saints, this game won’t be a problem.

WASHINGTON -1 Dallas
This game will be depressing to watch since it’s a reminder that the NFC East was there for the taking for the Giants and they screwed it up. Last season, they sucked, but when you look at the type of season the Eagles had, the Giants were never going to win enough games to win the division. This season though? This season the Giants could have won the division. As you can tell, I’m over the Giants throwing away another year.

Los Angeles Rams -10 over SAN FRANCISCO
I don’t know what this line would have to be for me to not take the Rams. -21? -24? -28? I think -28 might keep me away from picking the Rams, but I wouldn’t feel good about it.

KANSAS CITY -6 over Cincinnati
Everyone loves offense in every sport. Not me. I like games where points or runs or goals are hard to come by. Where field position and baserunners and power plays matter. I don’t care for these ridiculous games where both teams are in the 40s, or in the case of Sunday Night Football, the 30s. The Chiefs and Patriots couldn’t have cared less about playing defense and everyone ate it up. It was sad.

The only thing we learned from the Chiefs’ first loss is that they aren’t to be taken seriously. That game gave the Patriots the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Chiefs and because there’s no doubt in my mind that the Patriots will reach the AFC Championship Game every season until Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are gone (if they ever leave), the Chiefs won’t be going to the Super Bowl. They can continue to be the Greatest Regular-Season Show ever, but they aren’t going to win a championship because of that loss. By the time the AFC Championship Game roles around, Belichick will have turned his crappy defense around and the Chiefs will be the same Chiefs.

NEW YORK GIANTS +4.5 over Atlanta
I could see the Giants going to Atlanta coming off nearly 11 full days of rest and beating a bang-up Falcons team and everyone thinking the Giants might go on some run because they beat the Falcons on the road.

I could also see the Giants getting embarrassed by a banged-up Atlanta team that can’t beat anybody right now.

The first option would likely sucker me back into thinking maybe, just maybe the Giants could get back in the division. The second option would have me upset that the Falcons won’t clean house of the coaching staff that handed the Patriots a Super Bowl.

Nothing good can come out of this game. Either the Giants win and they ruin their place in the 2019 draft or they lose and continue to be an embarrassment and the Falcons, who have cost me so much money over the last three seasons, win. There’s no result to root for in this game.

Last week: 3-11-1
Season: 33-44-1