Oh what a Sunday we are in for today. This NFL slate actually could not be anymore underwhelming to look at today. However, it doesn’t have to be said that there is still so much money out there to be made today. I would like to apologize for lying in a previous blog. A couple weeks ago I stated that I hated watching this football team play and that was untrue. After last week’s events in Foxborough, I can confidently say that I once again am filled with joy when I watch this team. It took two games for me to rebuild my confidence. The way that Sam slung the ball against the Eagles and Patriots absolutely reinvigorated my sense of hope in this team.
I never had a doubt that we were going to lose to the Patriots. My only regret with that game is that I didn’t put enough money on us. I’m still appalled by the fact that we went into the game as underdogs. The lack of respect that this team gets is absurd. We were even dogs before the trades happened. It’s just something that doesn’t make sense to me. But whatever I appreciate it, we got a more favorable line for a bet that was always a lock. If you were tailing our picks last weekend, then I assume you must have had a pretty good day. The home team went 4/4 on our Skin’s bets. We’re going to keep that action going today and make sure that everybody ends their Sunday with a boatload of money in their pockets.
A fun fact that I enjoyed hearing was that our win last week in Foxborough was the first time we had taken down the Patriots at their home field since 1996. Sam was able to navigate his way through a Belechick coached team to bring home the win. The play where he ran for it on 3rd down while spinning and breaking tackles was incredible and had me out of my seat. I was correct on the front of holding back my Twitter fingers to defend Sam. I’ve let his play speak for my opinions and I strongly stand behind the fact that I believe he is our quarterback of the future. The players even seem confident in it too. Jonathan Allen said in an interview that Sam is our quarterback. Once you have the respect of, in my opinion, the most respected player on our roster. Then that’s when you know the entire rest of the locker room is going to start buying in on Sam.
Other than Sam zoning out for that one plan in the red zone where he just blatantly threw the ball to the other team, I would say that Sam played a great game. It’s very okay for Sam to make mistakes. Rome wasn’t built in a day. When you look at quarterbacks like Josh Allen who has one or two plays a game that leaves you scratching your head and being like what the hell did he just do. Yet he is still regarded around the league as one of the best quarterbacks. If only our receivers could start giving Sam more help. There were some blatant drops last week that should not be happening whatsoever. I believe in our receivers to figure this out and work to make our young quarterback’s life easier. The reemergence of Jahan Dotson is something that I have been great to see over the last two weeks. Hopefully, it is safe to say that Jahan’s sophomore slump is over. We are very lucky that it didn’t last the entire season. The touchdown grab he had was awesome and his value for betting anytime touchdown may just be too good to pass up on yet again this week. I can’t wait to watch him play football today.
Despite the absence of Chase and Montez, the defense played a great game. It must be noted that this great game was played against Mac Jones who in my opinion is one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. I just watched him get benches against the Colts so it might be over for him. You could say it was a good week for us to have the Patriots on the schedule.
I found a video on YouTube that showed Kam Curl mic’d up throughout the game. I must say that I am so excited for us to pay him and keep him around for many more years to come. He is easily the biggest draft steal we have had in the last 10 years. He is a vocal leader and you don’t see it from just watching the games through a TV. My favorite part of the video was the fact that every time he was on the sidelines, he was sitting right next to Forbes. It really does seem like he is one of Emmanuel’s biggest fans. When it comes to talking about confidence and keeping your boys up, Kam may be having one of the biggest impacts on Emmanuel behind the scenes.
It really does seem like our entire secondary really likes Forbes. As Forbes continues to develop, it is essential that he has a group around him who won’t let him hang his head too low. He played a huge game for us last weekend and absolutely deserves credit for it. I saw one tweet talking about Mac Jones wanting to target him. I wasn’t sure if it was clickbait but either way, that clearly did not work out for them. Our secondary was all tweeting about Emmanuel after the game. Even if they don’t perform, it’s obvious that this group of guys enjoy hanging around each other. They also like seeing their teammates succeed. Kam was so pumped for Quan after he snagged the game sealing pick. He kept running around screaming “QUAANNNN.” Even though our secondary hasn’t been up to par, at least the boys are keeping the vibes up. It gives me a lot of confidence moving forward that this unit will be able to to figure things out and have some fun playing ball.
An unexpected stat that I saw is that Benjamin St-Juste is leading the league in pass breakups. He is having a huge season that seems to not be being talked about a lot around the league other than the weekly PFF stats updates. it goes to show that he is getting targeted a lot as well and he is having none of it. It’s crazy how his play improved tremendously after he stopped doing the stupid anime looking box celebration. If anyone remembers from the Bills game, he hit one of those in the first quarter prior to us going on to get absolutely destroyed. I’m all in on BSJ, I regret the comment I made in an earlier blog complaining about us drafting from the shitty Big Ten schools. I still don’t like the fact that we do this, however I do like the fact that we drafted a guy who can play ball.
The KJ Henry roughing the passer call was easily the worst and most brutal NFL officiating call I have seen in recent memory. I have genuinely seen videos of 12-year-olds getting hit harder on Twitter. At the moment, it is extremely easy to question the officiating of this game and if anyone on that crew had money on the Patriots. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t seen any tweets following a further investigation of this call. If this were to happen to the Chiefs or the Eagles on a primetime game, that ref would never be touching another whistle in the NFL again in his life. Just goes to show how us bottom feeder teams are underappreciated and we have to go and make things happen for ourselves. Obviously, the recency bias from the Giants game last year is still haunting me.
I really don’t want to talk about this, however I have a bone to pick and before I go into my expectations for today’s Seahawks game, I’m going to pick it. I never thought I would be saying these words and it brings me a lot of sadness that I am saying it, but fuck Chase Young. It took him maybe 3 days to start throwing shade at our organization. Talking about the 49ers being a locker room full of winners. If he had just said that, I would have had no problems. But his delivery was 100% so obviously meant to be in a manner that disrespected our franchise. It’s just an extremely unnecessary comment. In my opinion, it makes moving on from him so much easier. It’s clear he had some beef or things going on with our team and locker room. I wish him the best and good health, but for the time being I am out on Chase.
The Skins got thrown in the 4pm slot to take on the Geno Smith led Seahawks. I must say that I absolutely love Geno Smith; however that does not mean that I think he is a good quarterback. I definitely think he is capable of playing great in flashes. However, luckily for us he is also capable of playing like absolute dog shit. He and Kirk Cousins to me are very similar quarterbacks. If you let them get hot, then they are going to tear your defense apart. Because of this, I think it is extremely important that we do not let Geno get in a rhythm. Normally, I would be expecting Geno to go out there and tear us apart, but after the trades and recent shakeup, I actually have confidence in us to go out there and watch him shit the bed. It just seems like our team is pissed off right now and when we expect everything to not go our way, things usually end up going our way. I really hope the Skins are able to maintain the mindset that we’ve been written off of the remainder of the season. I just have a lot more confidence in us when we are like this.
God forbid people start talking about playoff possibilities. I may be way ahead of myself, but I do think that it is eventually going to happen. I do believe that the second we start getting mentioned about taking the seventh seed, then the season will be over. However, with new ownership and a new gun slinging quarterback, you never know what could happen. Just imagine how fun that would be to watch if Sam Howell ends up being a playoff masterclass guy. He hasn’t exactly had to play any games yet that really mean something. Not saying that every game doesn’t mean something, but I am more referring to a playoff-like atmosphere. Today’s stadium has the potential to be the loudest that Sam has ever played in. I still watch that UNC VT entrance occasionally because it was the first big game to happen after Covid. We will see how Sam is able to handle it. I am not entering this week with as much confidence as last, but needless to say I will be hammering our moneyline and I expect us to win this one. We will be riding with the same string of bets as usual. The twitter will be posting our picks to make sure that everyone makes it out of today with some extra dollars in their pocket. Let’s have a Sunday and good luck to everyone out there this week. Skins by 90.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon