More than
Winning Selections...
Money Management Tools
to Turn Picks into Profits.

The release of the National Football League schedule is to a true football fan what Christmas morning is to a 4-year-old. One of my best friends is a 49ers season ticket holder, and when he gets his spring renewal package with the upcoming schedule, he goes through all 16 games and puts a “W” for a win or “L” for a loss.

He is stingy with the losses based on being a true fan, marking contests that appear most challenging with a squiggly line that is neither an “W” or “L”.

In fact, my friend picking games before a season begins doesn’t include the advantage of knowing the path San Francisco took to their week 10 showdown with division rival Los Angeles. Elements that are a lot more reliable for identifying winners than basing assumptions not on this season, but years gone bye.

One true and tried method for winning on the opening weekend is to take last year’s Super Bowl winner when they host the Thursday night season opener. This is a tradition that began in 2004 and only twice has straight up wins been interrupted. The defending champion didn’t open at home in 2013, that’s because the Super Bowl XLVII winning Baltimore Ravens share a parking lot with the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball and the Orioles wouldn’t reschedule their home game on the same day the Ravens would have opened the NFL season.

Instead of hosting the game to celebrate their Super Bowl triumph, the league dealt John Harbaugh and his men the toughest of all challenges. The Ravens had to open on the road against the team they had upset in overtime as a double-digit road underdog in the playoffs a few months earlier.

The result of the rematch was obvious, and the defending champions were beaten by a better team on their home field with a major revenge factor in their favor. Peyton Manning was only a game over .500 in his postseason career, but in the regular season he was as good as anyone at running up convincing winning margins.

Did you ever go to camp with your best friend?

I didn’t go to camp as a kid, but had I, it would have been great to have one of my best friends with me.

Seems three National Football League teams did have visions of bringing friends together in camp when they complemented their quarterbacks with one of their key college teammates.

The Jacksonville Jaguars had the first pick in the draft, and with a choice as obvious as Chadwick Boseman getting the best actor award in the Academy Awards, they took Clemson Quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Then late in the first round, with the 25th pick, they chose the guy he handed off to in college, runningback Travis Etienne.

Joe Burrow, who was the Cincinnati Bengals top pick in last year’s draft, got good news while he is rehabbing his late season knee injury. Cincinnati spent their first round pick, fifth overall, on his favorite college target, wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase. A personal side note here, I think the Bengals, and Burrow, would have been a lot better off if they had gone with Oregon Offensive Tackle Penei Sewell. Burrow isn’t rehabbing from his injury because of his receiving corps, but a weak offensive line.

Never-the-less, The tandem that tore up the college world on their way to a national championship a year ago is now working together for the Bengals.

What do Jeff Christenson, Babe Laufenberg, Reggie Collier, Gary Kubiak, Tom Ramsey and Bruce Mathison have in common with John Elway, Todd Blackridge, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, Ken O’Brien and Dan Marino?

They were the next six quarterbacks chosen in the 1983 National Football League Draft after Elway, Blackridge, Kelly, Eason, O’Brien and Marino were selected in the first round. No quarterback was chosen after the Miami Dolphins took Marino with the 27th pick until Christenson was selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the fifth round with the 137th pick in the draft.

What can we learn from this information?

Well, why it is fashionable to point out that Joe Montana wasn’t selected until the third round, the San Francisco 49ers tabbed him with the 82nd pick in the 1979 draft, and Tom Brady lasted until the sixth round, chosen by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, most often the scouts get it right.

Now, there are often some unsubstantiated claims about certain players that taint their viability on draft day. In 1983, there was a rumor that Marino had a drug problem, it is not verified that the Dolphins planted the story, but they certainly were the team that benefited from the false claim. Without that story circulating, we could have expected Marino would not have been the last of the six first round quarterbacks chosen that year.

This year, recent reports have Ohio State’s quarterback Justin Fields battling epilepsy. This is not a false rumor and has been confirmed by Fields who has battled it since a child and has managed it to where episodes are less frequent and it has never affected his play on the field. Still, the news may cool the 49ers prospects of drafting him with the third pick in the draft and shift their thinking to Alabama’s Mac Jones.