Best Bets: NFL Week 6, survivor league, totals and more

Jeff and Sam are back and they’re trying to gather themselves as much as the Bears are into the bye, as they both went 0-2 last week on the Bears-Raiders game and its total.

That dropped Sam to 6-3 on the Bears this season and Jeff to 4-5.

In the WCG Survivor pool Sam also took his second strike, in consecutive weeks to boot. Jeff got his first strike, as both pickers were on the Chiefs at home. Rough week all around for the heroes of this column. Blame Jeff as he was at that game and was clearly bad luck.

Overall, 14 survivor league members are now eliminated, 12 picked up strike two, 13 have one strike and just nine with clean sheets.

In the pick ‘ems league no one should quit their day job and move to Vegas but we now have a three way tie for first with a 40-38 picking record. Congrats to t4m8shn, WhiteH20, and CoachClem for their above-water picking thus far. Sam has jumped into the top 10 while Jeff and Lester are not good at this at 10 or more games under .500.

But we soldier on and there are a lot of small lines this week along with more mid-double-digit favorites and the first Turd Bowl with 0-5 Washington against 0-4 Miami.

Sam: The season hasn’t been kind to me, aside from being 6-3 on the Bears, I’m 36-42 in the WCG pick ‘ems and 11-13-1 in another college and NFL pick ‘ems league. I know hovering around .500 is pretty good, especially when it’s not real money on the line, but I am competitive. I want winners!

This week is tough, there’s a lot of risky lines out there.

The first game that is catching my eye though is Arizona hosting Atlanta. In a battle of the birds, the Falcons are 2.5 point road favorites. I actually like the home underdog here, the Falcons are reeling and were taken apart by the Texans and Deshaun Watson a week ago. The Cardinals haven’t lit the world on fire, but they’ve scored 20 or more points three times this year and the Falcons are 31st in points allowed. The Cardinals have been in three of their five games and Kyler Murray has been making plays. Give me the Cards and the over in this game, because neither defense is good, while 51.5 is a big number, it’s come up from an opening number of 47, so if you can find a lower number take it, but I think this could be a shootout in the desert.

The other game I’m looking at is Jacksonville (-1) against New Orleans. The Saints have been fine without Drew Brees, going 3-0 in his absence, but their defense has been iffy, allowing 23.2 points per game. I like the road underdog Saints here, I think they’ve been playing well without Brees and are just finding ways to win games. I think they can win this game outright.

I don’t hate Miami at home as a 3.5 underdog to the also winless Washington, however, that’s not an official pick.

For the survivor, I’m going to the emergency case and breaking it for the New England Patriots. I’m down to my last strike and I don’t want to be out of the fun before the halfway point. If I hadn’t burned the Cowboys already, I’d be tempted to take them against the Jets. If you really want to live dangerously, take a side in the Washington/Miami game.

Picks: Cardinals +2.5, Cardinals/Falcons over 51.5, Patriots (survivor)

Jeff: You see, what happened was, Sam copied off my paper and clearly that’s not good for anyone. I can’t believe my bad luck Sunday as I watched the Bears sleepwalk through the first quarter, the Packers dominate the Cowboys, and the Chiefs look like they watched too much Bears offense tape.

Let’s start off with what simply has to be an easy win - the Patriots at home against a banged up Giants team. I hate to burn the Patriots but I’m really hurting after that first strike when using a good Kansas City team. I had four teams that I was considering using last week and three of them won easily! Let’s just take the free square here and live to fight another week as the bad teams won’t all be playing each other like they are in Week 6.

Speaking of those Patriots, I’m going to take on that, ahem, giant line against New York and say that they can cover 17 points. Yeah, it’s a lot, but the Giants really don’t have much in the way of offensive weapons tonight and Belichick can almost certainly scheme to take away Golden Tate. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Patriots pitch a shut out.

The other line I really like is Philly getting 3 points on the road in Minnesota. The Eagles match up really well with what the Vikings want to do and should be able to shut down Dalvin Cook. With Carson Wentz and this Eagles offense finding its footing, I’m happy to take the road dog in this one.

Picks: Patriots -17, Eagles +3, Patriots (Survivor)

What are your picks of the week or are you taking a break in honor of the bye week? Hit up the comments below of find us on Twitter @SamHouseholder and @gridironborn.