A Look at NFL Spreads: Week 1

It's that time of year again: football is here. With it comes fantasy football and survivor pools (also known as suicide pools). The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article yesterday about why not to pick against Oakland in your suicide pool and ESPN's Chad Millman Blog had a good article about how to make your survivor league harder.

But while I do both fantasy and survivor/suicide, I am also in a spread league which is my favorite (and most agonizing) time of football season (besides the Giants, of course--which is also my favorite and most agonizing time of football season). Each week we pick every game against the spread, with two games counting double as "best bets". The person with the most points at the end of the week, wins the week and there are prizes for overall picking at the end of the year.

So as I started to do last year, I'm going to put those spreads up on the blog. Let us know in the comments which two would be your "Best Bets" and other games you feel pretty comfortable about. While I play for money in my pick'em league, we'll find out who is truly the guru of the spread league here at NYaT (team in CAPS is the home team).

FAVORITE	PTS	UNDERDOG
GIANTS	7	Panthers
Dolphins	3	BILLS
Falcons	2 1/2	STEELERS
BEARS	6	Lions
PATRIOTS	4 1/2	Bengals
BUCS	3	Browns
JAGUARS	2 1/2	Broncos
Colts	2	TEXANS
TITANS	6	Raiders
Packers	3	EAGLES
49ers	3	SEAHAWKS
Cardinals	4	RAMS
Cowboys	3 1/2	REDSKINS
JETS	2 1/2	Ravens
Chargers	5	CHIEFS