Monday Morning Quarterback: Week 11

Well, Spread Zone fans and followers, yesterday I finally discovered something more annoying than watching baseball with my mother-in-law.

Watching football with her.

Before I get to that story, let's start things off with our warm welcomes and coffee thank you's. After that gut-wrenching, garbage touchdown at the end of the San Diego Denver game knocked Marco and I out of our pool and into a bad mood, I went to The Spread Zone and was pleasantly surprised to find thee new followers and a few comforting e-mails.

TSZ WELCOMES: Jimmy C, Greg, and Edude. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to your input. Our Thursday Three is about to take the gambling world by storm.

COFFEE THANK YOU'S: Generous donations were made by Salvatore, Todd,  and Jimmy C. We haven't slept in two days, gentlemen. Thank you. We're already working on our Week 12 picks.

Back to the story.

About a month ago, I called Dish Network when he noticed they were giving away the NFL Ticket to new subscribers. "My mom has been a customer for nine years," I told them, "Any chance you could hook her up with The Ticket for the rest of the year."
"Well, we're not supposed to do that anymore, but let me see what I can do." Three cheerful Dish Network employees later, lots of ingratiating "No thank you's" to other discounted offers, and they hooked me up for the rest of the year, Premium Red Zone channel included.

My animal communicating, self-proclaimed psychic (no it has never helped me with gambling) mother-in-law has dog obedience classes on Sunday, so life was good, the world was in order, and I had a place of my own to completely ignore my wife and daughter and do the very important research for my very important blog. That is, until it started raining. No dog obedience classes and suddenly my mother-in-law is enough of a football fan to sit on the couch with me for six hours giving me her "psychic" hits on the games we're watching. "I think the blue team is going to win," she'd say, and I'd get annoyed because I'd picked the Packers.

                                      
                                     Pointy Birds Good

Please know that I believe in and respect the talents she has when it comes to animals, but I have yet to see those skills translate to the grid iron. Granted she has said all along that it was going to be a good year for animal teams when the season began, and when I counted 16 of them and asked her to be more specific, she said, "Bird teams." When I pressed her further because there are five of them, she specified that it would be teams with pointy logos like the Seahawks and the Falcons.

                               

                                                   Round Birds Bad

Sure enough, both teams are exceeding expectations, and I can respect that kind of predictive value. What I can't respect, especially when I picked the Cardinals (non-pointy bird logo) to cover the spread, is a 70 year-old woman jumping up and flapping her arms like what she thinks a Falcon looks like every time
Atlanta scored. "Straight birds," she sang, and then she would do some weird John Travolta singing Grease Lightening move. Very annoying. I hope it stops raining soon.

                                
                           Crazy Mother-in-law - Annoying

I know I'm leaving a lot out of this week's MMQB - more concussions, ridiculously high-scoring games between the NFL's best defense and a team that would struggle to make the BCS rankings, and three OTs simultaneously which was just ridiculous. If you had the Red Zone and no mother-in-law, you must have been in heaven. Even with her around, I was - especially since Carolina managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and hand the game over to Tampa Bay. Plus Freeman is on my fantasy team and that OT TD gave my team the two point victory. Even when everything doesn't work out the way you hoped it would, there's always fantasy football.

And there's always next week.

What am I complaining about? Marco and I are looking at another winning week even if the Bears don't cover - and it doesn't look like they're going to - our Friday Five went 4-1 ATS (yes, we're taking credit for getting in on Baltimore early and being very specific), and best of all our Fan Picks Thursday Three went 3-0 (yes, they get credit too for the same reasons). I sure hope no morons join TSZ, because I think this group of gamblers we have here is special. Keep up the good work, everyone.

That's your cue, fellow gamblers. This is your reminder to start thinking about your Thursday Three. Remember, it's a short week and a football-filled holiday with some enticing games to choose from, so please get your picks in by Wednesday night at midnight Eastern time to give me a chance to do the write up here on the West coast.

Here's the form we're sticking with.

The Thursday Three: Where Fans Share Their Expertise

Step 1: We have a new e-mail address: vinnyandmarco@gmail.com

Step 2: Include in your e-mail to us the three picks this week - against the spread - you are most confident in. Rank them in order 1 (most confident) to 3 (least confident).

Step 3: Include a sentence or two as to why you think your teams will win and/or cover. Please include stats, history, match-up issues rather than just "C'mon - Packers Rule," or "Jay Cutler Sucks." Actually, you can totally include that last part. 

Step 4: Let us know a little bit about yourself:

Where are you from: City, State

Primary Fan of: Which team do you love?

Step 5: Send us your picks and your thoughts and check back on Thursday to see if you were a part of the consensus Top Three Picks. Marco and I will tally up the picks and post The Thursday Three along with commentary from you the reader/fan/gambler. 

It's fun and, as usual, it's free.

I will post this reminder again all by itself. Last week we had about a half a dozen submissions and we'd like to see that number increase weekly. 

I'll get to all your e-mails this evening. Thank you all for making The Spread Zone what it is: a warm and comfortable place for gamblers to come and share their successes, their failures, and their money. 

Happy Monday, everyone. Only three more days until football. We'll have our Week 12 Picks ATS out ASAP. 

Vinny and Marco

Reminders: This is a new section we will include at the end of every post. Our goal at The Spread Zone is to help you make money, and if we can scrape together a few pennies with Google Adsense and other Ad revenues, we're going to try to do that. But we need you're help.

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