Well, our bets for the season are still terrible–but a 4-0 week for Andy last week, combined with a ho-hum 2-2 week for me, puts us at 24-28 (Tony) vs. 24-27-1 (Andy) for the season. Maybe rather than following our betting advice, you can find a book in Vegas that will take action on our fierce battle?
This weeks picks:
The New England Patriots scored a convincing win last weekend against Indianapolis, but it ended up being a costly one.
Star tight end Rob Gronkowski could miss a month or more with a broken arm suffered while blocking on an extra point late in the game.
Richard Hill, assistant editor for Pats Pulpit, acknowledges that Gronk is a tough loss to swallow, but adds that the team may be primed for another deep playoff run nonetheless.
Aaron Hernandez and three other lesser known tight ends will have to step up in his absence. And all three phases of the game will have to adjust and play better.
Nonetheless, the schedule plays out favorably for clinching a playoff spot, with two contests against Miami and single games against New York Jets and Jacksonville on the slate. A first-round bye, however, might be a tough get.
“It won’t be easy,” Hill says. “They’ll need the Ravens to either drop two games (likely) and beat the Broncos (possible, but it’s at Mile High), or they’ll need the Broncos to stumble along the way (not likely).”
Hill provided some longer thoughts that we’ve turned into its own post. He also joined us as our guest blogger for this Thanksgiving weekend’s slate of games.
Week 11 realistically saw a great week of picks across the board, but Andy’s 10-4 picks were far and away the worst of the week, finishing two games back of Derek Arnold from the Russell Street Report—who’s pick of Chicago on Monday night kept him from matching Tony’s 13-1 mark. The only game Tony missed was the Jets drubbing of the Rams, a game that Andy and Tony discussed as potentially going that way earlier in the week over lunch (you’re going to have to just trust us on that one, we really did discuss it).
That puts some distance between first and second place for the season:
| Week 11 | Season | |
| Tony | 13-1 | 105-54-1 |
| Andy | 10-4 | 102-57-1 |
| Celebrity Bloggers | 12-2 | 100-59-1 |
Many observers were ready to bury the Baltimore Ravens after they lost Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb during their Oct. 14 win over Dallas. But the Ravens have won two of three games since the defensive duo went down and, after putting up 55 points against Oakland on Sunday, the Ravens stand at 7-2 heading into next week’s division matchup with Pittsburgh.
Baltimore has remained competitive on defense, but has won by scoring points – 124 in the last four games, specifically. Derek Arnold, senior editor with the Russell Street Report, says that’s no accident.
“Despite their reputation, the Ravens are no longer a team that is carried by the defense,” he says. “They have become one of the NFL’s best red zone offenses and, as a result, are near the top of the league in points scored.”
Consistency is still an issue on offense and he’s not banking on another division title just yet. But the offense is improving and seems to be understanding that it is going to need to score in the mid-20s many weeks to win.
“While not spectacular, Joe Flacco is an extremely capable quarterback,” Arnold says. “And when the offense runs through Ray Rice and utilizes play-action effectively, Torrey Smith can hit a home run at any time. Anquan Boldin, Dennis Pitta and Ed Dickson can keep the chains moving.”
Arnold joined Zoneblitz as its guest blogger for week 11. After pulling into a three way tie in Week 9, in Week 10 we saw Andy and myself continue in our tying ways, with a 9-4-1 record, while our collective of celebrity bloggers dropped eight games to break the three-way tie.
| Week 10 | Season | |
| Tony | 9-4-1 | 92-53-1 |
| Andy | 9-4-1 | 92-53-1 |
| Celebrity Bloggers | 5-8-1 | 88-57-1 |
Week 11 picks, where Andy and I finally don’t feel obligated to pick against the Vikings, sees us agree on all of the Sunday day games, but disagreeing on the night games:
Just a quick post, as we need to get these up before the game starts tonight–we both continued our brutal seasons last week, each going 1-3, and both hitting our upsets of the week. So as long as we’re betting 5x the amount on our upsets as our regular bets, we’re doing good, right? So Andy is now 7-17 on the year, while I am 11-13.
Here we go again, on our own…
I watched last nights game and followed along on Twitter with much amusement. There’s seriously nothing funnier in the sports community than watching Twitter blow up after a questionable call. Unfortunately, less than twelve hours later, and it feels to me like very few people have really thought this through rationally or objectively, and instead are just insisting that we need to get these refs out of our sacred game, so we can get back to…yelling at the regular refs for blowing calls.
Here are some of my (somewhat disorganized) thoughts on the current situation with the referees:
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