Bart’s Best – Week 8 Top Plays

Again, sometimes you just have to be content with a .500 week if you’re a betting grinder. I ended up 2-2 last week bringing my season total to 16-12. However, watching a lot of those games come in last week always makes you second-guess yourself for not taking certain games. I originally stayed away from New England because you never know how traveling to another country can throw off a team. Then after the game started, I thought, okay – they both had to travel and New England is like….28 points better than Tampa. Dang! I jumped off the Jets bandwagon a week before so I couldn’t bet on them again – even if they were playing Oakland. I was the only one who picked Houston in my confidence pool, yet didn’t have enough confidence to pull the trigger in making them my pick for the week. (Notice: no comment about the Bears) Oh well, on to Week 8:Seattle +9.5 vs Dallas – I hate to pick on Dallas, but I love betting against them because believe it or not, in Vegas, they probably still have some of “America’s Team” feel for bettors. This is my favorite of the week. Seattle is coming off of a bye. Everyone remembers them being blown out by Arizona. When they were beat by Arizona, people were still thinking that Arizona wasn’t that good this year and they were on their post Super Bowl loss slide. Well, guess what? Arizona is pretty good (i.e. see last week vs. Giants). Everyone saw Dallas beat Atlanta last week and thinks that Dallas is going to blow out everybody; thus the 9.5 points to Seattle. I’ll take the points and will probably even take them straight up as an upset in confidence pools.

Texans -3.5 vs Bills – I don’t have much to say about this one other than I think my fantasy boys – Johnson & Daniels – are going to have big days again and the Texans will win by at least a TD.

Tennessee – 3 vs Jax – Tennessee gets their first win this week. Vince Young comes in and does whatever he can to keep his job – like running – very similar to Garrard for the Jags. Sunday is Tennessee’s playoffs and I imagine Vince doing whatever necessary to put a W up.

Cleveland +13.5 vs Bears – Bears will win, no doubt, but handing out 13.5? I’m a little gun shy with doing that after last week. They need to prove to me that they can fix that wretched Defense before I feel comfortable handing out 13.5 points again. I think the offense can put up numbers in the 30’s – can the defense hold the Browns in the teens? God, I hope so, but I wouldn’t put my $ on them just yet.

Season Total 16-12 – 57% winning percentage – need to step it up – just a little to get to my prediction.