NFL Picks Against The Spread

The Spotlight NFL Week 4 Picks Against The Spread

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Hello everyone it is bright and early here in the East Coast and about an hour ago I woke up to take my girlfriend to work.  I took a run over to the corner store like I often do, to get her some coffee and breakfast.  When iplaced my stuff down on the counter, I turned to my right only to see a steak and a six pack of Corona placed on the counter.  Figuring it mayve been a little early for steak and beer, I looked up to my right only to see a man chuckling a bit as he said “Sorry my brotha, we got football in 2 hours!”  My man is right, this week in New York, we get to see how the West Coast lives as in just under an hour, at 9:30AM, the Jets and Dolphins will face off live from London.  While I know it’s probably very hard for players to travel overseas and play football, I love when the NFL goes to London and we get bonus football.  I remember a few years back when the Raiders played after midnight on the East Coast and one year when there was Tuesday Night Football, I enjoyed them both.  If so inclined today, the football fan can sit down and watch a complete day of 4 games of football.  It’s no wonder when my girlfriend jumped out of the car for work, he kissed me goodbye and told me to have fun!  This is going to be a lot of fun so let’s get right into it.

If you’re not following along with me on twitter, I would urge all of you to do so as the last two weeks I’ve been unable to post my picks on their but have done so on their.  Same as usual, I’ve been posting my weekly picks as well as my primetime picks for every Thursday, Sunday and Monday night game.  This season we couldn’t have asked for a better start (and a little bit of luck along the way with games like Baltimore on Thursday night) as we currently have a record of 19-6 on the year all against the spread.  While we’ve been hot remember that as hot as the Summer gets, the Autumn is always soon to follow.  This is a tough week of games and while I believe I can get you through it but proceed with caution.

The Picks

1) The Oakland Raiders (-3) over The Chicago Bears

I’ll admit that I will feel a lot better about this one if Jay Cutler doesn’t play because if that happens, the Bears offense is all on the hsoulders of Matt Forte and while the Raiders defense isn’t the Seahawks, he saw how that went for the Bears offense last week.  That said, even if Cutler plays he isn’t going to be 100% and neither should Alshon Jeffrey.  The Raiders on the other hand, may have finally found some real players with Derek Carr, Latavis Murray and Amari Cooper.  Other than that, they also finally won on the east coast in Cleveland last week and I don’t see them slowing down this week.  The Bears defense is banged up and now they’ve gotten rid of Allen and Bostic to boot.  Hold your breath kids, we’re going to believe in the Oakland Raiders.

2) Carolina Panthers (-3) over The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Has anyone realized that the Panthers are 3-0.  While their offense isn’t world beating, Cam Newton has found a way to get it done and now he leads the Panthers to inconsistent Tampa Bay to face Jameis Winston and the fighting Bucs.  The Panthers went out of their way to add Jared Allen to an already stout defense.  I don’t like rookie quarterbacks against good defenses, even moreso than I hate picking road favorites.  This one should be easy for the Panthers.

3) Cincinnati Bengals (-4) over The Kansas City Chiefs

It’s the regular season and so you know I’m on the Bengals and so far they haven’t let me down.  Really like them at home this week against a Chiefs team that honestly I’ve found to be pretty overrated to start the season. Sure the Chiefs have played Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers the past two weeks but Andy Dalton hasn’t been far behind this season.  Chiefs are also banged up and the Bengals offense may in fact be the most complete in all of the NFL.

4) Philadelphia Eagles (-3) over The Washington Redskins 

I’ve gone back and forth a million times here on this pick because I was tempted to go with one of these underdogs like the Texans +7 or the Browns +7 but I don’t like to go with teams that you’re betting to hang in the game.  If I don’t see a way that a team is going to win the game, i don’t like picking them because they’re going to keep it close.  The numbers here would actually have you pick the Skins especially with a good amount of rest but I think the Eagles had something click last week and if they can get their high octane offense going, the Skins will be looking to keep up and they’ll have to do it with Kirk Cousins.  I feel like if the Skins are dependent on Cousins to win or keep them in a game, he’s likely to turn the ball over, they’re likely to lose and I think they will again here.

LOCK OF THE WEEK: New York Jets (-2) over the Miami Dolphins 

On the one hand, I hate picking the Jets because they’re my favorite team and because I’ll never bet against them.  Yet on the other hand,  Miami has looked like the worst team in the league this season.  They lucked their way into a victory week one and lost to the Jaguars two weeks ago and got manhandled by the Bills last week.  So much for that Dolphins week schedule to start the season, eh?  I think the Jets are just the better team and they’ll have both Chris Ivory and Eric Decker back this week.  Miami is the home team but that’s only by technicality as the game is in England.  i hope my Jets bounce back and I’m confident they will.

That’s going to do it for me now but I’ll be back later today with my sunday night football pick against the spread.

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The Spotlight NFL Picks Against The Spread- Monday Night Football- Jets At Colts

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Hello everyone,  first off I just wanted to apologize for being off the grid these past few days.  It was actually my three year anniversary with my girlfriend and so I was away for the weekend.  We did a variety of different activities from checking out a lobster bake at Penthouse 808 in Long Island City to boat riding at Central Park to checking out Matilda on Broadway.  They were all a lot of fun and you can expect reviews of each one of those in the coming weeks.  Due to this,  I was unable to give you guys the usual Picks entry you’ve come to expect but will return with that this Friday.  However, what I was able to do was post some of my picks over on twitter (@TommyOnTheSpot) throughout the week.  I hate missing more than one but I missed two this week, including our lock of the week- the Detroit Lions who got manhandled by the Minnesota Vikings.  It looked like Adrian Peterson was able to knock off some of that rust from week 1 and Matt Stafford just doesn’t look like himself.  I also missed badly on the Titans (-1) over the Browns.  This was a game that I wouldn’t have touched had Josh McCown been starting for the Browns but I got suckered in when I heard Manziel was starting.  While I’m not a believer in Johnny Football,  I should have realized a rookie quarterback on the road in Cleveland so early in the season wasn’t going to be able to do much.  Like I said in my preseason predictions, there will be growing pains with Marcus Mariota.

The good new is that I absolutely cleaned up with the rest of my 1pm picks yesterday connecting on the Patriots (-1), the Cardinals (-2), the Steelers (6), the Falcons (+2) and the Bengals (-3).  I then ended then night out strong by picking the Packers (-3.5).  This brings our total over here this season up to 11-3 with our NFL Picks Against The Spread and we’ll attempt to keep the hot hand going with Monday Night Football tonight.  Remember with the Sunday night, Monday night and Thursday night games, I’m going to give you guys a prediction because they are the primetime games but I’m not including them in my picks of the week.  That said,  I do think the primetime games are a little bit easier to pick sometimes due to the fact that they allow you to focus in on one key game.  With that said,  let’s get into today’s game.

In the interest of full disclosure,  I’m a big fan of the New York Jets, I like them more than any team in any sport and have rooted for them my entire life.  You will very rarely see me pick against them as one of the picks I choose to place action on but since they’re playing on Monday Night, I’ll will remain as impartial as I can be when I pick the Jets (+7) tonight.  I’m not saying the 1-0 Jets are going to beat the 0-1 Colts in Indy but I expect them to keep it close.  The number one thing I look at here is the injuries that the Colts have. It remains unclear if Robert Mathis will make his season debut and also remains unclear if TY Hilton is going to play.  If Hilton is out this means that Andrew Luck is left with unproven Donte Moncreif and Andre Johnson, who he really didn’t seem to click with during Week 1.  Furthermore, I’m already pretty unimpressed with the Colts on the defensive side of the ball and now Cornerbacks, Greg Toler and Darius Butler have both been ruled out as well.  I’d look for Eric Decker to have a big game tonight and for Ryan Fitzpatrick to exploit the weaknesses that Indy has at the cornerback position tonight.

Thus, my pick is The New York Jets (+7),  I expect a close game and don’t be shocked to see the Jets win the game outright.  Until next time who were some of your winners and losers from last night?

The Spotlight Picks Against The Spread- Thursday Night Football- Broncos At Chiefs

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Week 2 in the NFL season will kick off in a bit over an hour with a clash of AFC West teams as Peyton Manning will lead the Denver Broncos into Arrowhead to take on the Kansas City Chiefs.

This reads like a tale of two teams who fans feel completely different about this season.  Everywhere you look you see people jumping on the Chiefs bandwagon.  It seems like the only thing that Andy Reid’s team was missing last season was a wide receiver.  They have an elite running back in Jamaal Charles, a quarterback who has won in the playoffs, a rising tight end in Travis Kelce and a stud defense.  Well enter Jeremy Maclin and the Chiefs came out firing in Houston with seemingly all pieces in place.

On the other side of the dime you have the Denver Broncos, the four time division champions are seemingly finished accoridngly to the public.  Peyton Manning hasn’t looked good since last season and last week he averaged under 5 yards per pass.  Denver also got destroyed in the process…what’s that?  Denver won last week?  They beat the Baltimore Ravens?!?! You’d never that the Denver Broncos are currently 1-0 based on everything you’ve heard all week.

So what do we do tonight?   I’ll admit it, I cringe every time I see Peyton Manning go down and go down hard. It’s hard to watch knowing his injuries and, let’s face it, his age.  The Chiefs will be coming at him all night long but this year it’s a different Denver Bronco team.  After three years of the Broncos being carried by Peyton Manning, he is now being carried by them.  The Broncos have a great defense and have a good running game now that the Montee Ball experience is over.  I know Arrowhead will be loud tonight and I know the Chiefs are the consensus pick but I’m not willing to give up on Peyton Manning just yet.  This game reads more like a pickem and if I’m getting points with Peyton Manning I’ll take them gladly.

The Pick:  Broncos (+3, if you can wait it should drop to +3.5,  though don’t be too surprised if the Broncos win outright)