Are you ready or some football picks? We are. Jay’s Plays NFL picks is back for its 13th blockbuster season and third on GNN.
First, we want to welcome back all our readers from Golf News Net. Glad to have you aboard again. Also welcome to all the listeners on the Jay’s Plays podcast.
We’ve been kicking ass and taking names for much of the last decade, batting a whopping 62.5 percent. We believe enough in our system to publish our picks. Putting your money where our mouth was, we went 65-28-1 last year, 25-23 in teasers. So thank you to all of you who support us!
Here is a primer on how this column works:
1. Ernesto the Prediction Iguana makes all the picks (hew gets some help from the cats, Faith and Torrey). If you have any complaints about his results, just leave a message with your phone number. Ernesto will personally return all calls between the hours of 2-6 a.m.
2. We do teasers here, using the lines we get from Vegas Insider, so you get to move the line six points either way in your favor. You have to hit both picks to win, but you don’t lose the occasional tie. “But that’s harder,” you say…not if you play smart. Here’s how…
3. Take a really good team giving points to a particularly weak team and slide the six points to the favorite. Suddenly an eight-point favorite only has to win by two. Better still, if they are only a four-point favorite, suddenly you get two points for yourself. BONUS!
4. We don’t bet every game. Remember Ace Rothstein from "Casino"? He didn’t bet all 100 games on the card; he’d bet the two that were winners. So play SMART. Losers chase action. Winners stay cool and win one game at a time. We pick three games each week usually – sometimes two, sometimes four – but normally, it’s Green Light, Amber Alert and Red Zone.
5. Stay away from most inter-divisional match-ups! You never know what you’re going to get week-to-week, and teams tend to know each other too well. The chaos of the NFC East, for example, is difficult to get a pulse on consistently. Of course, when you do find a mismatch, exploit it ruthlessly, which leads us to…
6. Be the playground bully. Bet against crappy teams even more than you bet on good teams. (e.g. Cleveland!) For years, they’ve been an ATM machine for you!
7. Don’t forget the Over/Under! It’s your friend in a week where the lines are too close for comfort.
8. If you’re not 100 percent confident, DON’T BET THE GAME! That’s how you lose: chasing action.
9. Bet ultra-conservatively the first five weeks, if you must bet. We choose not to start the betting season until Week 4. The first four weeks are your litmus test. That’s when teams start to identify themselves.
10. Stay away from 7.5- and 3.5-point lines .As Mike Mosely once said, “Danger Will Robinson!”
So that’s the system. We will see you Week 4 with our first column and the start of OUR NFL prognostication season.
Oh, and for the record:
- In the AFC, the Cheatriots, the Steelers, the Jags and the Chiefs are your division winners with the Bengals and Broncos the wild cards.
- In the NFC, the Cowboys, Niners, Panthers and Packers win the divisions, the Panthers and Rams take the wild cards.
- Jaguars over Niners in the Super Bowl.
