Elliott Landy/Redferns
Ryan Fitz is my name, and I drove on the Houston train.
‘Til Mallett’s cavalry came and tore up the depth chart again.
In the summer of ’15, we were Gang Green, just barely alive.
By June 10th, Brady had fell. It’s a time I remember oh so well.
Last week, I felt great about my NFL picks across the board.
My father was wrapping up his time working in Las Vegas, meaning that it would be the last week of him betting my picks without telling me even though I had a hunch he was doing it. I wanted to make him back some of the money he had undoubtedly lost as I continued to pick Derek Carr to cover the spread over and over again. I did a good amount of research, mixed it with a dash of nonsense, and found myself five underdogs that I felt confident could win my pops some money. Again, one of them was David Carr.
The Raiders failed to cover. My picks went 1-4, and I went into Monday morning feeling like a failure once again.
I have to stop feeling confident about my picks. In gambling, confidence is a myth. It cannot exist, because everything is chance and no one knows anything about anything, especially football. I wanted to remember this fact while making my picks during Week 8. I wanted to focus on facts and emotions and up to date injury information all while knowing that it was ultimately a crapshoot. I took to Twitter with intentions of making my usual pre-picking rounds: checking in on Adam Schefter, Stephania Bell, and a few NFL players that might give a little hint towards their team’s mindset heading into Sunday. But I got distracted by Zach Mettenberger.
The NFL Draft is the biggest football event of the year, behind only the Super Bowl. Since its inception, the Draft has grown from a collection of anonymous dudes in a room picking college players to a television ratings bonanza that is broadcast in primetime and spans three days. The NFL Network now provides coverage from the early NFL Combine, and you can now catch footage live from the Pro Days of the Draft’s biggest stars.
But undeniably, the worst bi-product of the NFL Draft’s ascension from non-event to the blockbuster of the NFL’s offseason is the endless cycle of mock drafts and marginally updated mock drafts. The NFL Draft keeps Draft experts in business the same way Game of Thrones has single-handedly kept the fake blood industry alive. Every few weeks, Draft experts produce articles that drum up the hype train of certain players while decrying the follies of others, who ran 40-times slightly slower than expected or failed to prance around their Pro Day with just the proper flair.
I’m not interested in mock drafts. I don’t want to read Mel Kiper’s predictions on how the NFL Draft will play out, like he’s Professor Trelawney trying to read tea leaves. I don’t want to know who these teams will draft, but who they should be drafting.
Tuesdays With Horry 
