Gross Football Lunch – Weeks 12 & 13, 2025 NFL Season

Greetings loyal readers! I will be out of town next week for Thanksgiving, and while I could choose to be an incorrigible dirtbag and force you to track down my picks on BlueSky, I have chosen the path of honor, and will provide my picks for both weeks in this space. If this means I must pick Week 13 an entire week in advance, without any advance knowledge of the season-altering injuries, bizarre upsets, and general chaos to come in Week 12, then so be it.

This is a lot of football to get through, so there is no recipe, video game review, or expression of Vikings-based despair to be had in this column. To the picks, and then to the other picks!

NFL Confidence Pool – Week 12

Bye: Broncos, Chargers, Commanders, Dolphins

Week 11 was a spectacular enough bounce back that I would be in danger of letting it get to my head, if I didn’t know any better. But I’ve suffered enough double-digit losses on heat checks to know that the Texans cannot be dismissed entirely and the Rams have a tough matchup this week and that when the fraud stink lines become as visible as they are on both the Bears and the Steelers, trying to determine whose are technically larger is hair-splitting.

Fortunately, the fact that we’re rounding into the back third of the season means that we know about as much as we’re going to, and the relative dearth of division rivalry games has blessed us with a bounteous feast of mismatches a week early. These double digit picks may seem a bit obvious and a bit boring, but you pick the schedule you’re given. One of the most beneficial pieces of wisdom I’ve discovered over the years is that there is no reason not to leverage your advantages to fullest possible extent. These top three picks are the juiciest mismatches I’ve seen all season, and the closest thing to free money you’ll come across in this racket. Why shouldn’t I take them for all they’re worth?

Of course, one cannot have juicy mismatches without also having mind-numbingly dull football that simply isn’t worth talking about. That said, I am compelled to offer brief justifications for the final two picks in this group. The Panthers are to be commended for their winning record, but otherwise not to be taken seriously. The 49ers will destroy them, defensive injuries be damned. The only way the Panthers can win is if the 9ers’ run defense suffers a collapse so complete, it rivals that of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Was this tortured metaphor merely a flimsy pretext for posting contemporaneous newsreel footage of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse? Reader, you know me too well.

Moving on! Lamar Jackson is back and the worst of the Ravens’ schedule is in the rear-view mirror; keen observers of this space will note that I have been as enthusiastic in declaring the Ravens “back” as anybody. But they gave me a real scare in Cleveland last week, and weak inter-conference opposition has been one of their stumbling blocks in recent seasons. No, I couldn’t tell you what a theoretical Jets victory looks like, but I couldn’t tell you how this team lost to the Raiders at home last year, and that game already happened. Football sucks like that.

The double-digits are such easy assignments this week that I can’t make space for the Eagles, a team who have quietly regained their status as the unquestioned best team in the NFC. I say quietly because you wouldn’t know it from The Discourse; when you piss and moan about your winning team for wining football games normally and not by spreading the opposing players’ insides on the turf like ‘nduja on a pizza, you tap into the Universal Philly Fan. But with the defense back to full strength, each and every team in the league unfortunate enough to face them will have their hands full. Still, if I can pick an entire week without putting a single divisional game in the double digits, I will.

Speaking of The Discourse, the word ‘fraud’ gets thrown around a lot when discussing football teams, and has for at least a decade or so. (Suffice to say, we should all take a moment to appreciate what a wild ride the 2015 Panthers gave us.) What started as a marginally useful if also marginally obnoxious shorthand for a team with a great record that fails the eye test more than their record should allow has become a quick and dirty way to denigrate playoff teams with obvious flaws, or another form of acting out when a good team loses. This is a reminder that every team in the league is flawed, and every team in the league drops at least a few games here and there. If you want to find something smart and interesting to say about a team, there are more than enough ways to research the details of their performance, both in individual games and throughout the season. If you want to throw a tantrum, do so but keep the rest of us out of it, you hear?

All of this is to say that I don’t think there’s anything the Colts can do to make me consider them a serious title contender short of winning the Super Bowl. I do not trust Daniel Jones to win three, let alone four, playoff games, and neither should you. But they are going to win the AFC South in all likelihood and could easily find their way to the Divisional or Championship round. Fraudulence is relative concept in football, and regardless of what happens to the Colts in the playoffs, you can’t tell me that this Colts season hasn’t been a resounding success, and you can’t tell me they can’t beat the Chiefs.

But! The Chiefs are playing at home, with their backs against the wall and their very playoff chances shrinking with each additional loss. Do you want to pick against them this week? That’s what I thought.

Goddamn this last game is depressing. I’m taking the Browns because I think Myles Garrett may single-handedly will them to victory against the putrid Vegas line, regardless of what what wacky scramble-to-sack shenanigans K-Stef and Shadeur drew up earlier this week. 1 point assignments are nothing if not an invitation to commit to whatever wacky, stupid bits your priors give rise to.

NFL Confidence Pool – Week 13

Having already acknowledged that I am making these picks far in advance of a sensible time for doing so, I hereby further acknowledge tat I have nothing smart to say about any of them. There is nothing I can say now that this weekend’s action can’t make foolish, and my grandpa taught me that it’s better to say nothing and look stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt. You’ll just have to pore over this list of numbers and letters as though it were a religious text from a long-dead civilization, written in a language you don’t understand, then copy it down exactly as written onto your own pool sheet anyway without knowing why. The price of seeking foreknowledge is steep, indeed.

Enjoy the games, everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!