I’m here for one last newsletter before sending you all on your way to a holiday weekend, assuming the holidays haven’t entered the health and safety protocols by the time you read this.
There will not be a Friday edition of the newsletter this week, but we’ve decided to move Football Friday up a day to today, but I do not have an alliterative name for it.
Brown being activated and returning for tonight’s game, it’s hard to rely on a player who has been out for a month and didn’t look all that great before missing time.
Tennessee began the year 8-2 despite the injuries, but while it was able to soldier on for a bit, reality has caught up over the last month.
I think it’ll be six of seven after tonight for San Fran, and their track record in spots like this doesn’t hurt my confidence.
Yes, SEC fanbases are a bit too quick to use it as an excuse for any postseason loss, but there is some truth in it in a situation like this one.
The Knights are without quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who suffered an injury earlier this season and has since transferred to UCLA, but this offense performed well without him.
The Pick: Over 55 — While bowl games are always more difficult to handicap than regular-season games, one thing typically holds true: bad defenses in the regular season are still bad defenses in bowl games.
So, let’s bet on both defenses continuing to be bad! Now, if I have any concern with this play, it’s that I don’t know if we can rely on Hawaii.
The Pick: Georgia State -6 — Simply put, I do not trust the MAC right now, nor do I trust Ball State’s rush defense in this matchup.
In a game that will come down to which defense gets more stops, I trust Georgia State a lot more than I do Ball State.
The Pick: Colts +1 — It feels like we’ve been here before, doesn’t it? Last year the Cardinals started the season 6-3 but finished by losing five of their last seven and missed the playoffs.
The Colts have been undervalued on the market all season long, but while the public is finally starting to catch on, this still strikes me as a situation where the wrong team is favored.
It lost to Tennessee, it lost to Indianapolis, it lost to Tampa Bay and it lost to these Patriots 14-10 just a few weeks ago.
The Pick: Chargers -10 — I took the Texans last week against the Jaguars, and while I appreciate them getting the win outright, I wasn’t betting on them because I believed in them.
While I don’t think the Chargers can truly blow the doors off anybody with their defense, I do think they can score enough to cover this spread against a Texans team with nothing to play for.