Heavy favorites plentiful in Cincy Jungle’s Week 9 NFL picks

I had a sneaky feeling Week 8 would be a rough one, and I wasn’t wrong. More on that later. Week 9 has a little juice, with the Steelers-Ravens and Broncos-Raiders matchups popping off the screen in an otherwise dull week in terms of matchups.

Back to Week 8. It’s one I’m going to want to forget but will not ever get out of my mind. A 3-9 finish has me 15 games out of first place and a virtual non-factor for the rest of the season. In need of a miracle, I’ve decided to pick the Cleveland Browns in every remaining matchup of their season, excluding their matchup with the Bengals. I tend to heavily favor teams I like, pick against teams I don’t like, pick underdogs with no reasoning behind those picks and pick against teams I like if they start to win games — which is probably why I’ve done so poorly in the pick’em contest. (If you look back at my picks, I’m sure you’ll pick up on a trend or two.)

But on to everyone else, as I’m irrelevant at this point. (Heck, Kyle — who didn’t make picks a couple of weeks ago and didn’t make his picks this week — is two games up on me.) At 73-45, Anthony is holding onto a slight lead over Rebecca, Braden and Scott. A remarkable 10-2 finish in Week 8 propelled him to a two-game lead over Rebecca, whose 9-3 finish wasn’t too shabby either, and Braden, whose 6-6 finish had to hurt. For the record, we didn’t count a half game onto our records last week, we just scrubbed the tie off the boards.

Maybe I jinxed myself last week, as none of the four teams I encouraged readers to root for won. So for the sake of my own dignity, I’m going to stop rooting for every team at the conclusion of this blog, including the Bengals. The Packers are the only unanimous pick of the week, while five teams are hero picks this week.

Anthony has the 49ers, Patrick has the Lions, Rebecca has the Buccaneers and Braden has both the Jaguars and Bills. Of the five hero picks, I really like the Lions — though what do I know at this point? (Sorry in advance Patrick, probably jinxed you there.) Is there an opposite to King Midas? Because if there is, I’m that, at least when it comes to picks this season. Everything Midas touched turned into gold, and every time I root for a team to win because I picked them in this series, they blow a fourth-quarter lead.

If you can’t tell, this weekly column is really starting to agitate me. But as always, I’ll be back next week. Until then, go Browns!