With the 2020 NFL season now over and the league year ending in about five weeks, it's officially time to do some reflecting on the gambling year that was.
2020 saw the birth of the Too Many Legs Teaser of the Week. What began as a self-depreciating joke after I had a six-leg teaser go 5-1 (thanks to the Jaguars lone win of the season), ended up being a massive success.
A 3-0 start on 8-leg teasers allowed me to build up a nice little bankroll to be able to let it ride throughout the season at a guaranteed profit.
Even though it only hit 6 times over 17 weeks (35.29% of the time) #TML finished +47 units on the season which some handicappers would say is "amazing" or "incredible". One of my followers told me I should have picked up hundreds of followers from the success of TML, so it's not just me knowing that I'm under-appreciated online. There's a documented second person! In baseball standards .353 is Hall of Fame worthy, but I hit .353 at +1000 clip (well one week was +800 because of a push, but still). It's like every hit was a 3-run bomb. It took until Week 17 to for me to have a truly bad beat on the teaser. I'm fine with a 4-4 stinker off week, but Week 17 saw TML go 7-1 with the one leg that failed to hit losing by a single point in a game that featured a missed extra point and five empty Panther drives into Saints territory. We were a point away from +58 units on the year. I did this while doing minimal research because I didn't want to waste valuable time breaking shit down only to have a player be abruptly ruled out due to COVID or have a game moved/cancelled entirely. It's the same reason I didn't lock bets in until after 11 AM or noon most weeks. I also didn't play fantasy football for the first time in a decade because my former friend group has the collective backbone of a jelly fish. You don't realize how much that affects your knowledge of what's going around the league until you're not playing anymore. I really didn't gamble a ton out outside of the teaser this season either. I've won thousands and blown it all before and didn't want to see that happen again. When TML lost from weeks 8-12, I was only betting TML (plus I'm pretty sure that lined up with the NBA "offseason") to gamble responsibly. I say that because after won a bet on Celtics LIVE ML +140 against the Miami Heat on January 6th, my fortune turned for the worst. I knew I was cold, but I didn't realize how cold I was. I've always been sort of a head in the sand guy when things are going fine and even more so when they aren't. It wasn't until this morning when I decided to actually look at the records and see how long it had been since my last win that I realized just how cold I was.
That's right. I fucking went 0-26 on bets placed from January 6th until February 7th; a full month of losing tickets. I made Susan Lucci look like Tom Hanks.
Now, before you look at the ledger, please know that most of these bets were props and I wasn't even throwing half units at them, but L's are L's and I had 26 straight. Key: Italicized=prop bet; bold=live bet (bet placed after the game began) 0-1. January 9th: TML Super Wild Card Edition +500 0-2. January 9th: Jacob Hollister First TD in Rams @ Seahawks +2200 0-3. January 10th: Tennessee Titans ML +170 vs Ravens (Up 10-0 and lost after the softest punt in NFL history) 0-4. January 10th: Anthony Firkser First TD in Ravens @ Titans +3300 0-5. January 10th: Johnnu Smith OVER 3.5 REC +140 (two catches on opening drive and nothing for the rest of the game) 0-6. January 10th: Dez Bryant First TD in Ravens @ Titans +1800. 0-7. January 10th: Drew Brees OVER .5 INT vs Bears (had an INT called back after a penalty) +160 0-8. January 10th: Bears FG First Scoring Play in Bears @ Saints +450 0-9. January 11th: Ohio State ML +270 in the National Championship Game (lost 52-28) 0-10. January 16th: Robert Tonyan First TD in Rams @ Packers +800 0-11. January 16th: Cole Beasley First TD in Ravens @ Bills +1300 0-12. January 17th: Browns ML +340 @ Chiefs (Lost 22-17) 0-13. January 17th: Kareem Hunt First TD in Browns @ Chiefs +800 0-14. January 17th: Browns FG First Scoring Play in Browns @ Chiefs +480 0-15. January 17th: Browns LIVE ML @ Chiefs +1100 0-16. January 22nd: Celtics LIVE ML @ 76ers +180 0-17. January 22nd: Celtics LIVE ML @ 76ers +800 (final score 76ers 122-110) 0-18. January 24th: Stefon Diggs First TD in Bills @ Chiefs +700 (I fucked up and thought the Bills-Chiefs game was first) 0-19. January 24th: Bills ML @ Chiefs +130 0-20. January 24th: Aaron Rodgers First TD in Bucs @ Packers +1800 0-21. January 24th: Packers LIVE ML: +100 vs Bucs 0-22. January 24th: Packers LIVE ML: +180 vs Bucs 0-23. January 24th: Stefon Diggs First TD in Bills @ Chiefs +650 (peppered again before kickoff at worse odds...) 0-24. January 24th: Travis Kelce First TD in Bills @ Chiefs +600 0-25. January 24th: Tyreek Hill First TD in Bills @ Chiefs +600 0-26. January 24th: Bills LIVE ML @ Chiefs +400
Mood:
As a Patriots fan who grew up as the internet did, I can remember being in sports chatrooms on myspace and early facebook where people would shit on Pats fans for being "bandwagon" or "fair-weather" which to me at that point in life was the equivalent of a slur. I swear I've seen 500+ photos of Steve Grogan with a caption about how most Patriot fans didn't know who he was.
I say that because since the Bucs are the new flavor of the week for bandwagoners/have been an irrelevant franchise for 93% of their existence, I wonder how many people know the team's history? It's not all poaching GOATS and Warren Sapp, I'll tell ya! Did you know the Tampa Bay Buccaneers infamously lost their first 26 games in the NFL? I'd hope so because it's quite possibly the most well known futility stat in all of sports, but when you get DOL level clicks you can't be too careful.
Are we seeing the parallel?
I knew my luck was bound to turn around eventually. Like I said in my prop blog yesterday, I was due. You cannot keep the Doz Man down forever, unless you're his brain or basic social conversations. I was going to keep fading the Chiefs because I've been saying all year they're frauds and wouldn't you know they go full 1983 Redskins in the Super Bowl after a 14-2 season.
I just find it incredibly fitting, ironic, poetic, serendipitous and many other words that I know how to use correctly about 70% of the time that it was all my Bucs centered bets that ended my 0-26 streak. Technically it went to 0-27 when the coin toss was heads, but we're not counting that because it totally ruins this blog idea that I've spent more time than Mahome's spent running around last night on.
After my 0-26 streak, I went 6-4 on my Super Bowl bets last night for a modest +4.12 unit showing. In addition to what was covered in my blog, I added and won Gronk first Bucs TD +650, Tampa to receive the opening kickoff -155 and live bet the Bucs +165 when it was 3-0 Chiefs (and lost on Tyreek Hill first Chiefs TD; they had zero). Not exactly TML success, or enough to make up for an 0-26 streak, but damnit it's just nice to win one, or in my case six, to get some confidence going into a soft retirement now that football is over.
P.S. If you didn't get that incredible Susan Lucci reference:
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