NFL Bets, Week 5: Embracing the sadness of Dolphins-Patriots and turning it into profit

For the first time all season, the Rhode Island Scumbag — our resident NFL betting sherpa — had a profitable week. Right at the moment I told everyone to fade him, too.

Instead, the Atlanta Falcons rallied to cover and the Green Bay Packers’ defense fell apart and, whoops, here’s a one-unit profit. Not great, certainly, but moving in the right direction. Week 5 promises another minefield of NFL action — nine of this week’s 14 games have spreads decided by three points or fewer. Asking the Scumbag to guide us through that with a losing record is like taking shopping advice from Wile E. Coyote but, you know what, let’s stick with the lukewarm hand this week.

His picks are below with commentary in blockquotes.

“The future’s in the air, I can feel it everywhere, blowing with the winds of change”…

For anyone not old enough to immediately hear the slow, haunting whistling, the line came from the Scorpions 1990 hit, “Winds of Change.” In the Scumbag’s case, that haunting whistle signals the first profitable week we have had since the NFL season started. [Ed. note: does this make us the first betting column to quote a Scorpions song that isn’t “Rock You Like a Hurricane”? I know it’s not the first German band quoted here, because the original Scumbag used to reference “Du Hast” like the mayor of 1998.]

It seems that all this Scumbag needed to get off the snide was a public verbal undressing from the editor complied with Scumbag 1.0 hopping on the “FADE!!” train and firing in an all fade parlay proudly displayed to the group chat. It was practically inevitable that something would finally have to give with my incredibly frustrating results after three weeks.

Pittsburgh showed up too late last week to make the picks a sweep (I like to think it was my karma for cashing my Thursday night Giants cover), but Sunday was a step in the right direction nevertheless. Here are four games I think can help keep the positive momentum going for the Scumbag this week.