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My First 6 Months in IT - What to expect in YOUR Journey - Featuring advice on CVs/Resumes, Interviews, Certificates and training, and how to handle being laid off.
My Experience in IT after 6 months, What Can You Expect? Hi all, I recently read a on r\ITCareerQuestions about being frustrated with all of the posts asking for help. This in part, is a response to that. Fair warning – this is going to be a long one (slightly over 5000 words), strap yourself in or get out while you can, you have been warned! I have tried to break it up into sections, so feel free to skip to parts that interest you. I will happily answer all questions, PLEASE feel free to DM me. I will help anyone with resources that I used, and advice on best career pathways. Who is this post for? I think this post is going to be for you if you fit into any of the following categories. If you are looking to break in to IT and you haven’t even taken your first step, if you have been studying for certificates and you want to know if it is all going to be worth it (is there a light at the end of this tunnel). Maybe you want to know what your first 6 months in IT are going to be like. Maybe you want realistic salary expectations and you don’t want to ask a salesman or the guy driving an expensive car. Maybe you have been a lurker on this thread and you’ve seen all the conflicting advice. Perhaps you have sent out 400 job applications and had no bites. Maybe you have had 20 interviews and no one has given you a chance. My point being there are many steps you need to take to take your “first step” or to get your foot in the door. If you are someone who is taking any one of those steps, I do recommend reading this. My Journey, two jobs, one lay-off, sleepless nights, a global pandemic and an incredible wife. When I was 28, I decided I wanted a stable and steady career. Something I didn’t have to fight 30 other younger and hungrier people for. To put this into context I once applied for an entry level market research position and I don’t mind telling you that interview experience was something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I hadn’t applied myself at university, I studied Biology, something I had no passion for and the competition in scientific research was something that you would never survive without passion. I was always exceptional at exams/learning/studying, to that end I was first in my year at university for exam results. And for that great honour I was awarded a £1000 cash scholarship prize. And being an irresponsible student I spent the entire thing (and some student overdraft) on my very first PC. I spent hundreds of hours watching Linus tech tips, and Jays2cents and how to build a PC. I was hooked, I built that PC, booted her up, and realised…. I still want to watch build videos. I genuinely found out that I loved learning about hardware. I didn’t know that about myself. I know I see a lot of backstory posts asking for help that all say “I am tech savvy, I am the techy one in the family” etc etc. So, I think these people know what I mean. By the way if you are worried that being the “techy one” isn’t valuable then you are dead wrong. It means you can learn technologies quickly and interact with user interfaces with ease. These are going be all you do for a long time in IT. You will have many user interfaces thrown at you that are custom to your company, but more on that later. Well, unfortunately, years pass me by while I take a job in biology I have no passion for, I didn’t hate my job, I got to work at a university helping students with disabilities cope with every day life. But I didn’t feel excited or driven. And then one day I was watching the UK version of the apprentice, absolute trashy TV at its finest for those that don’t know what it is. It is a competition in which people present a business plan to a billionaire and that billionaire decides if the business plan has legs. So I am watching this guy with perfect quaffed hair and teeth that would blind you, (you know the type, he works is sales and thinks the world would collapse without him) and he is pitching a Cyber security recruitment company. And he has the leading experts in the country critiquing him, and I heard the same thing over and over. IT is desperate for people, for every 10 roles in IT security, there are only 1 or 2 qualified people. I have to admit I got a little excited, nervous excited. I did something that changed my life. I googled it and made a phone call. That’s right, I spent all of 2 minutes before I was on the phone to a salesman. Let me tell you, if I could go back in time a slap myself for buying in to this pitch I would. “The average person in IT security in the UK earns £72,000”, Booom, I am hooked. You are telling me I can earn £72K and they will be desperate to have me? I won’t have to compete? It won’t be a dog fight… Where the hell do I sign up? Well spoilers for what is to come later, but no, I didn’t end up as CIO of a small company making silly money in year one. So, what were they offering me and what did it cost me? I signed up for a course that included a Microsoft Technical associate (MTA) in server fundamentals and an MTA in security fundamentals. I signed up for a Comptia certificate in Network+ and in Security+ and finally an EC council certificate in ethical hacking, called CEH. All for the price of around £3000. “Not bad” I told myself for a £72K/year job. “Not bad” I told my wife (who supported me through every single step). So, when did I first begin to have doubts? That is easy, I remember it like it was yesterday. I had this awful procrastination habit (I bet almost ALL of you do it too) I would google jobs for whatever certificate I was going to study. For me, this was the CEH. A simple “CEH Jobs” search was almost all I ever googled back then. And there were hundreds of them, decent pay too. And then one day I saw it “we are looking for real candidates, no offense to those with a CEH”. It was like a punch to the gut, but worse as my heart raced with fear. What the hell did they mean?! It was at this point I realised I might be in trouble. I am sure a lot of you feel that way now. Have I just been swindled by a Nigerian prince who just needed my bank details so he can transfer me my millions? Well yes and no. Yes I had been swindled by the promise of £72K, and yes I had been swindled by the CEH, it is one of the most expensive certificates you can get and it does make you look like an idiot to anyone in field. But no, I had not been swindled out of a career just yet. I kept my head down and I nailed my first ever certificate and I have to admit, it was the hardest things I ever studied. I would say that knowing hardware helped a bit with the server fundamentals certificate, but only for about 5-10% of the learning objectives that were focussed on hardware. The rest was like information overload. I had to learn about how servers worked and communicated. I had to learn Microsoft’s branding too, which is a feat of its own. But I did it, I finally got an IT certificate. I powered through my security MTA full steam ahead knowing I could achieve it with hard work and consistency. And that is when things got interesting. I began studying for my network+, and let me tell you, I fell in love. I began feeling like the curtains were being drawn on the way the world worked. I understood how if I sent an email, that email was carried across the country to my friends and family. However, the instructor kept saying the same thing over and over. “And if you take a CISCO course you will learn all about it”. I mean if I had a £ for every time she said it…. Well, I did it again ladies and gentleman. I went back to the same person who sold me my snake oil. And I asked if they did CCNA courses. Of course they did, for the cool price of £800. What the hell I thought, the CCNA is a “real” certificate finally. Finally, I won’t feel worry and despair at the thought of this all being in vane, because I, Jacob Smith will be a network engineer. The course was mediocre, and I found myself frustrated, so I did the unthinkable. That is right, I spend £10 on an Udemy course. I mean obviously it was going to be terrible. You would have to be an idiot to think a £10 course could be better than an £800 one. Well Neil Anderson spared no time showing me the error of my ways. His course was phenomenal. I bought the course for the first half of the CCNA, then I bought the course for the second half, and then I thought why the hell not, its only £10, I will buy the course that comes as whole package just to support him. This is the lesson I learned that day. A person can sell their 20 hour course for £10 if they know it is good enough. And then they can make more money than the predator who sells their course to desperate people for thousands. Let’s skip forward a few months. It is the last hour of the last day in which I can sit the CCNA before they retire it and change it completely. The exam went amazingly, and for those interested I used Neil Anderson’s course, and Boson netsim and boson exsim for the tools. I am done. I have finally sat the last certificate I am going to sit before I start applying for Jobs. I no longer want the CEH as I know it will just make me look bad and I don’t want to commit the hours required to learn something that will hurt me. Advice on Resumes/CVs I fire up google again and waste no time typing “professional CV templates”. Wow, CVs look incredible these days, look how pretty I can make my application. I have dedicated sections for skills, work experience, school etc. Here is lesson number two, and more important than you realise. Do NOT use these templates ever. Every recruiter that you send your CV to has some sort of CV filter on it. These CV templates are terrible for a number of reasons. Firstly, the format cannot be read by the CV filter, it doesn’t know what it’s looking at so it just bins it. If you are using one and you have sent hundreds of applications and had no bites, then I strongly recommend you read this part and do what I did. Secondly, these templates are designed for people with work experience and skills. Unfortunately that wasn’t me, I was breaking in to IT. This meant that the focus of my CV HAD to be biology, there was no way to change this. My CCNA was at the bottom of my second page under “other”. So if by some divine intervention my CV did get through to a recruiter, there was no way they would ever read I had 5 certificates. I had some of the worst and most sleepless nights of my life for the next 2 weeks. I applied to 20-40 jobs a day and heard nothing. Not a peep. It is at this point my beautiful wife lets slip that her sister is in IT recruitment. Mixed emotions is an understatement, I bounced between desperate joyous relief and utter disbelief that at no point did she think to mention this. Here is what I learned. You are not applying for a social media job, you are not applying for a graphic designer job. A recruiter reads a hundred of these a day and there is nothing that annoys them more for IT people than a fancy looking CV. Put this CV in black and white, have literally nothing but words. Don’t even break the page up with horizontal lines. Put everything IT related at the top, have a strong and promising professional statement. Focus on your certificates, focus on your lab experience. And cram that CV full of skills that you know about. You want something like this in there. DHCP, DNS, IPv4, IPv6, AD, NTFS, Switching, Routing, Wireless, STP, RIP, OSPF, EIGRP. Hyper-V, VMWare. Windows 7/8/8.1/10, Windows Server 2008/R2, 2012/R2, 2016, 2019. iOS, MacOS, Android. This along with your certificates, your goals and your passion. Along with (briefly) anything transferable from other non-IT related jobs, I am talking about customer service, high stress jobs and time sensitive roles. These skills will be valuable but they should be secondary and again I cannot stress this enough, make it brief. Your education, and non-IT related jobs should make up a small portion of the CV that follows at the end. A recruiter is going to pick your CV up and see your skills, see your certificates and personal statement and then just put it down and give you a call. I doubt they ever get to the part where you describe what working at Pizza hut was like. Round 2 of applying for jobs Once I rewrote that CV (annoyingly I had already applied to a lot of the jobs in my area with my poor CV) I sent it out. The difference was life changing. I got a call back the next day actually I got three call backs the next day. Over the next 2 weeks I got roughly 12 recruiter calls, I got three interview offers. I did 2 interviews and got offered to the next stage. The first was with a large corporate company with 1000s of employees. They IQ tested me and they told me that I would be drug tested at my interview. This was a huge red flag to me. I have never done drugs and nor would I want to. But if these people are going to greet me at the door with a mouth swab, then I hate to think what working for them would be like. I turned down their offer for a second interview. Instead I went to interview at a nearby (well not nearby 90 mile round trip commute) MSP. This was mid-March and I have never enjoyed an interview experience more in my life. The culture was very much this is a place where we have a laugh and you will love working for us. I didn’t have any red flags at the time, I just was so pleased this was all finally happening for me. We joked about football, we talked about hobbies, some IT related questions, typical interview stuff. He even joked we had a bromance going on and said, and I quote “F**k me, you know an interview is going well when its been over and hour and you haven’t noticed”. Honestly, I think my older age was an advantage here, I was 30 at this point and I am at a stage in life where I am able to hold a conversation well without being nervous or self-conscious. There are obviously going to be downsides to being 30 and starting out too, but I was happy this worked in my favour. I got a full day and a half of training (sitting behind a guy and watching him work), okay some red flags cropped up at this point. The people here didn’t seem to care very much, nor did they know a huge amount. The way the cases distribution worked was everything went to 2nd line, and they trickled down anything they didn’t want to 1st line and they pushed up what they needed to, to 3rd line. So, I got all the “my webcam isn’t working” calls, which was fair enough, I was grateful to have the job. But I had nothing in my queue that I thought “omg I have no idea what this is”. That might sound like a good thing, but it is the worst thing that can happen to your career. How are you supposed to learn how to install SSL certificates if you never have a case for it? Well I doubt it is any shock to any of you crazy enough to still be reading, but I after a mindblowing 14 days, I was put on furlough (not sure if Americans have this, but it means temporarily laid off). It seriously makes you question why they hired someone that they laid off 14 days later, but that follows with the “everything is a laugh” attitude I suppose. I spent the first half of April not knowing (but having a bad feeling) what was going to happen next. And then our prime minister announced the first extension of the lockdown. And when I woke up the next morning I had been completely locked out of all my accounts and I had a “whatsapp” message waiting for me. You read that correctly, Mr fun and games decided it was appropriate to give me bad news over whatsapp. He told me he really liked me and to look out for a message from him when this all blows over, as I will be the first person they call. But he had to let a lot of staff go permanently. I spent all off April preparing for this, but it still didn’t help me through what this felt like. Try and imagine working your ass off for 18 months to begin a life you never once dreamed was possible, to have it given to you and then taken away in the space of a month. I was let go on a Friday and I didn’t sleep a wink that whole weekend. I did get a phone call from my recruiter which I thought was nice. But it turns out they were only calling me because the company that let me go were claiming it was because of poor performance. They didn’t want to pay the recruitment fee, and they were willing to damage my reputation and relationship with the recruiter. However, it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. Them refusing to pay the recruitment fee, drove my recruiter to immediately look for a job for me. It is Sunday afternoon that same weekend and I get a call saying “I have an interview lined up for you tomorrow, can you make it?”. I could not believe what I was hearing. I have an interview lined up and I may not even miss a pay day? I felt like crying. But what was that he said? I must have misheard, did he say it was for tomorrow? That’s right, after having no sleep and being in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion I now had less than 24 hours to prepare for a job I had no idea about. How to prep for an interview I worked my arse off. I learned everything I could about the company, I read their testimonials, I studied their customers, I looked at the solutions they provided. I like to have all my certificates with me, along with copies of my resume. I like to have prepared questions to ask the interviewer. I like to have a separate document that I can pass to them with all of my documentation from my labs. (this obviously means you have to document all your labs). I dressed as smartly as I could and gave it everything I could. I watched youtube videos of typical helpdesk questions, I learned the tricks to the questions they ask, e.g. The owner of your company says his printer is broken at the same time you get a call from a customer saying all 200 staff have lost connection to the internet. What do you do? The trick is to communicate with your team, with a team you can do both at the same time. These videos are an amazing tool to prep with and they give you really good answers that you don’t have to think too hard about. They also take away some of the nerves. So how did it go? Well of course I just didn’t sleep. I mean who would have been able to sleep after what I had been through. I thought about postponing it but I still went for it. I can’t begin to describe the difference in management style. This man was a manager, he was an IT professional with 25 years experience, and he had owned, ran and sold his own successful MSP. It was both refreshing and worrying. He expected nothing of me, he didn’t really care about my technical knowledge. I didn’t know this at the time, but it was because everyone at this company was driven and knew their stuff. Everyone held 10+ certs and had years and years of experience. This was a different company, with serious people and incredible opportunities to learn. I thought I had bombed, I was tired and a little defeated. But I got a second interview, and with sleep was able to completely turn it around. I turned my weaknesses in knowledge into opportunities to ask my manager to showcase his knowledge. I was far more engaged and I was offered the job at this far more serious role for the same money I was originally on and I cut my commute in half (well technically I am work from home). What to expect from a serious MSP? At my new company, cases come in to 1st line and you are expected to work on everything, and only after you have exhausted your ability can it go up to second line. It is also worth noting the main difference between the two companies is that the first one only provided services for their customers and they had monthly rolling contracts. My current company is a cloud provider and they host all of their customers infrastructures and endpoints, as well as having 1-3 year contracts (much harder to pull out of during a pandemic) it didn’t hurt that a lot of their customers are hospital related. I have been at my new company now for 4.5 months and learned more there than I could have ever learned at the first company. I put my money where my mouth is. It wasn’t long before my first manager called me and offered me my old job back. This time with a 33% pay increase. I flat out told him no (respectfully of course) but firmly. It was a lot more money than I am on now but that wasn’t the point. I would not want to stymy my career by working at such a poorly managed company. In the UK, they could have just left me furloughed (it wouldn’t have cost them anything) and I would have received 80% of my salary. But they terminated me and then expected me to come back? I wasn’t going to repay my new manager’s act of saving me from that hell with disloyalty (I know loyalty can be looked down upon in this sub, but that is how I was raised). What can you expect in your first 6 months? Enough about me, let’s look at you. Let’s look at what you can expect. You can expect that certificates can take between 2-6 months each depending on how much time you dedicate to them. You can expect your first job to pay a little more than minimum wage. However, most places now pay for your training, pay for your exams and give extra time to study during work. You can more than likely expect your first job to be helpdesk. You can expect to have to apply to hundreds of jobs to get your first one. However, if you follow my previous advice you should be getting call backs from recruiters at a minimum. If not, then it will be your CV that needs to change. If you want to be successful you will have to sacrifice. I get up 3 hours before my shift and I study. Every single day, and I work longer on weekends. I offer every single time someone needs to stay late or come in early. I often stay late after work finishes to tidy up cases and prepare for the next day. I work through every single lunch. The reason for this is because I take twice as many cases as the other person that started 3 months before me, lets call this person “anon”, anon is my direct competition and he drives me to be the best I can be. The results of my hard work are that I am sitting my exam in half the time that Anon will take (honestly I doubt he will take it when he says). I have closed more cases than him and he has been at the company for 7.5 months vs my 4.5 months. I was asked to go to site to setup a switch for a customer (twice) over anon. I have been “selected” by my manager to work directly with on a fileserver project. It looks like he has taken me under his wing (which I highly recommend, if you can get someone to teach you that is half as smart as my manager then do it). I have had multiple people tell me they notice how engaged I am during meetings, and how well they think I am doing. I have had a number of times a 2nd line ask me if I want to be shown something that typically only goes to 2nd Line. I have learned that hard work, determination and a willingness to learn does not go unnoticed. What are some of the negatives to expect? But it isn’t all fairytails, there are downsides too. I don’t spend as much time with my wife or doing the things I like. I feel guilty if I watch a film instead of study. If you take twice as many cases you are going to make at least twice as many mistakes. Making mistakes is normal, and you have to learn from them, but if you take them to heart like me, then you are going beat yourself up twice as often. Ultimately, the sky is the limit, how hard you work will depend on you and what drives you. I have my foot in the door and I have no intention of taking my foot of the gas anytime soon. If you think that once you get your foot in the door that the hard part is over, then that simply isn’t the case I am afraid. How to give yourself the best opportunity in your career (tips no one tells you). I push myself out of my comfort zone many times a day. I do this so that these things become my comfort zone. I notice how often my manager trusts me to do something that he wouldn’t normally let a 1st line support engineer do. You can expect to have a highly stressful working environment. You are going to have many fires to put out at the same time, and you need to organise yourself so it doesn’t overwhelm you. I think something that no certificate teaches you, or that I have yet to see, and it is easily the most important thing I have learned, is to have a to do list. First thing in the morning, before you do anything, fire up notepad or onenote and write down everything you have to do in that day. It doesn’t have to be in order, just get writing. And then anytime you complete a task look at notepad and start working on the next thing. Also, if anyone asks you to do anything ever, fire up notepad, and write it down. You can be albert Einstein himself, and you are going to forget to do a good chunk of that stuff if you write it down. And remember, you are going to make a lot of mistakes, but forgetting to do stuff is a terrible mistake to make and can be easily avoided. If you have to stop someone mid flow because you realise they are telling you to do a multistep thing, then stop them and fire it up and ask them to start again. Annoying but better than having to call them later and ask them to say it all again, or worse just forget it. You can expect a relatively thankless job. There will always be those people who remember to thank you and make you feel like you are appreciated, but more often than not you will get someone who the second the thing works, they want off the phone. Get used to goodbyes being a tad rushed/awkward. You can expect that you will need a lot of help. But try to be smart and kind about it. Try speaking to those people about things in which you don’t ask for help and ask them about themselves. Develop relationships that are meaningful. Also, try and vary the people you ask for help from, don’t take advantage of someone because they are polite and never let you know that inside they are frustrated because they too have a big to do list. Spread your help out and try and make up for the fact you are going to be a big inconvenience by offering to help in other ways. Make the coffees, make the teas, offer to take dogsh*t menial tasks that need doing. These sorts of things are good way to pay it back to someone that you won’t be able to help technically. Advice to avoid serious mistakes. Always think about what you are doing. Always. Is this something you should be doing? Is this something that needs approval? is this something you should check with someone first? Checking with someone is not the same as asking for help and it has saved my ass more times than I can count. Don’t be the person that causes a service outage because you didn’t check if something is right. It may feel obvious, it may make you look dumb. But if I was to be shown 100 tasks and asked what my gut tells me is the “proper protocol” for each one, I would get most wrong. Don’t try and guess what is best for the customer or company policy. This is what I like to call good old-fashioned Arse-covering. It covers yours and your employers. Those £72K jobs exist. And people do them. You could be one of them, but it will take years of dedication and sacrifice. If that sounds like you, if you can be driven, passionate and determined then nothing will stop you. Thank you for reading. If you are crazy enough to still be reading this, then thank you. I wish you all the luck in the world. TLDR: Hard work and self-belief pays off. Nothing is going to stop you except YOU.
Thursday Night Recap: That was nice. We put in 1 singles play and it was cashed by the end of the first half. The BBDLS we put in had many opportunities! Unfortunately, in the end, Darnold was not picked off and that bet was lost. Singles (1-0,+2.5u) Parlays (none) Teasers (none) BBDLS(0-1, -0.37u) All in all a positive night. Lets see what the first Sunday in October has to offer! 😎 https://preview.redd.it/9v6becefj3r51.jpg?width=790&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06d2feab30c82b1f6a3d7f8f69ec1bbed31ffebe 1PM Games IND at CHI: Both teams seem severely untested, beating opponents with a combined record of 1-8. Indy lost to the Jags in the home opener as a rather sizeable favorite and their only two wins have come against teams who's season is basically over. Conversely CHI is 3-0, but all three of their games had to be won in the 4th quarter, two come from behind and one holding off the garbage time Giants. Also, Chicago switched QBs mid game? I mean, it worked but Mitch was 2-0 to start the season and although he had thrown a pick in the first half, wasn't playing horrible... Honestly, I think this will be one of the first tests for both of these teams. I think both QBs are above average, when they have a run game, at picking off zone defenses. But if their run game is tested, it leads to some shaky QB play. *** Extra note: Colts coach, Frank Reich, was with the Philadelphia Eagles as quarterback coach when Foles replaced Carson Wentz and won Super Bowl MVP. "He was the one who really figured me out as a player," Foles said of Reich's tutelage in 2017. *** Does this mean Reich knows Foals strength's and weaknesses? Will River's even need to do anything in this game besides hand the ball off and watch his defense? Side note to that, Foals has a QBR of 105 when he's a backup. When he is a starter it is 88. It's only a lean as there is very little data on Foal's as a Bears QB, but my algo is leaning Colts/Under. NO at DET: A battle of two 1-2 teams here. One will stabilize at .500 and one will have a big hill to climb. NO lost their last two games, but both were without star Michael Thomas playing. He looks to return this game. Detroit struggled in their first two but got their star WR back in Galloday and were able to pull off an upset in AZ last week. The Lions big hole seems to be run defense, so Kamara may be in for another big day. However, if the Lions take an early lead their run D might not come into play as much. To me, this game is going to come down to Saints injuries. Is Thomas back and healthy? Will Marshon Lattimore and Janoris Jenkins, who were both listed on the Thursday injury report, play? Also tight end Jared Cook, defensive end Marcus Davenport, and guard Andrus Peat all missed practice on Friday. With this many holes, and Brees having trouble finding anyone other than Kamara... I could see another Lions upset here. If everyone comes back healthy and its both teams at full strength, my algo has NO as -8. But with the amounting injuries, this could be another, any given Sunday. ARZ at CAR: Another interesting match up for ARZ here. The algo predicted to be weary of them last week vs. DET and not only did DET cover, they outright won. Give AZ some credit though. Three turnovers and they still had a chance to win at the end of the game. Going from a team that was a TD favorite and lost to a team that was a TD underdog last week and won...Carolina got their first win last week over the LA Chargers. Honestly Bridgewater looked good. Their defense still isn't great and had a tough time against the run giving up over 5 ypc to 3 different RBs and 80 yards to Eckler in the air. The loss of CMC is clearly showing when the Panthers get in the red zone. If they just finished half the times they were in the red zone with a TD instead of a FG, that game would have been over by halftime. JAX at CIN: Jax coming off a disappointing loss to MIA last Thursday. CIN coming off the first tie of the season vs. the Eagles. I am rather high on Burrows this year. I think he and Matt Ryan and Gardner Minshew will have similar betting years. Lose a lot of games, cover a lot of spreads. Burrows was sacked 8 times last week yet he put up some very decent numbers and gave his team a chance to get their first win. This week he goes against a Jax secondary that is one of the worst in the league. This is one of my keys to the game for both teams, and why I have this as a virtual coin flip. Burrow has been sacked 14 times in 3 games and Jax has 3 TOTAL sacks in 3 games. If Jax continues the Burrow pressure, I favor Minshew and Robinson. If Jax continues to let opposing Qbs have time in the pocket, I believe Burrows will pick them apart just like Fitzmagic did. This looks like a great game to play both sides. I do like Burrows and he is giving his team every opportunity this year. However, +2.5 in a "coin flip" game is my FAVORITE number to tease. A standard 6 point teaser takes you through FOUR KEY NUMBERS in 3, 4, 6, and 7, up to +8.5. Cle at DAL: There are two games this week that were really hard for me to get a vibe on. This is the first. Dallas is like the baby brother to Seattle in my opinion. If Dallas was at full strength and had that defense we saw them producing last year, I would almost say they would be the big brother, but right now they are the little Seattle. Bad offense, but a good QB that can make plays and extend drives (Russ is obviously better) Cleveland however looks like they might find an identity like Tennessee had last year. Very Run first/play action later and eventually crack one or two deep balls to take the momentum and ultimately games. It's because of this style of matchup I am truly unsure which is the most +EV side here. Dallas should be the favorite. Their offense has more weapons than...probably anyone in the league right now and they are at home. But 4.5/5 points? Why isn't this closer to 2.5/3. If Cleveland doesn't fall behind, their style of play vs this weakened Dallas defense should EAT. Pounding the rock and setting up Baker to launch 40 yard bombs to Odell on the sideline and 25 yard crosses to Landry in enough space to rack up YAC? What's confusing about the line is Vegas should know that Cleveland has a chance to win, and also that Cleveland is 2-1 to the Dallas 1-2. Yet they still jack up the points from what I think it should be (2.5/3) all the way to 5.5 opens? Although Last week my algo and my gut favored GB and Vegas had moved the line in NO favor so i switched my lean to the Vegas side and it was wrong. It's weird because both teams can win by two TDs and lose by two TDs. Seems more prudent to skip the sides play (unless you lean heavy cle ml) and look at props. Both teams should have plenty of offense in this game. Even if CLE gets a lead and leans on the run game to crush the TOP battle, expect Dallas and Dak to launch it up there and give plenty of fantasy value. MIN at HOU: Battle of two winless teams here. MIN had a real shot to win last week vs the Titans. Correctly, they utilized Dalvin Cooks speed and agility to attack the Titans weakness on defense which is stopping the run. Unfortunately, as predicted, their defense is hot trash and gave up 6 field goals to Ten and lost the game in the final 2 mins to one of them. Houston was leading vs. PIT last week and had the momentum up until a questionable PI call on a PIT 4 and inches that swung the momentum to the PIT side with the Hou offense only gaining 41 yards and 2 first downs in the second half. After that it was all PIT. In this game, I don't see the same. EVEN if MIN can get an early lead and play HOU just like they did TEN, pressing the run game with Cook... Watson is too good not to be able to make some plays vs. this struggling MIN defense. My algo is favoring HOU here and flags Watson Rush yards 22.5 Over as a VERY favorable prop SEA at MIA: This is the other game that is a little confusing to me. As usual when capping a MIA game these days, you have to decide if you're going to see Fitzmagic, or Fitzception. Last week, we predicted poorly and Fitzmagic taught the Jags a little lesson. This week is even harder because he's coming off a stock building performance and about to face ANOTHER HORRIBLE DEFENSE. The Seattle D is worst in the league right now. Which is saying something when you see that the Seattle offense is one of the SLOWEST in the league! Taking the play clock down every chance they can and giving their defense every opportunity to rest. Yet the defense is still blowing coverages and getting burnt in the secondary. The one bright spot in the Seattle defense has been their ability to stop the run. They rank second in opponent's run yards per game at only 67! That's pretty good since they have already faced Gurley, Michel, and Elliot. However, this week Seattle is missing even more pieces on the defensive side of the ball. Jamal Adams on the pass rush and CB Quinton Dunbar are both out for this one. I can see this leaning Fitz more to the magic side than the ception side. I mean if there is a game this week that shouts take the underdog and the points. It feels like this one. It has all the factors of Seattle missing players, traveling 5500 miles east for a 1pm game (which russ is 9-0 in soooo... maybe that stat is worthless here), Mia riding high off a win and extra rest, and most importantly, one of the only games in the first few weeks we have seen some blatant RLM on. Currently I am seeing 71% spread and 90% ML on Seattle, but the line has dropped from a -7 open to -5.5. All this tells me that sharps are seeing some value on the MIA side. And who's to blame them, the team has some chemistry right now and SEA will be traveling across the country to play in 90 degree heat. Maybe I sprinkle some on the MIA ml here? 🤪 Bleh, that was hard to type. My algo has Sea -9 and they are also my preseason favorite to win theNFC...so I hate that I reached the conclusion that Fitz is likely to have one of his better games on the year.🤪 LAC at TB: Hmmm, Chargers coming off a disappointing loss to the struggling panthers. Now traveling east for a 1pm game short a few key players, namely two offensively linemen, to take on one of the better pass rushes in the league. I still am not convinced Brady and this Bucs offense is good yet. Their defense has the last half of last year to back up its start, but the offense struggled in game one and while it has done well in game 2 and 3, it was vs clearly inferior opponents. Herbert is still an unknown. He, like burrow, look very promising, but facing this pass rush in an early heavy travel game? The addition of Bosa back into the lineup is definitely going to help. Both teams seem to be stronger on the defensive side of the ball so I would expect this game to be lower scoring affair. BAL at WAS: What can I really say about these next two games. Bal did NOT live up to the expectations in week 3. After watch KC struggle against a Chargers team with a first start QB, Bal let KC look like the team that won the Superbowl. Washington played a close game for the first half-3quarters, but then just unraveled as the game closed. I am expecting Baltimore to come out with a rage from their previous loss and a focus on reestablishing themselves as one of the AFC's premier superbowl contenders. 4PM GAMES NYG at LAR: This game is basically the same for me. The Rams took their first loss of the season last week vs the undefeated Bills. They struggled early (west coast team traveling east for a 1pm game) going down 28-3. But mounted a comeback to take the lead late in the 4th, only to see a bogus PI and their prevent defense let the game slip away in the final minutes. I am veryyy high on this Rams team and I think they will only get better as a unit as the season continues. The NYG, on the other hand, are clearly the worst team in the NFC East. Which is saying a lot considering that is probably the worst division in football. They just lost a home blowout to the C team 49ers who had like 20 people on IR. And just to show how bad the Giants were last game, they didn't make SF put ONE time in that game. They also NEVER made a trip to the red zone... While they may not start off the first quarter as hot as the Ravens, I expect the Rams to win convincingly. Ne at KC: Well it looks like this game is a no go. I was very heavy on the NE side as my algo has this as NE +4. I put it in my early week pre research parlay and just this morning Draftkings voided it due to the Covid concerns. As I type this I am not sure if they game is even going to be played. If it somehow does, and all first team starters play, I love the NE side. I expect KC to do their thing, but giving Bellicheck and Cam a whole TD to cover?! Too much for me to pass on. BUF at LVR: Josh Allen and the Bills offense looked great in the first half vs zone defense. But once the Rams started blitzing it was over for Allen. The Raiders have looked good in all 3. They did get outplayed by NE in that one but as expected, Bellichek knows how to shut most people down. My algo has this one as Bills -1 so I may have to jump on the home dog catching points. SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL Philly at SF: I have no stats to back this up. Philly is crap, we know this. But we also know that no team is ever as bad as they looked at their worst. They are in the WORST division in football, so 0-2-1 is not a death sentence for them. I expect them to give it everything in this particular game. Especially with half the 49ers team still on IR. It's possible that Philly lays a fat egg like the Giants last week, but I think Philly is more stout up front and will slow down SF's running game and make Mullens beat them. Singles (10-14, -6u)
Johnathon Taylor 79.5 Rush Yards Over (2.3u to win 2u)
Johnathon Taylor Anytime TD (2.5u to win 2u)
T.J. Hockenson 46.5 Rec Yards Over (1.5u to win 1u)
Ryan Fitzpatrick & Russell Wilson 300+ Passing Yards Each @ +300 (1u to win 3u)
James Robinson 16.5 Rec Yards Over (2.3u to win 2u)
Watson 22.5 Rush Yards Over (4.5u to win 4u)
HOU -2.5 (3u to win 1.95u)
BAL 1Q -3.5 (2u to win 2u)
CLE 1Q +0.5 (2.2u to win 2u)
LAC/TB 44.5 Under (2.86u to win 2u)
Myles Gaskin 4 Reception Over (3.5u to win 3u)
PHL +7.5 (2.2u to win 2u)Sadly put this in before the recent injury update and points movement :( Still like the Philly side, just missed some free points.
Nelson Agholor 35.5 Rec Yards Over (2u to win 2u)
Darren Waller 5.5 Receptions Over (2.1u to win 2u)
Parlays (0-6, -22.15u)
BAL -7.5, TB 48.5u, CLE +10, AZ 45o, CIN +4, PHL +14.5 (3.24u to win 26.19u)
HOU ml, TB ml, DET ml, BAL -9.5, LAR -9.5,NE +10.5(2.5u to win 25.28u)Put this in early when I liked some DET ml sprinkle. It was before the NE game was called off so the odds reduced from 16-1 to 10-1
CLE +8.5, HOU ml, BAL -8.5, LAR -8.5 (2.5u to win 10.55u)
As this is a language of tastes and strands of DNA analog names cannot be written phonetically and are instead replaced with a human name or Earth analog in [brackets]. Span: The diameter of an average [Gaian] = 0.94mm, Kilospan = 0.94m. Beat: The amount of time it takes an average [Gaian] to move their cilia = 0.064s, kilobeat = 1min 4s. Work Cycle: 10 kilobeats. Equivalent to around 15 hours on their time scale Day: Day length on [Gaia] = 28h 16min. Equivalent to around 3 months on their time scale. Year: Year length on [Gaia] = 224.4 days = 264.3 Earth days. [First] [Previous] [Next] —————————————————————— Director Townsend combed through the pile of reports in his inbox carefully, most of them were on the drone project. It was a massive stroke of luck that his facility was the one that was closest to where the drones had been captured, some components were going to be shipped to other labs soon, but at the moment his lab had a head start on any research coming out of these things. While his name won’t be on any of the papers, having them come from his lab was still something. Though there was also the risk of the unknown and active cyborg technology getting loose or self-destructing. The higher ups would not be pleased if his lab ruined their only samples. So far, the physicists were having little luck disassembling the device the drones had been found with. The drone dissection team was having a little more progress, though so far they were mostly just confirming data that had already been gathered from the first crushed drone. The ineffectualness of the comm jammers when the agents were capturing these things was still a worryingly open question. Oh well, its a bit optimistic to hope we would make much progress on the first day. He thought ruefully. He made his way down to the latest report from the dissection team, noting that there was a considerable pause between it and their last report. He clicked it open and as he read his bushy grey eyebrows rose steadily higher up his forehead. When he finished he sat back and stared at the far wall blankly for a few moments. …shit it really is aliens. Or at least the things are claiming to be from aliens. Jesus, if they are telling the truth this is an even bigger issue than we thought. He read the report again and started making calls. —————————————————————— Alison was in the middle of explaining that the phase “we can fix that” can apply to metaphorical concepts like widespread fear when a knock on the lab’s outer door interrupted them. Carl went through the signal blocking pair of doors and had a brief conversation with the person outside. He walked back in looking thoughtful. “The director just read our report and is sending in some language experts, they should be here in a few hours. He called NASA too and they are wanting more data about the spaceship they’re looking for. I just gave the messenger our updated report about tiny things inside the wasps beingthe aliens, so that might cause some ruckus as well.” Alison glanced over at the cage. “Did you understand that?” She asked, testing their vocabulary. “Affirmative. Minor. Highly.” The wasp at the front of the cage replied. “What did you understand?” “Read. Arriving. Language. Desire. Information. Vessel. Message. Small. Inside.” “Yeah that’s pretty scattered. I’ll explain, it was multiple messages. The first was saying other people who have knowledge about languages are coming to help you communicate with us soon. The second was saying people are desiring more information about your vacuum ship, and the third message was that we told our decision maker that you are naturally evolved not made.” The bug stopped looking around at the ceiling and turned to face her again briefly. “Understood. Request. Vessel. Information.” Alison smiled. They are so ADHD. Or maybe they are trying to find escape routes. I’m glad they followed that explanation though regardless. “How large is your vacuum ship.” She asked, figuring that was a good place to start off. The bugs paused for a moment before the one up front held out two front legs around a millimeter apart. “Single. Length. Unit.” It said, gesturing at the two legs with a third limb. Alison nodded. “Understood. How many standard length units long is your ship?” She asked, as David zoomed in a camera to get a close up shot of the bug’s gesture. They hissed at each other for a moment before the bug replied “Lack. Knowledge. Numbers.” Alison sighed and began explaining base ten counting systems and the words involved. At this point most of her coworkers had returned to their various jobs examining the dead wasps and let Alison take the lead on the communication attempts, as her original job of studying the “drones’” computers was kind of out the window. I guess I’m not the worst of us have this job. Given all the behavior and computing capacity tests I was planning I’m probably the closest thing we have to an interrogator at the moment She thought wryly as she finished her short lecture. “Did you understand that?” She asked. —————————————————————— “Eve! Wake up. It stopped talking.” Frank sent. Eve jerked out of the light doze she had fallen into. “Huh, what? Oh, yeah falling asleep in front of it during a lecture probably isn’t good.” She said, remembering the long kilobeats she had just spent trying to look like she was paying attention, it had been talking for ages. “Did anyone follow what it was saying?” She sent sleepily, the last she remembered it was drawing dots and symbols on one of its big glowing screens and saying something about places. “Yeah, we think those squiggles it was drawing under the clumps of dots are symbols for different numbers. They kind of match some of the symbols we have seen on the phone too, so that’s interesting. Anyway, it seems that it uses a system of displaying number in multiples of ten by grouping symbols next to each other. It’s pretty straight forward, though annoyingly it’s sound language messes things up. As best I can tell, they having different words for each grouping, so you need to learn a new word to say a larger type of number. Why not just say the names of each symbol making up the number?” [Frank] trailed off grumbling. [Walter] [sighed] and sent over [Frank] “Regardless, we think we know enough to use the symbol numbers at least. I still think we should have just sent them 330 [beeps]. That would have taken way less time.” “This will be faster in the long run.” [Eve] replied. “…I hope. How complex are the symbol numbers?” “I think we can show the length in just three symbols, so it’s not that bad.” [Frank] sent. “The vison-based version is actually logical…” “Alright, we get it, you don’t like the sound version. Let’s just answer the question already.” [Erin] snapped. Nerves were beginning to wear thin after nearly a tenth day stuck in this bare glass room. “Alright, alright, help me grab the interface tool.” —————————————————————— Alison watched excitedly as the aliens began moving their little stylus on their phone again. They drew a crude 3 and then the radio let out three short tones. Ah good, checking their work I guess. “Three, yes.” She replied. They then drew another 3 next to the first and the radio let out a rapid squeal of beeps. “Err, I can’t count that fast.” Alison muttered as she played back the signal a few times slower. There were 33 beeps. She grinned. “Thirty-three, yes.” The drones then added a zero at the end and Alison rushed to count the slightly slower stream of beeps that the radio spat out. 330, they seem to have gotten it She thought with some relief after she finally finished counting. The bug up front was looking bored again. I really should try and tell them apart better; I might need to add some colored dots on them or something. Oh shit, they might have names, we never introduced ourselves. I’ll have to do that after this. “Three hundred and thirty, yes.” She replied, putting those thoughts out of her mind for the moment. The bugs carried the stylus away from the screen, thankfully not adding another digit. One of the ones standing near the phone flew onto the screen and pointed at the number. “Vessel. Unit. Lengths. Numbers.” The radio said, Alison wasn’t sure if it was the alien on the phone or the one up front speaking, they all used the same voice. “That’s the length of your vacuum ship in the units you showed us?” Alison checked. “Yes.” “Huh, so about this big?” She said, spreading her hands a third of a meter apart. “That’s pretty small.” “You. Large.” “…fair enough.” Alison said, noting the dimension down. “Is that the ship you used to travel between stars?” “Yes.” How the hell did they go interstellar in something the size of a football? She thought, shaking her head. Something for the actual interrogators to ask. “You drew the ship as an oval, is that roughly its shape?” She said, looking back up at the wasp in the front of the cage. “Word. Oval.” She drew a quick oval on her tablet. “That’s an oval.” “Vessel.” “No, I mean the shape, not what its representing.” “Symbol. Named. Query.” “Yes, we have names for different symbols.” “What. Symbol. Mean.” “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a type of shape.” “Understood. Type. Form. Not. Symbol.” “Err, yes. Anyway, your ship is oval shaped?” “Not. Flat.” She sighed and tried gesturing with her hands to outline a 3d ovoid “Like this? A not flat oval?” The wasps paused and watched her hand motions for a bit before replying. “Yes.” Alison dropped the charades and grabbed her sketch again, drawing length and width lines around the craft. “Ok, so its three hundred and 30 units long, how wide is it?” She said, waving her stylus from one side of the drawing to the other. The creatures wrote 104 on their phone. “Unit. Lengths.” The radio finished. “Ok, what is the ship made of?” The wasps seemed to struggle for words for a bit before one of the drones grabbed one of the chips of plastic scattered around where they had been sawing on the phone. It gestured towards the fleck. “Minor. Link.” “Slightly similar? Comparable?” “Yes.” Alison wrote down ‘Some sort of polymer.’ She then quickly sketched the scene of the ship between Earth and the Moon. “Anything more you can tell us about the ship’s location?” She asked, pointing to the rather vague drawing. “No. Ship. Move.” “But it moves around in this area?” “Many. Do. Yes.” “Oh! So there are several here? How many?” The wasps froze and hissed at each other again briefly. They then wrote 38. That’s not suspicious at all. Alison thought, noting the pause. “Are you lying?” She asked, squinting at them. They flinched. “No. Considered. Found. Negative.” “Say again?” The little bug up front twitched with annoyance. “Considered. Lying. Decided. Not.” Hmm, I’m not sure if them admitting that makes me trust them more or less Alison thought, making a note of the incident. “Is there anything else about one of your ships that would help us locate them?” “No.” “Ok. I’ll send this to my decision makers now.” She said, stepping out of the lab briefly to feed a paper copy of her report to a scanner outside. This seems kind of over kill given they don’t seem to be classic computers at all, but they could still have some computers on board their little wasp vehicles, or they could just be good hackers. Cyberweapons could still be an issue. Alison mused as she walked back in. She stood looking at the cage awkwardly for a moment, wondering what to ask next. They look pretty pathetic in there; we need to get an actual habitat or something set up for them if we plan on questioning them for long. Oh right, I still haven’t done introductions. She cleared her throat. “I am sorry, I haven’t told you my name, I am Alison. Do you have names?” “Yes. Not. Sound.” “Your name is Not Sound?” “No. Name. Not. Word. Scent. Memory.” “Oh. So not speakable then?” “Yes.” “That is a shame. I would have liked to know them. You are multiple individuals, right?” The wasp up front tilted its head slightly. “Query.” “Different minds.” “Yes. You. Query.” “Yes, I am an individual too.” “You. Many.” “What do you mean?” “Many. Small. Life.” “Oh, cells. Yeah, I have lots of cells. I still only have one mind though.” “Confirmed. Idea.” “You were wondering about that? I guess we are pretty alien to you. Are you not made of multiple cells?” “One. Creature. Yes.” A biologist would have a million questions right now. Alison bet. “Hey Carl!, I think you’ll like this.” She yelled to her coworker on the other side of the lab room. He glanced up from a scan of one of the wasp’s legs and hurried over. “What is it?” “I figured you’d like to know our guests here are unicellular.” He blinked. “That’s…interesting. It fits what we saw when that one was crawling around. How the heck to they think though?” “Memory. Chain. Folding.” The radio hissed. “That isn’t very helpful.” Carl muttered. Two wasps grabbed their stylus again and drew a triple helix shape. “Memory.” The radio said. Carl peered closer. “…that looks like the triple stranded DNA analog we found in the wasps’ nerve cells. Interesting, they encode memories into their genome?” “Word. Genome.” “Err, data storage for replication.” “Similar. Type.” “Fascinating. I really wish I could get a good scan of one of them but that might hurt them. How tolerant of ionizing radiation are you?” Carl asked. “Word. Ionizing.” “Rips electrons, small charged matter pieces, from atoms, um, small matter building blocks.” “Large. Bad.” The wasp up front opened up its head, and a tiny shimmering ball oozed out. Alison zoomed in with one of the cameras and watched as it formed several limbs and began flicking them around just above itself. Alison frowned with confusion until she noticed the faint shimmering on its body was actually not on its surface at all, it was coming from a faint translucent sphere englobing the creature. The alien was gesturing at it. “Need. Shield. On. Surface.” The radio hissed. “Star. Power. Hurt. Forget. Insane. Die.” The creature slid back into its case again and the wasp shuddered back to life. “…ok, important note, X-rays are off the table.” Carl said worriedly as he jotted down a report on his tablet. “You said you need those shields on the surface, do you normally live under ground?” “Under. Water.” “Ah. Do you need those shields when in your flying bodies?” He asked. “No.” “How long can you stay in those things?” “Many. Day.” “How many?” —————————————————————— “Err, I don’t know? It should be largely indefinite right?” Asked [Frank]. “The life support systems are only rated for around 4 days of total use. Indefinite for most practical purposes, though it wasn’t expected for us to be using them nonstop like this.” [Walter] sent softly. “At the rate this questioning is going they might actually keep us for that long. Heck, that would only feel like half a tenth day to them. And that’s assuming they are planning on letting us go at all.” [Erin] replied grimly. “Maybe that would be a good bargaining chip into letting us go? There is no point in keeping us longer if we will just starve.” [Eve] wondered. “I mean, they could just be planning on killing us when they are done. They might not want us reporting back to the fleet.” [Walter] pointed out. “Important questions.” [Eve] sent. “Lets ask them quickly.” —————————————————————— The wasps drew a 4 on the tablet, Carl and Alison shared worried looks. “That won’t give us much time at all.” He said. The radio hissed “Time. Limited. Vessel. Return. Query.” Alison grimaced. “That depends a lot on how communications with your ships go. If they run away or attack then we won’t be able to send you back. How do you think your people will respond to us contacting them? Or will they contact us soon? They must know you are missing.” “Decision. Makers. Know. Self. Gone. Long. Time. Think. Dead. Highly.” “Hmm, will they be willing to talk if we contact them and show them that you are still alive?” “Possible.” “What would their reaction likely be?” “Fear. Curiosity.” “We can work with the latter. Is their understanding of this language similar to yours?” “Yes. Same.” “OK, we might want to improve yours more first so you can act as translators. We wouldn’t want a misunderstanding with them.” “How. Long.” “Depends on how fast your translator improves, I’ve already noticed some improvement.” “Interaction. You. Confirmation. Assists.” “That’s good, some language teachers should be arriving in a few hours and they should be even better at that.” “Word. Hours.” “One 24th of a day.” Alison said, writing the numbers out on her tablet. “Long. Time.” “Yeah, your craft running out in a few days is a worrying time constraint. We might have to work out a way of synthesizing the stuff you need. What is it that will run out in 4 days?” “Food. Machine. Fail.” “Could you give us a sample of your food?” —————————————————————— “Do we really want to give them the ability to keep us here forever?” [Walter] asked. “Beats starving to death if the deeper downs do something stupid.” [Erin] replied. “Maybe we should wait until we know that has happened first. Getting rid of that leverage should be our last resort.” “Come on [Walter], they are slow, it might take them days to get a synthesizer running. Besides, we could still threaten to kill ourselves if they refuse to let us go.” [Erin] pointed out, gesturing at him with an antenna. “That’s a bit bright, but fine I get your point.” [Walter] [sighed]. “I guess I’ll give them the sample then.” Said [Frank] “You already have way too much exposure time [Eve].” “Fine by me.” She replied. “I feel no great need to make myself feel even more exposed again.” —————————————————————— “Yes. Give. Where.” Alison pointed to the back wall of the cage where the hatches were set and then went into the back room where they were operated. The room was an organized mess of various boxes full of testing materials that had been hastily cobbled together when they had heard about the wasps being caught and sent here this morning. On the near wall was an array of small hatches and the mechanical levers that opened them. She pulled a lever that operated the inner door for the smallest of the four hatches, and waited a few moments until Carl told her a wasp had gone in and out. She then closed the inner door and opened the outer one on the little airlock like chamber. Looking inside she didn’t see anything at first, until she spotted a dark mote of dust sitting in the center of the cubby. Being careful not to blow it away she scooped it up with the tip of a scalpel and deposited it into a sample vial. She walked back to Carl and passed it to him, he squinted at it confused for a moment. “I’m pretty sure the little speck in there is the sample they gave us.” Alison said “Or it might be a mote of dust, I can’t really tell.” “I’ll go check with the microscope.” Carl muttered as he headed back over to his work station. A couple of moments later he yelled over his shoulder “Yeah this was it. It’s actually a tiny plastic bottle, looks like it was made with a bit of the plastic from the phone case. I’m going to need some really good tweezers to get this open.” Alison left him to his work and turned back to the cage. “After food is there anything else you will need?” “More. Cage. Swim.” “Yeah, that box was meant just for a few tests, not long-term habitation. What kind of habitat do you need?” —————————————————————— “An apartment would be nice but somehow I’m guessing they don’t have a standard sized building laying around.” [Frank] muttered. “A water tank and a plastic block with some holes punched in it shouldn’t be too hard for them to make, and would give us at least some crude “rooms” to relax in out of sight.” [Eve] sent, along with a mental image. “Hmm, yeah. And if we specified a soft material it wouldn’t be too hard for us to just carve out rooms ourselves. There wouldn’t be any appliances in them or anything, but it beats swimming around an empty tank or just sitting in our craft for tenth days on end.” Another engineer agreed. “OK, let’s draw this out on the device.” —————————————————————— Alison spent a few minutes copying several sketches for what amounted to tiny fish tank decorations, mostly some minuscule blocks of plastic and wood with various nooks carved into them. Security will probably want to go over all of this to make sure that they couldn’t make anything dangerous out of it but so far it seems pretty innocuous. “Alright, what water conditions do you need? Do you need salt water?” “Word. Salt.” “It’s a mineral made of…ok let me get a periodic table. I figure you guys know about atoms and stuff, right?” “Matter. Building. Blocks. Yes. Very.” “Good, let me just give you our words for them then.” —————————————————————— [Walter] and [Erin] watched the giant’s slow lecture with bemusement. “I’m no chemist but they seem to have a decent grasp of the basics.” [Walter] remarked as the creature above them slowly blinked and one of its fingers continued its gradual progression towards the next label on the chart it was holding. “It didn’t mention quarks at all so they don’t seem to have gotten that far.” One of the fabricators replied. “True, though it seems to be trying to keep things short, thank the depths. Its only describing how they categorize different elements and isotopes, that just requires mentioning protons and neutrons.” [Walter] replied. “Also, look at how many elements they have on that chart, they must have some transuranic elements on there. I wonder how they got samples of those; you need to be pretty close to a super nova to get those.” “They use radioactive materials for power, they can briefly make supernova like conditions.” [Erin] pointed out. “Lovely thought.” [Walter] sent. That would be an interesting question to talk to the creature (err… Alison) about, but it taking a kilobeat to answer puts a damper on things. The creature eventually finished explaining the labeling system for the chart it was holding up, and pointed to elements 11 and 17 which it then called “Sodium” and “Chlorine”. It then drew a pair of circles next to each other with a dashed line in between. It labeled one circle 11 and the other 17. It tapped the drawing and said an unknown word, [Walter] figured it probably meant “ionic bond”. The creature did some more scribbling and then showed two smaller circles with 1’s in them linked to a bigger circle labeled 8. The smaller circles were linked to the bigger one with solid lines. It then drew a copy of that molecule next to the first and showed them being linked together with a dotted line. It then pointed to each type of line and named them. “Hmm, that’s clearly a pair of water molecule given the elements in them, I think it’s showing us how to draw different bonding types.” [Frank] sent. The thing began opening its mouth and the team waited a few hundred beats for it to speak. “Provide” “Many-atom” “Types” “In” “Water” “I think it wants us to list the minerals the tank water will need.” [Eve] sent. “That makes sense. Ugg, that’s going to take awhile to draw. Let’s get started on it then.” [Erin] grumbled as she flew over to the stylus again. The team spent a few kilobeats listing the components and concentrations of standard hab water. —————————————————————— Alison finished noting down the materials list, it was pretty short, just water with a few trace minerals to keep osmosis in check. She didn’t know enough about fish tanks to know if the oxygen concentration listed was normal or not though. “OK, this all looks like stuff we can get. I’ll submit a request for this stuff to the director.” She said, walking out of the lab again. While she was waiting for the scanner in the hall to finish, she turned to the bored looking intern sitting nearby. “Any word about how the director is handling this?” She asked the messenger. “Nothing worth interrupting you guys.” He said, flicking through the messages on his computer. “Some notices to other departments about requesting equipment to studying that lifting machine, not much progress on that still. Some proposals to try getting your aliens to turn it on for us, though security is vetoing that idea at the moment. The director is in talks with the FBI about moving those things to a different facility, it’s kind of a clusterfuck at the moment. The government doesn’t really know what they want to do with the things.” Alison let out a breath “Yeah no kidding, I don’t think anyone has a plan for dealing with captive sentient amoebas. I think we might have to return them to their ship soon, their life support will supposedly run out in a few days. Any word on finding their ships?” “NASA is working on it right now.” —————————————————————— Henry glared at the radar data again for the millionth time before starting slightly as his phone rang with his boss’s number. He worriedly grabbed it. “Hel-“ “DC called a few minutes ago. They are asking about any signs of small ovoid spacecraft in between the Earth and the Moon. The anomalies you are checking might not be an instrument error after all.” His boss said breathlessly. Henry blinked. “Umm, how big of a spacecraft are we talking here? The data is showing a football sized body zipping around. Are these some microsats they are trying to locate? There is no way they could have the fuel for the maneuvers this thing would supposedly be pulling.” “That matches what they described. They asked for 32 cm by 10 cm sized ovoids. The radar signatures you sent me last night are consistent with a rotating ovoid, and accelerating like that definitely rules out a natural body.” “It also rules out an unnatural body. The blip changed trajectories like crazy, the g’s those maneuvers would produce is absurd. It’s clearly an instrument glitch.” “On both the radar system and the thermal telescope?” His boss asked pointedly. Henry sighed. “Fine, if they want to double check it themselves they can be my guest. I’ll send the files over now.” —————————————————————— Director Townsend had been juggling phone calls all afternoon thanks to this alien issue. The linguists and questioners the NSA was sending over were going to arrive any minute now, and there was talk of them leaving with the creatures. “Yes sir, I realize this is a matter of national security, in fact I would go so far as to say it’s a matter of international security. But we are currently one of the more secure locations to house these creatures, and we need to keep studying them. This is an alien species for crying out loud, the place we need them is in a lab. We don’t even know what they eat yet, we need to do more research on them before we can send them off to some military base.” Townsend said with restrained frustration, this was the third time the NSA director had brought this up. The man on the other end of the line sighed. “Fine, if there really is that much left to do you can keep them for now, but I will be sending additional security. Finish your work quickly.” Townsend glared at the phone briefly after the general abruptly hung up. Ugh, at least he was somewhat willing to compromise. He grumbled to himself as his phone immediately began ringing again, it was NASA. “Director Townsend speaking.” He said urgently. “Director, this is Bernstein again. We have found several matches for the objects you described. There were several unexplained small objects caught on radar over the last few weeks, and even some thermal images as well. We began a search for more of them an hour ago and we think we found another one. Its in a low elliptical orbit that misses most of our radar stations, though we managed to get a good read on it a few minutes ago. Its albedo is crazy low, its messing with the radar a bit too, but we spotted it with an infrared satellite as well. Its quite a bit warmer than a normal rock should be.” “Sounds promising. Keep a close eye on it, we might be giving them a call soon.” He hung up and checked his messages again and saw the interrogators had arrived. Let’s hope they don’t make a mess of things. (Continues in comments) [Next]
NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2020
We have talked a lot about the draft, biggest remaining needs for every NFL team, some breakout candidates and other stuff, so let’s now get back to more of a big picture and look at some teams from an angle of where could they go next season. In this article, I am analyzing those teams that finished fourth in their division this past year and why they could win it in 2020 or land at the bottom once again, plus an outlook where I actually see them. Of course much of this is about these eight teams and how much better or worse I feel about them than the general public, but it was heavily dependent on their three division rivals as well. The top half I could certainly see earn a playoff spot and surprise some people if everything goes right. After that a lot of my faith is more built around the lack of great competition and giving some hope to these respective fan bases. As the cliché goes – everybody is 0-0 right now. https://preview.redd.it/rs90lt6ckf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ddfc8945862472b52b5ef8c69076acde904c44c
1. Arizona Cardinals
Why they can win the division: Let’s just start with the main point here – this Cardinals squad has all the ingredients to make a big jump in 2020. I expect Kyler Murray to enter the superstar conversation in year two, after impressing with his arm talent and ability to extend plays in a (somewhat controversial) Offensive Rookie of the Year campaign. Steve Keim managed to unload a bad David Johnson contract and basically acquire an elite receiver in DeAndre Hopkins for a second-round pick. Kenyan Drake now has a full offseason to learn this offense and make himself a major factor once again, following up an outstanding second half of the season once the Cardinals traded for him with Miami. He perfectly fits into this offense with a lot East-West based rushing from shotgun sets and his involvement in the pass game, including those quick throws as an extension of the rushing attack. Arizona’s defense should be a lot better with run-stoppers being added in the draft that fit their 3-4 base front with Utah’s Leki Fotu and LSU’s Rashard Lawrence, since they can stay in those packages against the other teams in their division running a lot of 12 and 21 personnel probably. Add to that a do-it-all player with ridiculous range and overall athleticism in Isaiah Simmons at eight overall, plus all the other guys being in their second year under DC Vance Joseph. I love Budda Baker as a missile from his safety spot and I think some of the other young guys on that unit will take a step forward, like second-year corner Byron Murphy, who I talked about last week. Now let’s get to rest of the West – every other team in that division has some issues. The 49ers are facing the objects of a potential Super Bowl hangover and some limitations with Jimmy G at the helm. The Seahawks have question marks on the edge on either side of the ball with Cedric Ogbuehi and Brandon Shell fighting for the starting gig at right tackle and Jadeveon Clowney still on the open market, with a bunch of draft picks these last couple of years having to step up. And the Rams had one of the worst O-lines in football last season and they lost some pieces on defense. The Cardinals already gave all these teams issues in 2019 and have now added pieces that were clearly missing when last matching up against each other. Why they could finish last again: Most importantly, I am still not completely sold on the Cardinals offensive line, with D.J. Humphries being signed to a rather expensive deal as a below-average left tackle, third-rounder Josh Jones – while earning a late first-round grade from me – still needing an overhaul on his footwork before he can slide in at right tackle and guard Justin Pugh finally having played a full 16 games for the first time since 2015 last season. NFL coaches had a lot of time to study Kliff Kingsbury’s Air-Raid offense, which when you break it down is pretty simplistic in the amount of schemes they run. Yes, he diversified it a little as last season went along, going under center and running some pro-style rushing plays, but at its core, you can learn how to create some issues for all those mesh concepts and spread sets. As far as the Cardinals defense goes, it is more about pieces than proven commodities. Patrick Peterson is seemingly on the decline, they are thin in the secondary and could Chandler Jones follow soon, after he has been one of the most underrated pass-rushers in the league for a while now? You are staring the reigning NFC champs in the eyes, a team that was a few inches away from earning a playoff bye and another squad that went to the Super Bowl just two years ago. This is probably the best division in the entire league. Bottom line: I still believe the 49ers have done enough to repeat as division champs, re-tooling for all the losses they have suffered this offseason. However, I’m feeling pretty good about the Cardinals earning a wildcard spot. While I believe in the Seahawks quarterback and the Rams head coach respectively to not allow their teams to not have throwaway seasons, I also see enough issues with those squads to make me believe the Cardinals could have the second-best year of anybody in the West. To me they are pretty clearly the best of these eight teams, because they have a young phenom at quarterback, stars at pretty much every position, a different type of system around them and what I’d like to call “juice” coming into 2020. https://preview.redd.it/anrr9erfkf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=5655b4452baff2691a0e060e8d70918d58801a4c
2. Detroit Lions
Why they can win the division: Matt Stafford is back healthy and when he was in the lineup last season, this was a team that defeated the Eagles, Chargers and only didn’t finish the job against the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs because of some crazy stuff going on late. The veteran QB stood at 19 touchdowns compared to five picks and was playing at a near-MVP type level. However, Detroit’s identity will be built on the run game with re-investments in the offensive line as well as adding D’Andre Swift to form a dynamic one-two punch with him and Kerryon Johnson. Kenny Golladay and Marvin Jones may be the most underrated receiving duo to go with Danny Amendola as a tough guy in the slot and T.J. Hockenson coming into year two as a top-ten pick a year ago, having shown flashes when he was healthy. The defense is finally starting to take shape with third-overall Jeffrey Okudah as an elite corner prospect being added to an underrated secondary, Jamie Collins being a chess piece in the front seven after already having worked well with Matt Patricia and some young guys up front trying to prove themselves to go with the versatile Trey Flowers. Maybe more importantly than the Lions themselves – Nobody else got that much better and none of the other three really stand out to me. Other than the Vikings probably – who had the advantage of making a record-breaking 15 selections – the Lions might have had the best draft within the division. Thanks to that last-place schedule, they get to face the Redskins in the East (instead of Eagles & Cowboys) and Cardinals in the West, who I just talked about taking a step forward, but are still a better draw than the reigning conference champions or possibly having to travel to Seattle. I believe that new regime in Detroit has finally built an identity on both sides of the ball with the heavy investments in the run game and back-seven on defense. Winning ten games might earn you a division title, if everybody plays each other tough. Why they could finish last again: Can these guys finally stay healthy? Matt Stafford to my surprise played a full 16 games in eight straight years before last season, but a lot of that had to do with his toughness to fight through pain and he had major issues with that shoulder early on in his career before basically breaking his back after putting the team on it for the last decade. Kerryon Johnson has missed 14 of 32 possible starts and he has never carried the ball more than 118 times a season. Their receiving corp has been banged up quite a bit too. More glaring even – how will all these additions of former Patriots players work out? Can Matt Patricia build a New England 2.0 in Michigan or is he just bringing in players he knows will listen to him and the way he wants things to be done? Detroit could also rely on a lot of rookies to be immediate impact players – possibly two new starting guards on offense, running back D’Andre Swift probably sharing the load with Kerryon, Jeffrey Okudah having to immediately become their CB1 and Julian Okwara being asked to become a much more consistent player if they give him major snaps. And I recently talked about how their uncertainty at punter could be an issue for their ball-control, defense-minded style of play. They also have an early bye (week five), which I’m never a big fan of, after facing the Bears, Packers, Cardinals and Saints, which probably includes three playoff teams. If Chicago can get any competent QB play, all these teams should be highly competitive. Bottom line: I don’t think any team in this division wins more than ten games. Unfortunately I don’t see the Lions go over that mark themselves either. The Packers won’t come out victorious in so many close games (8-1 in one-possession affairs), the Vikings have lost a few proven commodities and look for young talent to immediately replace those and the Bears still have a quarterback competition going on. So if Detroit can do any better than just split the season series with those three teams, I see them finishing above .500, but ten wins is the ceiling for me. In terms of the competition inside the division, the Lions may be my number one team in this conversation, but I see a much clearer path to things crashing down for Matt Patricia and them having another disappointing season than I do with the Cardinals. No team in this division may finish below that 8-8 mark. https://preview.redd.it/7ivo914ikf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=d029ddd274b78e78f5bc932d00086b8c697a466e
3. Miami Dolphins
Why they can win the division: When you ask the general public, the Buffalo Bills right now are the favorites to win the AFC East, but they haven’t done so since 1995 and they still have to prove they really are that team. The Patriots lost several pieces on defense and Tom Brady of course, which probably leads them to starting a quarterback, who over his four career pass attempts has thrown more touchdowns to the opposing team than to his own. The Jets are still building up that roster, with GM Joe Douglas trying to plant seeds on burnt earth, and they face a BRUTAL schedule. So Miami has a lot of things going in their favor for an organization that I believe in what they are trying to build. Depending on what happens at quarterback, you could have a veteran in Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was by far the best inside the division in several key categories last season and/or Tua Tagovailoa, who had one of the most prolific careers we have seen from anybody in the SEC. They added at least two new starters on the O-line, they now have one of the premiere cornerback trios in the league with the all-time highest paid player at the position in Byron Jones and first-round pick Noah Igbinoghene to go with Xavien Howard and with some added beef up front, they are finally looking a lot like what Brian Flores had in New England. DeVante Parker really broke out over the second half of 2019 and Miami should have a much better rushing attack because of the additions up front and two quality committee backs in Jordan Howard and Matt Breida being added. They have two other young pass-catchers ready to break out this upcoming season in tight-end Mike Gesicki and a UDFA receiver from a year ago in Preston Williams. Whenever Tua’s name is called upon, he will be a perfect fit for Chan Gailey’s horizontal passing game. Why they could finish last again: As much as I like what I see from this entire organization, it is probably just a year too early for Miami. So many young players could be thrown into the fire and a lot of them I look at as needing that experience – 18th overall pick Austin Jackson (USC) is more of a developmental tackle still with his footwork and hand-placement issues, 30th overall pick Noah Igbinoghene (Auburn) has only played cornerback for two years and was bailed out by his athletic tools at times, third-rounder Brandon Jones has to develop more of a feel in deep coverage and at least one more rookie lineman will likely start for them. Even outside of this year’s draft class, they already had several players on their roster that are still moving towards their prime. Whether you look at last year’s first-rounder Christian Wilkins, a lot of second- and third-year pass-catchers or their young linebackers outside of Kyle Van Noy. The Bills are entering year four of that turn-around under Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane, the Patriots still have the greatest coach of all time and will be a tough matchup solely based on that and the Jets at least have people playing for their jobs, plus a very talented young quarterback I still believe in. As much as I doubt Adam Gase, as long as Sam Darnold doesn’t get mono again, the offense should at least be competent, and the defense could potentially have a top-five player at every level with All-Pro Bowl safety Jamal Adams, an 85-million dollar linebacker in C.J. Mosley and my number one prospect in last year’s draft on the interior D-line with Quinnen Williams. Bottom line: As I mentioned before, the Bills are the front-runners in this division for me. As much respect as I have for Bill Belichick, I haven’t seen enough from Jarrett Stidham to make me a believer and he shrunk in some big moments at Auburn. The Jets to me could be a lot better than they were in 2019 and still go 6-10 just because of the type of schedule they are up against. So the Dolphins to me could easily finish anywhere from second to fourth, depending on how some of the players on that roster progress. I wouldn’t bet on them actually making the playoffs, but they could absolutely be a pain in the butt for some of the better teams in the AFC and in 2021 they might be the pick here. https://preview.redd.it/nme3explkf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=3998c6026125c1b9b48438e3fc9afaf9601b116e
4. Los Angeles Chargers
Why they can win the division: First and foremost, this Chargers defense is absolutely loaded with no real hole that you can point to. Derwin James is back healthy after a first-team All-Pro rookie campaign, Chris Harris Jr. comes in to make this secondary one the elite units in the NFL to go with two more Pro Bowlers among it and they have some guys I expect to break out like Jerry Tillery, Drue Tranquill and Nasir Adderley. In terms of having matchup pieces and a versatile pass rush to challenge Kansas City, nobody in the league may be on the same level as these guys. Offensively, Ihave talked about how the left tackle spot is concern for L.A. with a battle between Sam Tevi and Trey Pipkins for the starting job, but the other four spots are as good as they have been in a while, acquiring Pro Bowl guard Trai Turner via trade, signing a top five right tackle in Bryan Bulaga and getting Mike Pouncey back healthy. Tyrod Taylor can steer the ship and even if Justin Herbert is thrown into the fire – which I wouldn’t recommend – they have the skill-position players and willingness to run the ball to take pressure off those guys. While the Chiefs return 20 of 22 starters from a year ago, this wouldn’t be the first time we saw a Super Bowl champion have some issues the following season and as much as we want to hype up the Broncos and Raiders, both their quarterbacks (and other players of course as well) have a lot to prove still. Outside of KC, the Chargers likely have the smallest changes to what they do other than moving on from Philip Rivers and we saw that formula work the year prior, when they challenged Kansas City until the very end for the division crown and the conference’s top seed potentially. While they probably would have liked to bring in Tom Brady over the offseason, the fact they decided against signing Cam Newton to a roster that is ready to win right now, shows you the confidence they have in that quarterback room. Why they could finish last again: I’m not a huge fan of Derek Carr, but the Chargers will probably have the worst quarterback in the division in 2020. And their starting left tackle could be the worst in the entire league. As good as their defense will probably be, you can not consistently win games in which your offense doesn’t put up 20+ points in the league today – especially when all these teams in their division have spent so much on acquiring offensive firepower these last couple of years. I believe all three of their division rivals got better this offseason and the Chargers spent their top draft pick (sixth overall) on a young quarterback, who might not even help them win games this season. As I already mentioned, Kansas City brings back almost their entire starting lineups and they went 12-4 despite Mahomes seemingly having his knee cap facing the sideline while laying on his back. I have uttered my thoughts on Denver several times now, which you can read up on later. As for Las Vegas’ new team, they did start last season 6-4 and just heavily invested into their two major issues – wide receiver and linebacker. And while I don’t like to talk about it – injuries have been a huge issue for this Chargers team in recent years and I don’t really know what it is even, but I can’t assume that they all of a sudden can stay healthy. Bottom line: In terms of talent on the roster outside of the quarterback position, you could make a pretty compelling argument that the Chargers are ahead of all the other teams on this list. That’s the reason they have a pretty high floor of finishing around .500 and if everything works out, they could absolutely be a playoff contender. However, for this exercise in particular, I believe their upside is capped by what they have under center. Tyrod Taylor can be a top-20 quarterback in the NFL this season and in terms of upside, Justin Herbert has all the tools to become a difference-maker once he steps on the field, but they don’t have the explosiveness the Chiefs or the Broncos have for that matter. With so much continuity on a team that has the best player in the entire league, I can’t go against the Chiefs and in the end we are evaluating the chances to actually win the division. https://preview.redd.it/rywropjokf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed77a7303af810b862abb2100c4f0b86841a2d38
5. Washington Redskins
Why they can win the division: These guys are very reminiscent of the 49ers with their defensive line, in terms of having invested a lot of high draft picks into the unit these last couple of years and now with that second overall pick bringing in a true stud from Ohio State – this time in Chase Young. When you look at all those guys up front – with the Bama boys patrolling the middle, Matt Ioannidis capable of moving around the front, Montez Sweat looking to break out in year two and Ryan Kerrigan still being there as a productive veteran – they will wreak some havoc this season. Ron Rivera could finally bring some structure to this organization and help them turn it around on defense with the addition of an old companion in Thomas Davis, plus some high-upside players like Reuben Foster and Fabian Moreau looking to prove themselves. Quarterback Dwayne Haskins had a very underwhelming rookie campaign, but he clearly wasn’t ready to be out there and found himself in a bad situation in terms of the support system around him. I like a lot of their young skill-position players the front office has surrounded him with, when you look at Terry McLaurin trying to become a young star in this league, who produced despite shaky quarterback play last season, Kelvin Harmon and Antonio Gandy-Golden being two big-bodied targets I liked these last two drafts, Derrius Guice hopefully finally being able to stay healthy to lead this backfield and this year’s third-round pick Antonio Gibson being a chess piece that you can manufacture touches for. Somebody I forgot to mention in this discussion recently is Steven Sims Jr., who is a jitterbug with the ball in his hands. New offensive coordinator Scott Turner will implement a system that should make life easier on his second-year signal-caller as well, while relying heavily on the run game. Why they could finish last again: Haskins is by far the least proven QB of the bunch, with Daniel Jones even being head and shoulders above him in their respective rookie seasons. No pass-catcher outside of Terry McLaurin had any major production to speak. Counting on a 37-year old Thomas Davis to not only be a leader for them, but also make plays on the field, could create issues, and Washington lost some pieces in the secondary. This offseason is a challenge for any team, that is looking to implement a new system on each side of the ball, but I think especially for a motivator like Rivera, who can give his squad a heartbeat and push them to success, not being there in person with those guys will hurt. Most importantly however, this division to me will be a two-man race between the Eagles and Cowboys – as it has been for a while now. They both will likely have top ten quarterbacks, better receiving corps, better offensive lines and more experienced defenses. The Giants may not blow anybody away coming into 2020, but looking at the two matchups from last year between them and the Redskins, Big Blue beat them 24-3 the first time around, when Daniel Jones threw one touchdown compared to two interceptions and then he diced them up for five TDs and no picks in week 16. The one area Washington would have had the clear upper hand was with their front-four, but New York just invested a lot of draft capital into their O-line to prevent that. Just go through the Redskins’ schedule and show me more than six wins. I dare you. Bottom line: These last two sentences really say it all. Even if Philly and Dallas split the season series and Washington can get a game off either one of them, it will be tough to turn around this squad as quickly as this season – with reduced practice time and team activities – to a point where they can finish above both of them. Both of them could easily win double-digit games in 2020 and while I think the Redskins are on the right track if Haskins looks more like the Ohio State version of himself, other than their defensive line, no unit for them is ready to compete for the division quite yet. Just going through their schedule in an objective manner, it is tough to find any lay-ups and say Washington has some baseline of wins they count on. To not have them any lower than this is more due to the respect for Riverboat Ron and how high I was on a lot of the guys they drafted recently. https://preview.redd.it/szpawv9rkf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=62ca5fe882d8155d83eb3328e9bf1f1681a17384
6. Jacksonville Jaguars
Why they can win the division: I was going back and forth between my number six and seven teams, because the Jaguars are projected to pick first overall come next April for a reason – they did lose a lot of pieces. However, to me it came down to the fact that the AFC South might be won at 9-7 or 10-6 and this coaching staff actually has to win to keep their jobs. There is a lot noise about the Colts, but when you go back to last season, Philip Rivers was a turnover machine with serious questions about his arm strength. Bill O’Brien made some very questionable decisions for Houston and Tennessee is counting on a formula that is built on a 250-banger running the ball 25+ times and Ryan Tannehill finally repeating a career year, as they are coming off an AFC title game appearance. As far as Jacksonville goes, Gardner Minshew was the highest-graded rookie quarterback according to PFF and altogether I would have put him second only behind Kyler Murray. D.J. Chark broke out as one of the young star receivers and I had a first-round grade on Colorado’s Laviska Shenault if he can be healthy, because his talent is off the charts. I think the O-line would have benefitted from another tackle to kick Cam Robinson inside to guard, but those guys are some road-graders to make the run game work. Defensively the only real contributor from that Sacksonville group a couple of years ago who actually wants to be there is Myles Jack, but I really like their young duo off the edge in first-rounders Josh Allen last year and now K’Lavon Chaisson (LSU). There are some questions about the back-end, but they were built front-to-back with a lot of zone coverage behind it and depending on the development of ninth overall pick C.J. Henderson, they can roll away from him matching up with the opposing team’s number one receiver. Avoiding some of the better AFC squads altogether is pretty sweet as well, to go with facing no playoff team from last year outside their division until the middle of November. Why they could finish last again: I’m just not sure if all of these players are ready to fight for that coaching staff and organization. Two of their remaining veterans (Leonard Fournette and Yannick Ngakoue) have openly talked about how they want to be traded, they only have a few actually proven commodities on that entire roster and with the way they have unloaded big cap numbers, they have set themselves up for a true rebuild potentially, as they are expected to be in the Trevor Lawrence-Justin Fields sweepstakes come next April. Even if they can get a few breaks and the division is up for grabs, does this organization even want to win this season? If not for the injury to Jacoby Brissett in the middle of the season, all three other teams in that division would have almost certainly finished above .500 and the Colts are actually the team that improved by far the most among them. That Texans, who have actually won the South four of the last five years, including last season, may be the smallest challenge and still sweep Jacksonville. Vegas rarely misses completely and the Jaguars right now are the odds-on favorite to pick first overall come next April, with an NFL-low OveUnder of 4.5 wins on the season. And as favorable as the early portion of their schedule looks like right, check out this eight-game stretch after their week seven bye – at Chargers, vs. Texans, at Packers, vs. Steelers, vs. Browns, at Vikings, vs. Titans, at Ravens. Ouch. They might go winless over that period. Bottom line: The Jaguars to me are a very interesting team, because I believe they have accumulated a bunch of young talent, which gets lost a little when you see all the names that aren’t there anymore. There is a lot to like about this roster, when you look at what these players could develop into, but that doesn’t mean they will have success this year already. The Colts have the best 53 currently in the division (or 55 now), the Texans have the best quarterback and the Titans are coming off an AFC Championship game appearance. Gardner Minshew could make this kind of a tough decision if they end up picking anywhere after first overall and I think some of those other kids will put up pretty good numbers, but they are still pretty clearly fourth in the South as for now. https://preview.redd.it/5myv276vkf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=7fb25f47d0759e9b5a07876ea01787898c6cc817
7. Carolina Panthers
Why they can win the division: Nobody knows for sure what Matt Rhule and his new coaching staff will throw at them. Joe Brady gets to work with Teddy Bridgewater once again, who he already coached in New Orleans – so there will be familiarity for him in this system and they already “speak the same language”. That young receiving corp with D.J. Moore, Curtis Samuel, free agency addition Robby Anderson and even an up-and-coming tight-end in Ian Thomas is pretty underrated actually, plus of course they have one of the truly elite weapons out of the backfield in Christian McCaffrey, who is probably set to break his own RB reception record once again. The Panthers defense-only draft has brought them a monster in the middle in Derrick Brown (Auburn), a really talented edge rusher in Yetur Gross-Matos (Penn State) on the opposite of last year’s rookie stud Brian Burns, a super-rangy safety with linebacker size in Jeremy Chinn (Southern Illinois), what I think is a starting corner in Troy Pride Jr. (Notre Dame) and some other pieces in the secondary. The talent is clearly there and now you bring in a scheme that is probably going to be unique for the NFL level as well, when you look at that 3-3-5 Baylor ran under Rhule and defensive coordinator Phil Snow. As much as we want to praise our legends of the game, the quarterbacks of the two front-runners in this division will be 41 and 43 years old respectively and let’s not forget that Atlanta started out last season 1-7. Why they could finish last again: Especially this offseason, without certainty if there will be anything like training camp or even a real preseason, that completely new staff with new systems they are trying to teach will certainly have some growing pains. Bridgewater has been a top-20 starting QB maybe one year of his career and even when he was applauded for the way he filled in for Drew Brees last season, he finished dead-last in intended air yards among quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts. How will that mesh with a lot of vertical targets around him? When he has those guys running free on slants and dig routes, the ball will get there, but will he be willing to throw that deep post or give his guys a chance on go-balls? Defensively they are counting on a lot of young players and they have nobody to even come close to replacing Luke Kuechly, as well as making the switch to an unproven scheme possibly, if they actually use some of those 3-3-5 looks coming over from Baylor. When you look at Rhule’s track-record, it always took him until year two to show improvement and then in that third season is when those teams can really make some noise. And that was in the AAC and Big 12 respectively. Now he is in the NFC South with a team that just went 13-3 in the Saints and a Bucs squad that already was 7-9 and lost six of those games by one score, only because despite finishing fifth in takeaways, they ranked in the bottom five in turnover differential due to easily leading the league with 41 giveaways. That should get a lot better with Tom Brady coming in, who has never even quite thrown half of Jameis Winston’s 30 interceptions in any of his 20 years in the league. Even the Falcons – for as poorly as they started last season – went 6-2 after really coming together and making some changes in their bye week last season. Bottom line: The Panthers are clearly the most unproven team in this division. While new systems that haven’t been scouted yet certainly have an advantage in terms of game-planning early on, especially in this offseason with heavily limited live reps most likely, that might equal a net minus. You have to root for a guy like Teddy Bridgewater and the way he has worked his way up to a starting spot again, but I just don’t look at him as a surefire franchise signal-caller. The other three teams in the South all have top ten quarterbacks in the league in my opinion and much more continuity around them. Until the Panthers finally get to their bye week at the start of December, I don’t see them winning more than four of those twelve games. At that point they may have their eyes on a different goal already, if Teddy B isn’t the clear answer under center. https://preview.redd.it/y7agj2n2lf751.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=221af0a1f689d3b19d5e250fac0b58a35877edad
8. Cincinnati Bengals
Why they can win the division: We’re not that far away from 2015, when the Bengals won the AFC North with a 12-4 record as the fifth year in a row making the playoffs. Since then this is the first time I feel like there really is change happening with this team. Marvin Lewis was replaced by a young Zac Taylor, trying to prove himself to the league, they drafted Heisman trophy winner Joe Burrow first overall to replace as average a quarterback as we have had over the last decade in Andy Dalton and the front office finally spent some money in free agency. While you would think a quarterback going first overall usually comes into a situation, where he is devoid of talent around him, Cincinnati suddenly has one of the better group of skill-position players in the entire league, assuming A.J. Green is back healthy. Tyler Boyd is a stud in the slot, who will be Burrow’s version of Justin Jefferson, a 50-50 ball specialist in second-round pick Tee Higgins (Clemson) matches perfectly with Burrow’s expertise of winning with ball-placement and if they get anything from former first-rounder John Ross at least as a decoy with his speed, that’s a plus. I expect Joe Mixon to be among the league leader’s in running back receptions and be more effective in space with those receivers around him as well. The signings the Bengals have made on defense gives them a lot more talent and complements very well what they already had. D.J. Reader is one of the most underrated defensive linemen in the league and frees everybody up along the front, they completely overhauled that linebacker group, which was a major issue these last couple of years, they brought in a starting CB2 and nickel from Minnesota to pair up with William Jackson III, who is ready to announce himself as one of the best corners in football, and Von Bell is a great match with the rangy free safety Jessie Bates. Why they could finish last again: As talented as all those guys throwing, catching and running the ball may be, it all starts with what’s happening up front and the Bengals offensive line is still in transition. They could have two of the worst starters in the league at both guard spots and right tackle once again, with the prior ones close to reaching that bust status and Bobby Hart still somehow having a starting job. As great as Joe Burrow was last year at LSU and how clean his evaluation was, how much better than Andy Dalton will he be right away, especially going up against those scary defensive fronts inside his division? Defensively they could easily have six new starters, which obviously can be looked at as a positive sign, considering they allowed 20+ points in all but two games last season, but there is also a lack of continuity and reduced time to fit all those pieces together. Cincinnati’s coaching staff hasn’t really proven anything yet and they will be facing a massacre of a schedule, with three occasions of back-to-back road games and while three of their final four games of the season are at home, they will face the Cowboys, Steelers and Ravens, to go with a trip to Houston in-between. If they don’t beat the Chargers in the season-opener, they probably don’t get that first W until week four against the Jaguars and then they have to hope they can sneak out another one until their bye week. Baltimore is tied with Kansas City for the highest projected win total with reigning MVP coming into just his third season, Pittsburgh is favored to make the playoffs with Big Ben back under center and Cleveland was the offseason favorite in 2019, while fielding an even better roster this year. Bottom line: I feel bad for putting this team last, because I thought Joe Burrow was the top quarterback and definitely worthy of that number one pick and the Bengals finally spent big money in free agency to retool the defense. To me this is less about them than the Ravens, who just were the number one overall seed in the playoffs at 14-2 and haven’t done anything other than get better themselves, a Steelers team that made a run at the playoffs with the worst quarterback play in the league now getting Ben back and a Browns roster that is among the top ten league-wide in most people’s opinion. Still, there is a lot to like about this team at the skill-positions, which is probably behind only Cleveland in terms all the weapons they have, some young standouts on defense and hope that all of this brings a fresh breath of air. If you enjoyed this content, I would really appreciate if you could visit the original piece (with video clips) - https://halilsrealfootballtalk.com/2020/06/16/nfl-teams-most-likely-to-go-from-worst-to-first-in-2020/ You can also listen to my breakdown on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9kCcuPobNU
Thursday Night Recap: Well, I think that game told us everything we need to know about JAX. They are going to be very inconsistent. To play the games they played in week 1 and 2 and then come home and put up a stinker against a bottom team in the league... So, the Jags are now in my list of teams in 2020 that I will bet as dogs, but never as favorites. We did ok on the evening. +1 Unit and our BBDLS is live going into the UFC fight tomorrow. Singles (1-1,+2u) Parlays (0-1, -1u) Teasers (none) BBDLS(still alive)Update, Costa got rocked. BBDLS dead! Weeks 3 is upon us. Lets check out the match-ups! :D 1PM Games LV at NE: Both teams looked pretty great offensively last week. Cam is the only other player I still seem some value on for MVP. The most important thing to me in this game is Coach vs Coach. Is there more confidence in Gruden and his defense vs Bellichek calling for Cam? OR Bellichek and his defense at home vs Derrick Carr traveling across the country? This early in the season is the time when its any given Sunday, but on a short week for LV and a full week for NE, don't see NE giving this one up at home very often. The spread is a bit high, but NE looks like a great candidate for a Teaser. LAR at Buf: First undefeated matchup of the day. It seems as if the Rams have a better pass rush, but the Bills have the better overall defense. The Rams are traveling East again after flying to Philly last week and back to LA. Goff looks great this year. He Superbowl slumped last year; having no running game hurt him tremendously. But, this year it seems as if the team is finding an offensive rhythm and giving Goff enough time to spread the ball around. My Algo is high on LA and says this spread should be LA -2. Since our Algo has LA at a 55% win, win or lose, this is an easy +EV Bet on the Rams. Also another great candidate for a Teaser. Hou at Pit: Oh boy, am I excited to see this one! PIT really let me down last week allowing DEN, with a back up QB, to get a back door cover. HOU SHOULD be undervalued as they are 0-2. However, lets remember both of their losses came to the Chiefs and Ravens... I have this weird feeling this is going to be one of those road dog gets an early lead and the favorite has to battle back to try and last drive win or not. It is extremely hard for 0-2 teams to make the playoffs so I look for all the 0-2 teams to give MAXIMUM POWAH! The Texans are the best 0-2 team IMO. With a middle of the road total, the Texans not only look like another good candidate for a Teaser but have value on the spread and the ML. SF at NYG: What will happen in this game?! NY Giants, Saquan, out. SF, Everyone out. I have gone against SF in both weeks and so far they are 1-1. If there was another week to fade them, I am sure this has to be it. Back to back road game, Missing like 10 key players including the QB and Star TE... I can't see laying points with SF with those conditions, that leads me to believe there is value on the NY points side. BTW, another 0-2 team. You know they want to compete till the end. Ten at Min: I am extremely torn on this one. I think TEN D still has some work to do to become playoff ready. But, the Min D has a ton of work to do just to win a game... I feel like MIN and PHL are on down years but it is sooooo hard for me to bet against Zimmer, especially at home. Depending on game script, this could be Dalvin Cooks wake up game. Was at Cle: This seems like I could give almost the same analysis as the Cincy/CLE game. Cle should put this away but 7 is a big number so be weary of backdoor covers. If CLE wants a shot at the extra wildcard spot this year, they NEED to take care of business this game. Washington on back to back road games and a non-favorable schedule this year. This should be good practice for two teams trending in opposite directions. CLE is my Favorite pick in the teasers this week. Cin at Phl: Well, well well. The only battle of two 0-2 teams. I have been riding the Eagles suck train for the first two weeks now, and Joe Burrow getting two backdoor covers on his first two starts has me wanting to ride that train again. The Eagles did look ok for the first half of last weeks game, but after a pick from Wentz, the energy shifted and the Eagles were left behind. Even IF the Eagles can pull it together as a team to get a win, I still like the young Burrow to fight till the end of games. Might even sprinkle a little ML action on Cincy here...Eagles D still feels like hot trashhhhh Chi at Atl: Our last 0-2 team (that has a chance) Chi has looked...ok. I take it back, Tenn isnt the worst 2-0 team, Chicago is. Without an outlier performance 4th quarter in game one and the Giants losing Saquan in game 2, Chi could theoretically be 0-2. ATL defense is starting off the year like they did last year, by just getting dressed but not really playing. This is looking like another big offensive year for Matt Ryan, followed by some horrible coaching decisions and stupid losses by his defense playing the worst zone defense known to man. In this game though? I have to side with the 0-2 home favorite. There is a reason they are 0-2 vs a 2-0 team and still giving points. You don't see MIN as a clear favorite and they have a coach that knows what he is doing! NYJ at Ind: I cant write about this game. I very much dislike Rivers and don't like taking him when he has to cover more than a TD. I already gave him his chance in week 1. I think he is full capable of winning a blowout in this game and dominating the news cycle next week, but I just cant take this many points with anyone other than the Chiefs and Ravens 4PM Games Car at LAC: All the interesting games to talk about today and then this game is squeaked in there. CMC, gone. Tyrod Taylor, out for another week at least. Herbert...dropping sherbet scoops out to everyone. Honestly, offensively, CAR didn't look that bad. Teddy looks like young Watson, in that he's chased everywhere but still makes some things happen. LA with a 1st time starting backup QB that didn't know he was playing... had success and honestly Herbert looked a lot like Drew Lock last year. This game has some small potential for an upset and 6.5 for a 2nd time starting QB is....interesting but I think the LA defense is what carries this one to a victory. Det at AZ: This is one of those games that scares me. Every week there is a game with a 6-9 point spread where there is an upset. Outside of the Bengals and Texans, this is that game on my radar this week. But i am already over betting on DET for the year. AZ has started on fire. Is this DET defense that gave up 21 to Trubitsky, IN THE 4TH QUARTER, gonna slow down the red hot cards? I'm not stepping on that train. This game looks to be my stay away game. Lets see how these teams develop before we put too much stock in them. This is a potentially great game for props though! TB at Den: Still not sure what's going on with either of these two teams. TB looked decent last week, but it was vs CAR... Brady is not yet in rhythm but he's getting decent protection. Denver backdoor covered last week after Lock went down with an injury, being replaced by Jeff Driskle. Jeff had a decent game and screwed all the Steelers spread bettors. I think what's more interesting then a spread in this one would be the Under. With QB changes for Den, Brady not yet in form, and both teams having decent defenses, this game looks primed for some weird 16-10. Dal at Sea: The Titans game and these next two were the hardest for me to judge on such little data. I am obviously very high on SEA this year predicting them to win the NFC and have a great shot at a Superbowl this year. I am conversely not that hot on Dallas. I think the whole NFC East is a work in progress. Dallas is full of offense, but until they can have a healthy season with a top 5 defense, I don't think they can go all the way. This years defensive losses are particularly rough and it's only week 2. Both teams have offenses capable of lighting it up at any time so for that reason I think it will be in both teams interest to keep the other offence off the field. This means sustained drives to eat up as much clock as possible. I also think that Dallas will be awfully full of themselves (warranted or not) from last weeks come from behind win. In a game where I am going to contrarily take the under, I must also take all those points. Sunday Night Football GB at NO: The last game of the day, also very hard one to dissect with little data. It seems as if Rodgers is coming out going for an MVP type season. Brees on the other hand looks...old. My algo has GB +1.5 here and normally I would think Vegas was just shading because NO is a team the public likes to bet on at home. However the public perception is NO lost on primetime as a favorite last week while GB is 2-0 with back to back 40 point offensive performances. And they are still giving GB 3 and in some books 3.5... This worries me. Vegas is usually more right than wrong and primetime games tend to lean opposite of public perception. I may have to take NO just based on the fact that 70% of the moneyline money is on GB yet they are still a 3 point favorite. I am pretty light on wagers this week. I am currently moving and so I have had a little less time to look over the full cards and props. I do like weeks 3-5 as a sweet spot for underdog value as the markets try to find the right prices for each team. Singles (9-10, -3.15u)
LAR +2.5 (2u to win 2u)
HOU +4.5 (1.1u to win 1u)
Kareem Hunt 19.5 Rec Yards Over (1.15u to win 1u)
DAL +5.5 (1.1u to win 1u)
Parlays (0-3, -6.5u)
Israel Adesanya ML, CLE ml, IND ml, NE ml, BAL ml (9u to win 33.87u)
Kamara 75 Rush yards and TD (Raiders/NO TNF), Cincy +6.5, Ten ml, IND ml, Dal +5.5, BAL ml (3u to win 97u)
Teasers (1-1, +38.85u)
CLE -1, ATL +3.5, TB PK and U48.5 (6u to win 15.6u)
NE Pk, CLE PK, LAR +8.5, NYG +10.5, HOU +10.5, CIN +12.5, BAL +3.5 (4u to win 24u)
BBDLS (0-4, -3.4u)
I have 10 BBDLS in for a total of 9.2u. They are all 10+ team parlays getting greater than 100-1 odds. If I typed them all up it would double the size of this page. These are all most likely losing tickets but if one hits I will post the screenshot.
DraftKings $2 Million Pick em National Championship $1Million for First Week 2 (3-2) Better! Its expected that as I gather more data, these picks should better. Lets keep this train rolling to its resting place for the remainder of the year, :D 5-0 city! Overall (4-6) Week 3
[F] Werewolves are Assholes, But Vampires are Worse 1/2 So as you can imagine, at this point things weren't looking so hot for us. We had Little Missy locked up with some kind of supernatural furniture next to Mark in my garage, one of our werewolves is bed-er... toilet ridden, we have a literal hostage situation, our seasoned vampire hunter was nowhere to be found(and I'll definitely be having a talk with that secret keeping bitch about that when I see her again), and yeah... the vampires. I was definitely in way over my head. I mean I ain't gonna leave the little hoodlums to fend for themselves, but you can bet your ass I'll never have to wash a dish or dust a shelf for the rest of my life after this. Oh, and for the people asking about our cannibalistic princess and her name, well she said something about it when she asked me to write this part. She said she wants to do something like in that Brad Pitt movie where the guy telling the story never mentions their name. That girl sure likes her movies... Bless her heart. So at this point we were still all huddled in the living room trying to figure out what we were going to do next, making our best effort to talk over the dual barrage of obscenities spilling out from the garage. Finally we agreed to close the door for a minute and let them tucker themselves out. "Ok, Wolf Boy, ideas." I said once I closed the door and walked back into the room with everyone else. "I... Um... We might be screwed." Milo says in response. That was followed by a mild uproar from everyone in attendance. Likely not what they wanted to hear from the only one in the room even half familiar with all this nonsense. I managed to get everyone quieted down about the time Jasmine started to pick up another heavy object to bash Milo with again. "Alright alright! Everyone just calm the hell down!" I hollered over the ruckus. "Listen sugar, you gotta chill. It ain't that boy's fault he's simple." I said to Jasmine while I took the marble elephant statue out of her hands. "And this was expensive. Try to go for something cheap next time." About that time Trey spoke up. "Ok, so we have to do something. We damn sure can't leave her in there like that." He said, pointing towards the garage where some muffled commotion could still be heard. "And what the hell is it we're supposed to do?!" Joannah commented back. Trey started to answer but Dex beat him to it. "What ever we can!" He shouted. "Not to mention that guy's still in there with plugs missing from him all over the place. And I don't know about you but if I have to clean up one more pile of Mark-shit, him or me one is gonna die." About this time the sun was already up. And about mid argument we all stopped and turned when we heard the stairs creak as Teagan came down. "What is all these noise and screams?" She said in that darling broken English of hers. She looked an absolute mess. Poor girl looked like death eating a cracker. "Oh sweetie you don't need to worry about all that right now." I said about the same time Milo said, "What are you doing down here? You should go rest some more. I'll come up and tell you everything in a little w-" But she cut him off. "NO! You will tell me now!" She demanded. "Somebody drop the peas." "Beans." Dex said. "It's spill the beans." "What?" Teagan asked. "Who has spilled beans?" "No no, I was just... The expression is to spill the beans." He tried to explain. "Why did you spill beans? Have you cleaned them? Why would you leave such mess?" She scolded. "You go clean these beans." Milo was now off in a corner with his face buried in his palms in embarrassment, Dex made his way into the kitchen long enough to fake clean imaginary beans and return to the living room with everyone else. "Ok, fuck all of you for not helping me out with that." He said. Then we got Teagan up to speed on everything that happened since she went up stairs, down to the little metal thing that just saved all our asses. As you might imagine, she was a tad... distraught. "WHAT?! YOU HAVE HER LOCKED LIKE SOME ANIMAL?!" She screamed before turning to make for the garage. "NO NO!" Milo stopped her. "We're trying to let her wear herself out for a while to see if that calms her down a little." "NO! I must go to help h-" She stopped as long, low, growl roared across the room from Teagan's... stomach. "Oh no!" She groaned before grabbing her gut and dashing up the stairs like lightning. A few seconds later we all heard the bathroom door slam shut. We all turned to look at Milo again. "...... Werewolf.... stuff." He said quietly, suddenly forcing us all to recall the phrase that near traumatized us all about a week ago... "Had to poop out my werewolf arm." "Yeah... What goes up must come down, what goes in... must come out." He explained in his own kinda way. "It's hard on the body to do what she did. Didn't have enough food stored for mass so when she changed it took till there wasn't anything left to take. Now her body is trying to get rid of everything that isn't mostly human, which doesn't leave her with much. That's why she's so bad off right now." "The poor girl..." Lesley murmured softly. "She's made it through the worst of it." Milo reassured her. "So... does the "out" part get worse too when you change all the way?" Dex asked. "That's disgusting!" Joannah exclaimed. "Why would you ask that?!" And as you can all imagine, Joannah's revulsion at the question only served to excite Milo's enthusiasm to answer. "Define worse." Milo said with a grin. "What do you mean?" Dex questioned. "Well I mean worse for who? The one doing it... or whoever has to deal with the aftermath?" He smiled even bigger in Joannah's direction causing her to wince. "When we're fully transformed we're also in a lot better shape when we change back, but what comes out, well... you guys ever seen Jurassic Park?" It took us a second before we collectively groaned "Oh my god!" "I mean now Teagan, she's a proper lady about it. Usually brings some toilet paper and finds her a secluded spot away from civilization and innocent human beings and takes care of it there." He went on. "Annnd... what do you do? To ask a question I don't really think I want answered." Trey said. "Ah, well ya see I like to find the nearest construction site and just unleash hell on some poor, unsuspecting port-a-john. Then I like to hide and wait around for the first person to open the door. One guy actually started crying. It was great." Milo bragged. And there we were, in the middle of my house, having an in depth conversation about werewolf shit. Somebody stop the merry go round. I want off... Nobody went back to sleep. We all stayed up and discussed what we was gonna do now, to little success. After a while me, Trey, and Milo went to the kitchen to start making some food for the recovering Teagan upstairs, who Lesley, Dex, Jasmine and Joannah were with. We'd finish making something and one of them would come down long enough to snatch it up and take it to her. After a while Trey and Milo got to chatting. "So how'd you and her meet?" Milo asked Trey, inquiring about the rabid shit head on lockdown in the garage. "Met in college." He answered. "Same economics class. Actually, the first conversation we ever had was her asking me out." Milo slammed his hand down hard on the table. "WHAT?!!" He yelled. "Yeah, we even went on a couple of dates way back." Trey laughed. "Once we even... held hands." "You dated... HER?" Milo asked, pointing towards the garage. "Well yeah. I mean she's not so bad all the time and she's cute, in an "I might stab you in your sleep" kind of way." Trey replied. "Oh my god..." Milo said, leaning back in his chair to look around the corner. "You're right. She's... cute. What the hell?" "But I thought she was-" Milo started. "A lesbian?" I interrupted. "Well I get how you might think that. She does mostly bat for the away team but I catch her looking at the fellas every now and then. I try not to label them kinds of things. That way nobody feels pressured to stay inside a box. Let people hump whoever they wanna hump I say." "But you let people call you Gay Jake." Milo says. "That's cause I'm queer as a three dollar bill sweety. Don't want nothing to do with any vagina. They creep me right ass out. They look like them face things from the alien movie. You ever make eye contact with one? Looks like something's gonna try to jump out and get ya." I explain, likely a little more vividly than entirely necessary. "Mmkay..." Milo says slowly, somewhat cringing. "What about the others? How'd they all meet?" "Well Joannah is kinda new to all this. I met her at the mall where she worked and we'd only been dating for about a week before we... met you." Trey answered. "Yeah, and Dex was already living here when I brought Shit Head in." I added. "Wait, Dex lived here too? Why?" Milo asked. "That boy had his problems too. I had a lot troubled kids through here over the years. Dex had him a fondness for opioids which led him to a fondness for heroin. So he ended up here in a similar way. He was cleaned up and getting back on his feet about the time that little hellion came." I said. "Then what?" Milo asked, scooting forward in his seat. "Oh she bullied the piss out of the poor boy." I told him. "But that boy stayed and took it all and never complained not the first time. And I'd tell him, I'd say "Why you let her do you like that?" and he'd just smile and say that he could see how much pent up anger she had, and that she was dealing with it the only way she knew how. Bless that boy's heart, he hung in there till the bitter end to where one day she just snapped, and all the guilt of every time she'd smack him or push him or call him some horrible name or break something of his hit her all and once." "And then what?" Milo asked almost standing up off his chair. "She did something a hadn't ever seen her do up to that point. She apologized. Hell, after that you'd hardly see them apart really. I don't think she would have recovered as well if he wasn't around like he was. I think they been best friends ever since then." I explained. "I been catching him peeking into the garage on his way back upstairs every time he comes down to get Teagan's food." After that conversation I'd catch Milo and Dex making their way from the kitchen to the garage to Teagan's room side by side. I mean most of the time it was just long enough to let a pressure wave of obscenities burst through the opening, but they were making the effort just the same. An now let me tell y'all, this next part just 'bout broke my little heart. Later that night I went to poke my head in the garage real quick and oh my goodness. I found Milo and Dex both sitting on the cold concrete floor. Dex was out like a light lean't up against the wall, but Milo had brought a laptop downstairs and had it open and playing her favorite movies for her. Every now and then he'd catch Mark trying to watch so he'd pick something random off the floor and throw it at him saying "NO! You don't get to watch." Which would cause our predatory princess to crack an evil little giggle each time. Now don't get me wrong, I still wasn't going to get in range of her chompers, but this was the calmest she'd been so far. I stuck my head in just a little and asked Milo if he needed anything. "Nah, Teagan passed out from the itus a while ago so I figured I'd hang down here with Jaws and the Fecal Phenom over there and keep her company." He answered. "Hey... Is that HER laptop?" I asked. "How'd you get into that? She keeps it locked up like Fort Knox." "Well... at first she said she'd open it for me. But when I tried to hand it to her... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." He turned to show me a mouth sized section of his right sleeve missing with what was apparently dried blood around the edges. "So I had to figure it out myself. Wasn't too hard. Turns out it was bobbys idgets. All one word." "Boy, you gotta tell me, are you an idiot or a genius? I gotta know." I finally broke down and asked him what we was all thinking. "Exactly." He answered with a wink and turned back to the screen. That boy makes me tired I swear to god. He's lucky he's cute. We all gathered back up in the kitchen later the next day to resume our figuring. Like you might expect we didn't get too awful far at all. That is, not until Teagan finally made her way down stairs in relatively better conditon. And that's cause when he saw her, Dex went to say hi and wave to her, which made him drop that gun-shaped knife thing of his. Which THEN thunked tip first right into my hardwood floor. "Oh damn it boy! Y'all are steady fucking up my whole house!" I barked. But about that time Milo got this strange look on his face. "Hey Teag... HEY! HEY!!" He yelled. "Teagan! That guy who made these things!" He said, yanking the cutlery from MY HARDWOOD FLOOR. "Maybe he knows something about what we can do to help her!" "HOLY SHIT!! BANGRATTLE" Sounded from over near the fridge where Jasmine had been pilfering around for food. "Oh god... Oh god..." She groaned, holding her head as she slowly shuffled over to the table. "Oh honey... Your poor head. Are you alright?" I tried to ask but she just held a finger up at me. "Mm. M-mmm..." She mumbled, trying to hold still as much as possible until she was able to take a deep breath and talk again. "Do... Do you think that would work?" She asked Milo. "It's worth a shot. We should at least try. Teag, do you have any contact info from him or anything? What was his name." He said. "No. I am sorry, but we did not get it before we leave." She said. "But I am thinking his name was Hephaestus. He says to call him Hep also." To spare you some boring dialogue, in about 30 seconds that idiot savant had found him on... fucking Facebook. Turns out he's pretty easy to get in touch with through his day job not making vampire fighting equipment. About another 30 seconds later we all gathered around the phone set to speaker as it rang. The other end clicked and someone on the other side answered, "HELLO! If this is the IRS I already told you to suck my ass." "That is the strange Tony person." Teagan whispered. "Um yeah hi. I think I'll take a rain check on the ass sucking." Milo replied, causing everyone else to chuckle. "Any chance we can chat with Hep real quick?" "Oh shit! Right right!" The Tony man said. "Gimme a second." We then heard him say something with the phone way from his face that sounded like "Here. Run this out to him." Followed by the familiar sound of metal tinking and the sound of some kind of power tool getting louder in the distance. "Heeeello! You got Hep!" Another voice answered. "YES HELLO!" Milo said loudly. "Hi yeah, my friend and my wife just left your place a few days ago. You remember?" "Wait! You two are married?!" Lesley shrieked. "Really?!" Milo and Teagan both held up their left hands showing off a small black band tattooed around both of their ring fingers that apparently none of us noticed before. "AWWW! That's adorable!" Jasmine and Lesley both cooed in unison, causing Joannah to groan in disgust. "We got married in Romania... In Vlad's castle. It was the last thing I used my inheritance money on other than the plane tickets back here." He said with a big, proud grin. "That is just beautiful." The voice in the phone spoke up, causing us all the jump a little. "Yeah, still here guys." The man said. "Oh right..." Milo says back into the phone. "Uh, so we kinda have a situation." "Your buddy went psycho and tried to eat someone?" The voice interjected. "I... Yeah. How'd you know?" Milo asked him. "I had a hunch that things might go tits up with your girl in the garage over there. Guess my little friend was helpful after all." The man said, making us all lean back away from the phone. "How... do you know she's in the gargage?" Milo said, joining the rest of us in looking around the room suspiciously. "Don't worry about it." The man said, increasing our worry. "Now what do you need from me?" "Well..." Milo answered, "We were hoping you'd know how to fix her... or something." "....... I do not. BUT," He continued, "I think if there is a way, I know the people who would know. I'm going to give you their number. Just tell them Hephaestus told you to call. That should get them talking." Then he gave us the number to call, wished us luck, and hung up. We didn't waste a second dialing the new number. We sat the phone back down on the table and circled around again, listening to the ring. CLICK "Worst Hotel, front desk! Who the fuck is this?!" A voice shouted through the speaker. We all looked around at each other, all seemingly collectively thinking that the art of answering the phone has really taken a dive. "Uh hi, my name is Milo and I was told to call by Hephaestus! Who the fuck is this?!" Milo shouted back. "Ugh... God damn it. I hate taking these. Jesus what a day... Hello my name is Lezley. How can I help you today?" The man says. "Oh my god my name's Lesley too!" Lesley chirps excitedly. "Like O... M... G! Do you like... wanna totally be BFFs and like have sleepovers and talk about all the cute boys on the football team and like do each other's nails and stuff?!" The man on the phone said in the most heavily condescending tone I think any of us ever heard. "Asshole..." Lesley whispered to herself before walking away from the table. "What the hell do you people want?" The man asked. "Our friend is a half vampire, werewolf thing, I think, and she's trying to eat us." Milo says into the phone. "We need to know how to fix her." "An orichalcum infused weapon to the head or the heart ought to fix her." The man replies, sending Jasmine into a shit fit. "Uh, no can do good buddy. We're going to need her alive." Milo said once we got Jasmine settled back down. "UGHHH!! Ok god! You said she's trying to eat people yeah?" He asks. "Yeah, that's right. She bit a chunk out of our hosta-er... Out of Mark. Ate his finger too." Milo answers. "Jesus. Have any of you EVER watched a vampire movie? What do vampires need?" The man asks in the same condescending tone. ""Blood?" Milo half answers half asks. "Yes blood dumbass! And what happens when they don't get what they need for a while? They flip the fuck out! So... how about... and hear me out hear... YOU GET HER SOME GOD DAMN BLOOD!" The man yells at us. "So... we just go in there and give her some of our blood?" Dex asks. "That's easy enough." "No you jackass!" The man barks at him. "Not unless you want her to bite a chunk out of your stupid neck! Ok look... You idiots obviously can't be trusted to think this through yourselves, so here it is. Right now you need to find a way to slide her a BIG bucket of FRESH and COMPLETELY HUMAN blood. If she's only half vampire, however the fuck THAT happened, then she'll probably only need a small amount every now and then. Regular food should work most of the time. Pure vampires get their nutrition from liquefying the entire body and sucking that up. If she doesn't have the ostial-dentitions you see on regular ones, and her tongue isn't partially bifurcated, then she's probably get most of her nutrition from regular sourses. And once she's calmed down you'll be able to donate to her directly, but unless you want her to tear you a new asshole, right now you need to find some way to get her the blood while she's all bitey and shit. This is just how she is now. You don't fix werewolf and you don't fix vampire. Deal with it. God I feel like I'm just hear to explain shit to people all the damn time. CLICK" And with that the guy hung up, leaving us all looking at the black screen in silence. After about 30 seconds of gazing into the touch screen void Jasmine finally broke the quiet. "I guess we need human blood." She says. Milo responds, "What a coincidence! I know someone who has some to spare!", grabbing a metal turkey baster syringe and a large tup-a-ware bowl before starting for the garage with a spring in his step. "WHAT THE FUCK YOU PSYCHOPATH?!" Joannah shrieked at the top of her lungs, stepping in front of Milo with her arms spread, blocking his way. "What?" Milo questioned with the most bullshit feigned innocent tone possible. As y'all can imagine, that didn't go well and the rest of us damn near had to break up a fist fight. After we got them two cooled down... about 30 minutes later... we started figuring on how we was supposed to come by a heap of fresh human blood. Long story short, it's pretty obvious a blood bank would have something to do with our solution, but we sat around for hours trying to come up with a heist game plan before that lovable moron Milo said something I still ain't sure was smart or dumb. But I gotta admit, didn't none of us think of it. "Why don't we just run in, grab it, and run back out?" He asked us all, sitting up from where he had been laying down on the floor. "What are you talking about?" Trey asked him. "I was just thinking, how many people try to steal blood from a blood bank? It's not like they keep that shit in a vault with a bunch of armed guards and stuff right?" Milo explained, which actually started making some kinda sense. So we all decided, we was gonna smash and grab a blood bank. We found one a respectable ways away online first, then we had to decide who was going. "I'm thinking Milo." Trey said. "I mean if something does go to shit and he gets shot he can heal. We can't." Everyone seemed to agree, then Teagan spoke up. "Then someone will have to also go with him." She said. "Why's that honey?" I asked her. "Teag n-!" Milo started but Teagan said it before he could stop her. "Because Milo does not know how to do the driving." She said. "THANK... YOU... TEAGAN! Thank... you..." Milo says loudly. "HAHAHA! Oh my god you don't know how to drive?!" Joannah cackled mockingly at the poor boy, who's head was now hidden down in his arms. "HEY! You behave you little shit." I scolded her. "It's ok sugar. We ain't gonna judge you none here." I comforted him, secretly taking out my little note pad and putting a check under the stupid section of the smart/stupid tally I had been keeping of him through the day. Anyway, I ended up volunteering to drive the little hoodlum cause I had a dummy plate for my Wrangler that weren't nobody looking for and that don't trace back to my house. And once the next day rolled around we were ready to get wild. We figured sooner was better than later to get our situation somewhat stabilized again. Plus we figured the more time we had to think about it the more likely we were to come to our senses and chicken out.
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