Week Fourteen Crystal Ball - Thursday: Beware of Airborne Swine
Published continually since 1994
My friends, pigs have grown wings. The temperature in Hades has dipped below freezing. The sun has set in the East.
Indeed, just as implausibly, your oft-humbled GURU produced a spotless 16-0 mark1 last week, a first in The Ball’s 31 years. The Halley’s Comet-like occurence pushed the season record to 124-70 (.639), a figure as inflated as my abs.
Reverberations were felt as far away as Alaska, home of Hall of Famer Larry Csonka, the man who leads his 1972 unbeaten Dolphins teammates in a toast when the final unbeaten NFL team falls each season. Sir, I apologize for my surprising run and urge you, please, to have a drink on me.
Csonka, of course, is not threatened by the flukish performance of a penny-ante writer and I’m sure the same is true of another football tough guy, Dee-troit’s Dan Campbell. Like Csonka, Campbell played with great intensity during his 10-year career, and the Motor City head coach works the sidelines with that same intensity.
That brings us to Thursday Night Football, with Campbell’s Lions (11-1, 5-1 home) hosting the Packers (9-3, 4-1 away) in a matchup of the first- and second-place teams in the NFC North. Bezos has all the action at 8:15 pm ET.
I could wax on (and on…and on…) about this Detroit squad but, instead, I’ll leave it at this: the Lions are a team on a mission and, until proven otherwise, every club they face is a speed bump on their path to a Super Bowl appearance.
Expect the Pack to play well but, in the end, it’s going to be Campbell & Co. Let’s call it 33-29, Lions.
That’s it for tonight folks. I’ll check back for the weekend slate, and we’ll take it from there. God bless!
It could’ve been 17-0 if I’d taken the Colts over the Pats as intended but, alas, I forgot to pick the game!