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

Two National Football League games was good enough for your dad on Thanksgiving, and this year it is going to have to be good enough for you.

The traditional hosts, the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys, will be in action while hosting the Houston Texans and Washington Redskins respectively. The originally scheduled late game, the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers hosting the defending AFC North Division Champion Baltimore Ravens, has been postponed … at least until Sunday.

While that game has been rescheduled for a 10:15 a.m. Pacific Time start on Sunday, whether the three day delay will actually allow the contest to be played is not yet a settled question. The Ravens have a Covid-19 outbreak that looks a lot like one in a Washington nursing home in March.

Okay, so we get the Cowboys hosting the second game on Thursday and they meet the Redskins with the winner possibly ending the weekend alone atop the NFC East Division standings.

Battle of titans, huh?

Well, not really.

Do you like to gamble?

Las Vegas may be for you.

I was once in a masters program writing class at the University of San Francisco, and a couple times that semester the professor would have us read one of our latest works to the rest of the class. The guy reading his story one day seemed a nice enough fella, but when he shared his story about how he liked to cruise up to Lake Tahoe at a leisurely pace in his old Toyota, my blood boiled.

He was one of those sons-of-bitches that tied up traffic on Highway 50 while I was rushing to get to the Lake Tahoe casinos to get down on a football game. I hated those slow travelers, and it sometimes took more than one passing lane to get them in the rearview mirror.

Now, you might think that as long as I was rushing up to make a bet on a football game that I like to gamble. Truth is, I don’t … at least not on football. Now I may enjoy a cocktail and time sitting next to my wife pulling on a slot machine … and that certainly would be gambling. But gamble on a football game?

No.

Two National Football Conference teams in very similar situations in their division standings meet tonight in Florida when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Los Angeles Rams. Both these teams have lost three games this year, the Bucs have won one more because they are one of the final two teams that are yet to enjoy their bye week. All 32 teams are in action this coming week, beginning with the three games on Thanksgiving, and the Bucs will get their bye the week after the holiday.

Both the Rams and Buccaneers need a win to keep pace with the leaders in their divisions. The Buccaneers looking for a victory to catch New Orleans in the NFC South with eight wins, they would still have one more loss. With a win tonight, the Rams equal the Seattle Seahawks mark at seven wins and three losses in the NFC West. The Rams also own the tiebreaker against the Seahawks, having beaten them last week in the first of their two 2020 head-to-head matchups.

Have you ever spent the final days with an elderly loved one?

My experience is that their demise is often preceded by a burst of alertness and energy before they pass.

Last week, Tampa Bay was in Carolina to play a Panthers team looking to end a four game losing streak. In the first half, Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady didn’t look like the greatest of all time. In fact, on his first offensive possession, which lasted only two plays, his offense turned the ball over. When the two teams headed for the halftime locker room, the game was tied at 17 and there were more questions than answers about Brady.

After all, this is an aging quarterback that got blown out on his home field in a critical NFC South Division showdown the week before by the New Orleans Saints, 38-3. The week before that, Brady looked old while nursing his team to a two-point win over the win starved New York Giants.