The first time, I encouraged you to check your testicles.  The second time, I encouraged you to check your breasts. Now, I encourage you to take time out of each day and give yourself a treat.  You deserve it!  With this crazy busy life, and specially the impending holiday season, it is important to take some time and relax.

The treat, of course, can be whatever makes you happy.  It can be a piece of fancy chocolate

a tipple of your favorite libation

or maybe a bit of exercise to get the blood running

The point is to make yourself happy every day.

This is so important because we certainly cannot rely on our NFL teams to do that for us.  As we get to the, as the Aussies say, Three Quarter Time point of the season, it’s time again to see how badly we have been disappointed this NFL season.

WEEK TEN

My Team:  The Steelers lost at home to the best team in the league by a score of 35-30.  To be fair, that was a great game and either team could have won at the end.  The Cowboys just played better.  I’m ok with this loss.

Local Team: The Rams beat the Jets on the road in New York by a score of 9-6.  This, if you remember, is the second 9-6 win for the Rams this season.  That, my friends, is how you sell season tickets!

WEEK ELEVEN

My Team: The Steelers beat up on the Cleveland Browns.  Honestly, it was nice, but one can’t get too worked up about it.  It was the Browns.

Local Team: The Rams pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory by falling to the Rumblin’ Tannehills (nickname is a work in progress) at home in the rain.  Daniel Tosh was happy as was the Mrs.

WEEK TWELVE

My Team: The Steelers beat the Luck-less Colts on Thanksgiving.  The game might as well have been on Christmas because we got a gift.  No way we beat that team with Luck on the field at home.

Local Team: The Rams lost on the road to the New Orleans Saints.  Badly.  Like 49-21.

WEEK THIRTEEN

My Team:  The Steelers hosted the NY football Giants and won.  There was a lot of Eli derp, but we’ll take it.  A win is a win.

Local Team:  The Rams flew across the country to get their asses kicked by the New England Patriots.  Even the loss of Gronk could not stop this beatdown.  Please note that I am writing this on Saturday, so the game has not been played yet.  I highly doubt I will have to edit it.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

First off, my decision to cut off Sunday ticket has continued to be validated.  I missed the Browns game, but I didn’t really MISS it.  The Colts game, the Cowboys game, and the Giants game were all on regular TV.  So far, I’ve only missed matchups against the Jets and Browns.  Not really worth the $600+, would you say?

The Rams are firmly on their way to a best-case-scenario 7-9 record by sitting pretty at 4-8.  You know, in this ever-changing topsy-turvy world, it is nice to see that some things don’t change.  BTW, if you want to get yourselves a good laugh and no,  I’m not talking about Jeff Fisher’s contract extension, take a look at the ESPN attendance figures here. Did you notice the oddball?  Yup, the NFL doesn’t want to talk about attendance at Rams games.  Doing some quick Wikipedia research, I’ve looked at the attendance for the four true home games (the Giants game was in London).  Here are the results:

Week Two – Seattle Seahawks – 91,046

Week Five – Buffalo Bills – 83,679

Week Nine – Carolina Panthers – 86,109

Week Eleven – Miami Dolphins – 83,483

This actually tracks pretty well with my preseason predictions:

Seattle prediction:  Good attendance.  It will be the first real game, so interest will be high and the opponent is good

Bills prediction: Reduced attendance.  This may turn into a prototypical LA Lakers/LA Dodgers home game in that people will arrive late and leave early in order to beat traffic

Panthers prediction: Attendance will tick up as even the barista in Silver Lake with the clit ring and her boyfriend with the ebony ear plugs have heard of the Panthers since they attended an ironic Super Bowl party last February.

Miami prediction: The USC-UCLA game happens the day before at the Rose Bowl.  If you think this town will support two 100,000 football games back to back, I have some beachfront property in Riverside I’d like to sell you.   Reduced attendance as all the money will go towards the college game and no one in Miami wants to fly to LA.

Let’s take a look at the standings, shall we?

Here were my playoff team predictions at the quarter pole:

AFC: Denver,  Oakland,  Pittsburgh,  New England,  Houston,  Baltimore.

NFC: Philadelphia,  Atlanta,  Minnesota,  Green Bay,  Seattle,  Dallas

And here were my updated playoff team predictions at the halfway point:

AFC: Denver,  Oakland,  Kansas City,  New England,  Houston,  Pathetic Winner of AFC North.

NFC: Philadelphia,  Atlanta,  Minnesota,  Green Bay,  Seattle,  Dallas

And here are my updated playoff team predictions at Three Quarter Time:

AFC: Oakland,  Kansas City,  Denver,  New England,  Pathetic Winner of AFC South,  Pathetic Winner of AFC North.

NFC: Dallas, Washington, New York Giants, Seattle,  Pathetic Winner of NFC South,  Pathetic Winner of NFC North

Houston has regressed and now the AFC South is up for grabs.  Similarly, Atlanta has regressed and now the NFC South is up for grabs. I have now decided that, like the AFC West, the third best team in the NFC East will be better than any other non-division-winner. The only difference is that the Giants have kicked out the Eagles for that last spot.

It seems like things are getting more exciting, but in reality the painful truth is that only the truly good teams have stood out.  I really only like four teams to make the Superb Owl:  Dallas, Oakland, New England, and Seattle, in that order.  My homer ass still holds out hope that the Steelers can make a run, but my realistic side knows that the champion will come out of that group of four.  Let’s see what happens…

One more thing: I think we all need to start listening to the Monday Night Football games on radio and have the TV sound off. Kevin Harlan is just the absolute best.  He once again gave an awesome narration of drunks on the field. Kevin Harlan is a National Treasure!