Making a Bed We'll Have to Lie In: A Short Story By Vinny and Marco

Going into Thursday night's preseason finale, Marco and I knew we had an uphill battle when it came to picking games against the spread. In researching the games, we quickly realized that the Over/Under might be easier to gauge based on the experience of a team's back-up quarterback or the win-at-all-costs (Jim Schwartz) or momentum (Jim Harbaugh) philosophies of some of the coaches. Although Marco cautioned me, "If we're good at this, you know they'll ask us to keep doing it." How good could we be - it's the preseason. It's like shooting fish in a barrel - if it's night time and the barrel is actually an Arctic, fish-less ocean.



Okay, I'm exaggerating. The fourth week of the NFL preseason is typically an UNDER heavy week with all of the back-ups and their back-ups fighting for the remaining roster spots before Saturday's final cuts, so if you have a large bankroll you could bet UNDER across the board and walk away a moderate winner at 9-7 or 10-6.

OR...

You could just read The Spread Zone  where Marco and I - after a stellar first week of rolling our old Dungeons and Dragons 40-sided die, ended up with hit points, charisma, and a promotion to Dungeon Master. I know, I had you at 40-sided die, right? If you'll recall, our picks included 7 OVERs to go with the standard preseason UNDERs, and the results were:

TSZ's 2013 Preseason Stats

Thursday Night: 8-8 ATS

Preseason to Date: 29-19 ATS

Over/Under: 13-3

As my three year-old daughter likes to say, "Dad, that's blossom." So will we be including OVER/UNDERS in our weekly analysis? That is a conversation Marco and I will have with our expert team this weekend. It might be pretty cool to retire at 13-3, claim an 81% success rate in our advertising campaigns, but never, ever pick another game. Beats sticking around too long...



So that was the preseason, folks, and if you're not excited about football season starting after all that, then you're probably one of the misguided folks who ended up at The Spread Zone looking for porn. True story - in the first month of TSZ our number one source of traffic was from porn site frequenters looking for a different kind of spread.



In addition to this preseason wrap, I've added a couple of other articles on The Spread Zone with some interesting takeaways from this year's preseason. As sports bettors, it's important to find a balance between research and TMI - too much information. Take things with a grain of salt, and remember - if you try something and it works, it's called "a system," but if you try some thing and it doesn't, it's called information.

See you all back at The Spread Zone,

Vinny and Marco