Reid Kerr

Happy holiday season, dear readers!

I celebrated Black Friday in the same way I always do, by going down to my local shopping center, getting a buggy full of large, awkward items, and just slowly trawling around the aisles, basically being a piece of human cholesterol in the arteries of commerce. After a few hours I just leave the cart behind and go have breakfast somewhere. You’re welcome, shoppers. Your frustration is my family tradition.

Now that we are through with Thanksgiving, we’re firmly in the most wonderful time of the year. With Christmas and New Year dead ahead, there’s a lot of great pro football coming up. Not to mention some of those other lesser sports, of course.

More importantly, this is the time of year where you find out whether or not your team is serious about contending. There’s about five-and-a-half games left for everybody, and honestly, there’s a lot of teams in the middle, and there are entire divisions still up for grabs to mediocre teams.

Yeah, I’m looking right at you, NFC South. When Carolina is a three-win team with a chance to still host a playoff game, somebody isn’t pulling their weight.

So when you think about your favorite team, are you in or out? Can they make a run or is it time to start watching bowl games and dreaming of the draft, and finally cleaning out the garage? Is your coach a keeper or not? Quick examples.

Dallas has won two games in a row and has a weirdly winnable schedule dead ahead of them, so … is the excitement back? Or is this the second half false hope that gets expectations up just to crush them again?

The Chargers have won four of five, are they really a playoff contender?

The Texans still have the record of a playoff team, but … they’ve really come back to Earth this season. Are they really ready for the postseason?

Forget the playoffs, what’s the over/under on cataclysmic events for the Jets for the rest of the season?

The answers to these and many other questions will unfold in front of us over the next month. While we’re putting up trees and hanging lights, teams will be making runs to the playoffs, or more likely benching players for vague reasons as the teams start scouting for the draft.

So enjoy it while it’s happening, take it all in while the Christmas carols are playing because it’ll all be over soon. By the time we’re checking our stockings and wondering what figgy pudding really is, about half of the teams in the league will be done for the season and playing out the string.

Time for my week 13 picks. On Thanksgiving, I went 3-0, and 1-2 against the Vegas point spreads. In my defense,the Bears are coming up with new ways to lose games that we can only dream about. Lesson learned there. On the season, I’m now 49-29 and 35-43 against Vegas. Here’s my picks. As always, these are for the purposes of comedic discussion only. No wagering.

Houston (-3.5) at Jacksonville: If NFL teams were holiday food, the Jaguars would be the equivalent of that one casserole dish where it doesn’t matter what the ingredients are, it just never comes together. You have high hopes when you scoop it onto your plate, then you feed it to the dog when no one else is looking.

Pick: Texans to win and cover, winning by four points or more.

Seattle (-1) at NY Jets: I’ll say this for this whole situation, the addition of Aaron Rodgers definitely turned the Jets into a team you had to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean on the field.

Pick: Seahawks to win and cover, winning by two points or more.

LA Rams (-2.5) at New Orleans: I’m not sure which is more surprising, the Saints two-game winning streak to start the season, or the one in their last two games.

Pick: Rams to win and cover, winning by three points or more.

Pittsburgh (+3) at Cincinnati: The Bengals are the perfect example of what a pro football team would look like if it were put together by a guy who only plays fantasy football.

Pick: Bengals to win but not cover, winning by two points or fewer.

Philadelphia (+3) at Baltimore: This is a battle between two teams I hate, but I am very afraid of. This is like when the Freebirds would square off against Skandor Akbar’s Devastation Incorporated. This matchup is just scary and unnerving, and there’s no one for me to root for here.

Pick: Eagles to win it outright.

Tampa Bay (-6) at Carolina: In philosophical terms, Baker Mayfield diving on a fumble at the goal line in a week 12 game is the exact opposite of Cam Newton declining to do that in the Super Bowl.

Pick: Bucs to win and cover, winning by seven points or more.

I’ll also take the Cardinals over the Vikings, Chargers over the Falcons, and throwing my money in the river over getting up at four in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving to save twenty bucks. Good luck, everybody, and a safe and happy Thanksgiving weekend to all.