Tag: rhode island scumbag

Last week’s results weren’t awful, but they were the worst thing you can be as a handicapper: boring. Our Scumbag prognosticator and I teamed up for a 3-4 record, meaning we were neither profitable nor fadeable. There wasn’t much you could have taken from last week’s column to make a confident decision in either direction.

Fortunately, we’ve got plenty more opportunities to get back on track, even after Week 11’s hiccup. Week 12 brings us the NFL’s annual Thanksgiving games as well as the chance to bet against Kirk Cousins in primetime (though I wish the Dallas Cowboys could have saved that boat-racing another week so we could get an artificially high Minnesota Vikings line). Where are we headed with this week’s picks? Oh, friends, I would love to introduce it here but that would only spoil the surprise.

Week 9 brought another profitable Sunday for our Scumbag System ™. It would have been even better had the Miami Dolphins settled for at least one more field goal on fourth-and-short, but these are the perils of betting on an enterprising young head coach in 2022 (and, somehow, a reason why Jim Irsay believes Jeff Saturday will be the next great head coach of the Indianapolis Colts).

Week 10 will provide four divisional rivalries as well as a handful of big underdogs and lofty totals. Is this the week to trust Kirk Cousins? To believe in the Atlanta Falcons chaos? To invest further in the Tennessee Titans’ slow-and-steady progress under Mike Vrabel?

Here’s what our resident dirtbag handicapper had to say about last week’s mediocre result:

Going 1-1-1 doesn’t seem that bad … but when you realize how close we were to an easy 3-0 weekend, it is mildly infuriating. The Dolphins decided they didn’t want to tackle Justin Fields. Mike McDaniel decided to go for it on multiple fourth downs in field goal range and convert none. That should have been a blowout by Miami. The Rams just needed a first down in the fourth quarter to ice the game. Nope … they gave it back to Tom Brady and let him do Brady things.

Frustrating day, but we are on to Week 10.

Week 8 kept the Scumbag System’s ™ winning streak alive. Just barely.

Jumping on the Buffalo Bills early at -10 resulted in a Sunday night push when Josh Allen briefly forgot how to play football in a moment where he could have erased all hope of a Green Bay Packers comeback. Instead, he left that duty to Mason Crosby, who came through to miss a late 55-yard field goal and allow the Bills to walk to the locker room with a 27-17 win.

Things didn’t go as smoothly with the gameday bets our Ocean State handicapper actually made. Garbage time was absolutely brutal to our Scumbag friend, making it two straight weeks with profitable locks and creating some behind the scenes drama (that he is in no way shape or form compelled to share with us, but does anyway. I think it’s therapeutic. Who doesn’t like throwing a good “bad beat” story into the universe?).

Backdoor covers in the NFL can make or break your weekend. I’ve been on both sides of them. This week was one of the worst experiences that I’ve ever had in the NFL. I was on the wrong end of four garbage time, meaningless scores turning my betting tickets from stacks of hundred dollar bills to coasters for the beers that I then had to consume to try and dull the pain.

I live bet the Jacksonville Jaguars on three different occasions in the early game. All I needed was a three-point win to cash all three. Nope, thanks a lot Trevor.

I live bet the Tennessee Titans two different times and just needed a 14-point win to cash both. Then Dameon Pierce catches a touchdown pass with 17 seconds left. Light those tickets on fire.

New England Patriots alternate line -9.5 was one of my favorite plays of the day paying out at +215. They had the New York Jets pinned deep and all they had to do was play a little bit of defense. Nope. 60 yard play followed by a 3rd down TD catch. Light that eight-unit winner on fire.

Finally, the Packers. Oh my god was I right about this team. They suck.

However, Buffalo doesn’t really care if they win by 10, 20 or 30. Once they are up a few points, they knew they were in the driver’s seat against that inept offense. That one really stung. Hopefully you got -10 or better and didn’t lay the alt line -16.5 or the actual -10.5 [Ed. note: ooof]

The good news is your official locks are in good hands and still hitting at a plus-.600 rate. Here’s what we’ve got for Week 9.

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After a brief bump in the road, the Scumbag System ™ is back on track. Last week’s 2-1 record — only the Titans’ sudden competence could slow it down — pushed the Rhode Island Scumbag to 8-4-1 through four weeks.

That included some boring bets — rooting for the unders in a down year for many NFL offenses — and faith in an Atlanta Falcons team that managed to not only upset the Cleveland Browns but did so while completing only seven passes (and, thus, destroying the brains of anyone who took Kyle Pitts in the third round of their fantasy drafts). It was a vital bounceback for our handicapper. Now he’s putting his system up against Week 5.

In his words:

This week will test our handicapping focus and discipline. It is always tempting to splash around after a winning week. That is how casinos make a lot of their money back.

Understand this… the money you just won (if you followed this article) is yours. It isn’t “profit” or “house money.” This is your money.

Be smart and stick to the unit system. Place one unit on all of your base plays. Bump that to two or three units if you’re feeling very bullish, but don’t extend beyond that.

There are eight plays that match our systems. We can’t make eight bets in a day. We’d take on too much risk and put the likelihood of an undefeated betting day basically out of reach. We’ll have to look at the eight games and trim the fat. The two pure system plays — home underdogs in conference games — are:

• New York Jets +3.5 vs. Miami Dolphins
• Arizona Cardinals +5 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The divisional game unders (17-5 to the under from my rough calculation) in play are:

• Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Houston Texans under 45
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Atlanta Falcons under 48.5
• Jets vs. Dolphins under 44.5
• Minnesota Vikings vs. Chicago Bears under 44
• Baltimore Ravens vs. Cincinnati Bengals under 48.5
• Kansas City Chiefs vs. Las Vegas Raiders under 52.5

You can’t ignore 17-5 so I’m going to select 2 of these and then add in a side. I’m going to abandon the first system for two reasons. First, I’ve seen Philly play. I’m not going to bet against them until I see a valid reason. Second, I made a vow to myself that I will NOT be including the New York Jets in any more of my plays.

Alright then, we’ve got a basic menu. Let’s see what this week’s selections are.

The Rhode Island Scumbag started off the 2022 NFL season with a 3-0 record. He also, apparently, did not appreciate me telling the world he doesn’t believe in outer space.

The deluge at Soldier Field, Justin Fields’ wizardry and Trey Lance’s inability to generate offense — especially after losing Eli Mitchell — paid off his Chicago Bears +6.5 bet and made my declaration that I’d take the San Francisco 49ers at -10 look utterly stupid. Throw in the Atlanta Falcons’ feistiness and the New England Patriots’ struggles and you’ve got an early undefeated record that’s 25 percent of the way to the 12-0 start at which I promised him a podcast.

[Ed note: Oh GOD why did I promise him a podcast DAMMIT what a terrible idea.]

This, fortunately for all of us, led to a 300-word lecture that preceded this week’s picks. Here it is, edited for content and conciseness and because he spelled my name three different ways in the space of one paragraph.

Ever wonder why every stat nerd you hear on the radio or have to listen to in the pre-game shows isn’t smashing every single bet and cashing tickets every weekend? That’s because as long time bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro once said “trends don’t pay the rent, my friend.” That’s why I wasn’t worried when my boy Christian D’Andrea [Ed. note: he used my full name like a disappointed parent!] threw a bunch of stats my way to try and make my Chicago Bears pick look like a guaranteed loser. If sports betting were that easy, all those fancy hotels in Vegas would more closely resemble a Howard Johnson’s. No, this racket is not that easy. You want to lay points on the road with an unproven QB in a hostile environment? You go right ahead, Christian.

This is going to be a great battle between Christian and myself because we are completely opposite in our approach to selecting games. I watch the games on Sunday. Then, I make the lines on Monday (or what I think the lines should be.) Then, I compare my lines to the Vegas lines and see where I have an advantage. Christian seems to bet a lot more based on trends, statistics from some random number crunchers. He pays less attention to the actual human beings playing the great game of football. We will see how that works out as the season progresses.

It is here I would like to remind you that the RIS locks finished the 2021 season at 7-21. If they were a football team, they would have been Joe Judge’s New York Giants. If he did pay attention to trends, he would know he did not cash a single lock after Week 16, including the playoffs.

Also, the “random number crunchers” are the NFL themselves, but go off king. God damn I love this guy. Maybe that podcast is a *great* idea. Alright man, light me up again.

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