Las Vegas Weekly

November 8, 2008 · 12:48 PM

Celebrity NFL Picks: We couched a better first half than the Raiders

By Sal DeFilippo

At halftime of the Atlanta Falcons-Oakland Raiders game on Sunday, I looked at the statistics and realized something.

From my couch, where the line of scrimmage is determined by the location of the remote and the potato chips, I actually had a better first half than the Raiders.

We each had zero first downs. The Raiders had negative two yards of total offense, and I was holding steady at zero yards lost. And since fumbled potato chips don’t count in the official statistics, I actually had a more productive half than the struggling Raiders.

To their credit, they did muster up three first downs in the second half (the optimist would point out that Oakland is clearly a second-half team), and finished with 77 total yards of offense. I mean, yeah, it’s their worst total as a franchise in 47 years, but at least they finished in the black.

My favorite part of this sad story is what happened in the aftermath – this week, the Raiders released their highest-paid defensive player, DeAngelo Hall. Apparently, if Hall had done a better job defending other teams’ receivers, they would have scored fewer points, thus making the Raiders’ offensive imeptitude less noticeable. I guess.

Ah, the silver and black. They weren’t the only ones to struggle last week, however. Reality set in for me, too, as I missed all three picks against the spread, all by three points or fewer. Still, a loss is a loss (or in this case, three losses), so the season mark falls to a still-respectable 16-10-1. This week, I’ll try to rebound with the Packers +2 ½ at the Vikings, the Jets-Rams over 44 ½ and the Giants plus 3 at the Eagles.

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