We’ve reached the home stretch.
Even with movement in the schedule that left us with four Primetime games in Week 13 — the more football, the better! — we’re finally and officially caught up with the original plan. Every team has played exactly twelve games, and there are no more bye weeks. From here on out, we’re looking at the final quarter of the season with four 16-game weekends.
In defense of the league, we should be impressed that we’ve reached this point. There were plenty of comments and complaints along-the-way, but the overall picture of the league and its standings have remained unchanged. The best teams have risen to the top. The worst have fallen to the bottom.
And those in between will be vying for playoff position for the next month.
We have a slightly different consideration to make with the additional of another Wild Card spot in 2020, but the rest of our approach remains intact. As we’ll see in the coming weeks, it’s not always enough that a team ‘must’ win, but it certainly helps in terms of gauging intent. As the football world saw on full display with the Jets, last week, “intent” plays a huge role.
Below are predictions for each game against the spread. Spreads have been taken from various websites and are subject to change. The spread in parenthesis denotes the selected team. An asterisk denotes a confidence pick.
*Confidence Picks – 2020 Season: 38-31-3 (Last Week: 5-0)
(2019 Season: 57-43-3) (2018 Season: 63-48-4) (2017 Season: 53-48-4) (2016 Season: 53-67-3) (2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2) (6-Year Total: 356-297-18)
All Picks Against Spread – 2020 Season: 97-91-4 (Last Week: 8-7)
(2019 Season: 142-118-7) (2018 Season: 137-118-12) (2017 Season: 137-119-11) (2016 Season: 123-136-8) (2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4) (6-Year Total: 831-722-49)
New England Patriots at Los Angeles Rams
I always make it a point to highlight weeks in which we have good Primetime matchups. In addition to my football fandom simply growing excited with the anticipation of a good game, competitive Primetime contests usually give us the opportunity to find value in the spread. As always, more eyeballs are on the television when it’s the only game in town, and more eyeballs means more opportunities for people to make mistakes.
I start here because the spread between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams is