LOCKS Season Total to Date: 19-15-1

Brutal week on LOCKS.   I think, similar to the Lions, I refused to buy into the talents of the Florida State Seminoles, and I got served.  It has been a whole month of undervaluing their team, and no doubt many others doubted them the same way, but FSU absolutely dominated that second half against the Miami Hurricanes.  My ignorance of the Seminoles cost me.

Otherwise, there were some near misses, UCLA was only a few points away from covering even -27, and the most unlikely cover, A&M -46 still nailed it.   The lone NFL game was a miss: Buffalo was worthless in the 2nd half, but I doubt anyone regrets going with the Bills seeing how the Chiefs played.  The Chiefs *still* didn't play a good football game, their offense was terrible.  The defense literally bailed them out with two touchdowns.  To say "well that shouldn't have been a LOCK of the week" is silly.  Buffalo had every reason to win that game yesterday, but instead, the Chiefs covered their 3 point spread.

So in total, LOCKS went 1-4, our first losing week of the year I believe.  Thankfully it wasn't a total wipeout.   Season total is now 19-15-1.

One other area that I need to emphasize is NFL picks.  The last three weeks, there were some "potential" LOCKS of the Week I could have gone to that probably would have hit.  I'm also doing better with NFL games than College this year.

Potential LOCKS:

Titans -3
Texans +2.5
Vikings +10.5
Carolina -7.5

These turned out not to be LOCKS due to a lot of factors, and you can see where my trepidation was validated with the Texans.   The Texans had the effort and the personnel to blow away the Colts, but they being the Texans, still found a way to choke the game.  To be fair, Gary Kubiak collapsed at halftime, and obviously the Texans and their fans were emotionally shaken.

Carolina -- it was still a divisional game, so there was always the chance that the Falcons could make one last stand (similar to what the Bucs did at Seattle).  Thankfully the Panthers showed how good they really were, and they were *good*.

Vikes... the Vikes still are a pretty bad team, but more and more, as kickoff approached, I wanted to use  Minnesota as a LOCK of the Week.  I couldn't *believe* the Cowboys were a 10+ point favorite at home, knowing how suspect they are tactically and how weak minded their coaching staff is.  I came very close to writing a new article to announce "Special Add on LOCK: Vikes +10.5" but it wouldn't have been in the spirit of football picks to tack one on at the end.  When you go to publish your picks, those are the picks.

Titans... when you talk about two bad teams, a game like that could go either way.   I didn't think it was quite enough to put into LOCK of the Week Territory.