NFL Conference Championship Picks

OK, we're going to try something new here with this week's NFL picks. After going something like 6-21 in my last 27 picks this season (including the playoffs), I've gotten to the point where I cannot make a good pick to save my life. In fact, that has become just about as reliable an indicator as any other pattern I'm seeing out there, to the point that I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is and bet on it.

That's right -- it's time for some opposite picks. Works like a charm.

So first, we've got the Indianapolis Colts favored by 8 points at home over the New York Jets. Here is where normally I would point out how incredibly well the Jets' defense has been playing, including completely stifling the 11-game-win-streak San Diego Chargers in San Diego last week to the tune of just 7 points scored before trash time in that game by one of the NFL's most prolific scoring offenses. I would also point out that it was just a 5-point game early in the third quarter when these two teams met a few weeks ago before the Colts pulled their starters and eventually lost to allow the Jets into the playoffs. I would mention how the Colts are simply not the excessive-scoring offense that they may have been in the past, looking at their schedule all throughout this year. Lastly I would point out how well Mark Sanchez has been playing here over the past month, in particular in not trying to do too much and in not throwing costly interceptions or making idiot plays. All of this leads me to the obvious conclusion that a spread of more than a touchdown simply is too much for this game.

And thus, the pick is? Indianapolis. Lay the 8. It doesn't make sense, but like I said picking the opposite of what makes sense to me would have been a very profitable strategy over the past month of NFL football.

In the other game this weekend, it's the New Orleans Saints favored by 3.5 over the visiting Minnesota Favres, and again I think it's pretty clear which way my sensibilities lean. Although both teams absolutely shat the bed at the end of the regular season this year, the Saints are the home team, they were the better team during the entire season this year, and they looked to have bounced back even harder last week in a 45-14 brutalization of the defending NFC Champion Cardinals than the Favres did in smushing the Cowboys. Especially given Brett Favre's penchant for stepping down in big spots late in his career, and since I have the feeling that this is finally going to be Drew Brees' time to shine, that line of barely more than a field goal seems a bit on the low side to me. Thus, since all logic dictates a pick on the Saints, take the Favres, plus the 3.5 points.

Should be a fun chance this weekend to see just how bad I am really running in these NFL games. Because, if you get every game you pick wrong for a month, so then you decide to go opposite of what you want to pick the games as, and you go on to lose those opposite picks as well, then you know you are *seriously* running bad.