Concurrent with the NFL campaign, and perhaps even more important to me overall, is the fall season of Portland’s Pinball League. Each Sunday for a few months, I gather with the rest of my team to represent the Ship Ahoy Tavern in intense battles of flipping and nudging while also drinking a few yellow beers. It’s without a doubt one of the highlights of my Portland life, and I wanted to start this week’s piece with a shoutout to the Ship Show.
Since the league re-started last fall after an understandable year-and-a-half-long COVID hiatus, our scrappy little team has managed to qualify for the A Division playoffs in each of the past two seasons. We’re chock full of outstanding pinballers (not including my profoundly average self) who also know how to have a good time, and I look forward to every match.
Unfortunately, this season has not started out as successfully, with our heroes thus far going 0-2. This most recent match (my first of the season) was a particularly bad whooping, with the gentlemen from Hungry Tiger coming to our bar and handing us a 13-3 defeat. Granted, the team now known as the Hungry Hungry Flippos are the league’s defending champions, and they’ve retained the vast majority of their outstanding roster this fall, but a loss still stings.
We do have eight more matches to right the ship (pun extremely intended), though, and my hopes are high. But you didn’t click on this to read about pinball.
The sting of Sunday’s loss at the bar was blunted somewhat by the Packers’ convincing win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers earlier in the day. (Sending positive vibes to Floridians who are really feeling the impact of Hurricane Ian.) The Bucs’ offense was depleted for sure, with three of the team’s top wide receivers missing from their lineup, so the fact that Tampa only scored one extremely late touchdown was not too much of a surprise. As with last week’s Packer victory over the Bears, the team was able to establish a wide enough lead in the first half to coast mainly on their running game and defense to guide them to eventual victory.
Unlike last week’s game, I actually won a few of my bets. I’m still chasing that elusive “clean sweep,” but after last week’s $20 loss, I was happy to walk away from this week with a very small profit (though still not enough to get back to even on the year).
Would you like to know more?
BET #1 – Packers +2.5 (-110) – $5 bet pays out $9.54 – WIN
Why did I make this bet?
My main debate on this one was whether to bet the Packers to win straight-up or to take the 2.5 points. Ultimately, at such a small wager, the moneyline only would have yielded about a dollar more in winnings, so I thought why not give myself the cushion. Turns out I didn’t need it, but I went into this one pretty confident the Bucs wouldn’t run up the score.
What did I learn here?
Despite their best efforts to turn me into a skeptic after Week 1, I’m pretty much all the way back inside the Irrational Confidence Zone when it comes to the Packers’ future performance. The Bucs are also one of the best teams in the NFC, and once again it’s worth mentioning that they were working at a disadvantage with all of their offensive absences, but the game was nowhere as close as the 14-12 score might indicate.
If not for that extremely late fourth-quarter Bucs touchdown – which was absolutely cause for some concern, but we’ll leave that aside – the Packers were in control for nearly the entire game, and the outcome hardly seemed in doubt until the final seconds.
BET #2 – Both Teams Score in the First Quarter (+160) – $5 bet pays out $13 – WIN
Why did I make this bet?
This is another one of those props where I perhaps naively guessed that two professional football teams would be able to score points, only adjusted for lowered expectations after last week’s loss. Regular readers will recall that among last week’s losses was a $5 wager that both the Packers and the Bears would score at least one touchdown in each half.
This week, I cut the timeline way down, but also opened things up to include any method of scoring points, figuring that each team would want to get on the board as quickly as possible.
What did I learn here?
The Packers offense has been dynamite in the first half during Weeks 2 and 3, so it might be worth examining some first-half-specific bets for next Sunday. I think I got a little lucky that the teams scored on each of their respective opening drives, so this bet cashed pretty quickly. They won’t all be like that, but I do like the value for future first-half points props.
BET #3 – Packers OVER 20.5 Points (+100) – $5 bet pays out $10 – LOSS
Why did I make this bet?
The Packers only totaled seven points during their entire first game, but then turned around against the Bears and bested that number by 20, so I guess I was literally betting optimistically here. They got three touchdowns just in the second quarter last week, which made me hopeful that they’d perhaps be able to repeat that performance given an entire game’s worth of time.
What did I learn here?
Well at least the Packers won.
Green Bay again failed to score a touchdown (or in this case, even a single point) in the second half, but they also didn’t need to with the Buccaneers failing to do anything more than kick a couple of field goals before the contest’s closing moments. To be completely candid, the degenerate low-stakes gambler part of my brain wanted to see Tampa score that two-point conversion, as doing so not only would have tied the game (see below), but also perhaps would have motivated the Packers to get into the end zone one more time.
All of this also presupposes that there would have been enough time left for the Packers to successfully score an extra point, which would have been very unlikely during regulation and nearly impossible during overtime (when both teams would have had to score offsetting opening-drive field goals AND THEN the Packers finish the game with a touchdown for me to cash this bet), but a guy can dream.
BET #4 – Game Tied Again After 0-0 (+100) – $5 bet pays out $10 – LOSS
Why did I make this bet?
I want to give some well reasoned explanation here, but the truth is I was scared off from doing $10 bets after my total loss last week, so I had $5 left over that I needed to use on something and this one had even odds. It was another of those bets that counted on the elite skill on display in the NFL, and the fact that there were so many different possible ways that a tie could happen at some point during the game.
What did I learn here?
Again, there was a part of my brain that wanted the Bucs to score that final two-pointer in order that I could collect on this bet. Sorry, Packer-fan friends.
If there’s anything to be learned from my two losses this week, it’s probably that at such small wager numbers, it’s worth looking into a few minus-odds bets moving forward. I’ve been stubbornly reluctant to consider the majority of those, especially when it comes to props, but that’s probably where a lot of the smart money goes.
SUMMARY
WEEK 3
$20 bet
$22.54 paid out
$2.54 profit
2022 SEASON
$60 bet
$54.96 paid out
$5.04 loss
Other Bets from the Weekend
Aidan Hutchinson 2+ Sacks AND Lions to Win (+700) – $5 pays $40 – LOSS
The main takeaway from this loss is to wait until Friday or Saturday to place my bets, no matter how impatient or bored I might get earlier in the week.
I’m a dedicated Hard Knocks viewer, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Lions, mostly because of Barry Sanders and the fact that they’ve been an intra-division non-rival to the Packers for most of my 38 years, so I was pretty jazzed by what I saw out of the rookie defensive lineman from Michigan (on whom the Detroit used 2022’s second overall draft pick). Those high hopes seemed to be realized in Week 2, when Hutchinson took down Washington Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz three times, so I thought it might be fun to try a seven-to-one same-game parlay.
It turns out that Hutchinson suffered a thigh injury sometime last week (after I placed this bet), but he apparently wasn’t hurt enough to sit out Sunday’s game against Minnesota – just hurt enough to manage zero total tackles and sacks combined. It wouldn’t have mattered, though, as the Lions somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by allowing two fourth-quarter Vikings touchdowns.
Last week it was the Browns. This week it was the Lions. I love my losers, apparently.
NEXT WEEK
The Packers return home from their victory over Tom Brady to face his former team when the New England Patriots visit Northeast Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon. As of this writing, the Packers are steep ten-point favorites, though with the Patriots most likely starting journeyman Brian Hoyer at quarterback (who graduated high school one year after I did), that’s actually pretty tempting.
Take care!
