Day: December 1, 2019

This week’s scoreboard

For the second time this year, the Jets have lost to a previously winless team. First they dropped one to the Dolphins, but even more impressively, this week’s humiliation involved a convincing thrashing by the 0-11 Bengals. The 2019 Jets became the first team in NFL history to lose to two teams that entered a game 0-7 or worse.

Meanwhile, in serious football competition, the Patriots lost, and the Ravens won a hard-fought game over the 49ers in what could be a Super Bowl preview. Since their humiliating loss to the Browns in late September, the Ravens have gone 8-0, including defeats of the Patriots, Niners and Seahawks, plus total curb-stompings of the Texans and Rams.

It’s kind of interesting that nearly every significant conference is expected to produce a lopsided conference title game.

The most dramatic example is that Clemson is favored by 28 over Virginia. (First meeting this year.)

THE Ohio State University is favored by 17 over Wisconsin. (Ohio State won their first match-up by 31.)

LSU is favored by 7 over Georgia. (They have not met this year.)

Oklahoma is favored by 9 over Baylor. (Oklahoma won by three earlier in the year, after Baylor blew a 25-point lead.)

The narrowest odds are in the Pac-10, where Utah is favored by 5 over Oregon in the only match-up of the season between those two teams.

In the “who cares” conference, Memphis is favored by 11 over Cincinnati, which makes sense since the same two teams just played yesterday and Memphis won by 10! (The home field edge is not a factor since both games are in Memphis.) You can’t fault Cincinnati for cowardice in their scheduling. Their only other loss this year occurred because they took on THE OSU earlier in the year. Of course, dragons usually beat saints and goliaths usually beat undersized shepherds. Cincinnati’s scheduling was brave, but foolhardy. They were crushed 42-0 in front of an SRO crowd of 104,000 in Columbus.