Pencil Storm’s regular football beat writer (Big $ of The North Coast Posse) was unavailable for this week’s NFL Playoff Rundown after being hospitalized/committed after a lengthy/unintelligible rant at the Library Bar following the Cleveland Browns’ humiliating loss to Houston Texans’ rookie quarterback CJ Stroud of OSU Buckeye fame during Wild Card Weekend. The Pencil Storm Editorial Board (Colin, Jeremy, Ricki) will be taking up the slack.

Colin Gawel (Watershed co-founder, owner Colin’s Coffee, beer gourmand, Pencil Storm publisher & Co-Editor in Chief)

Even though the Browns got completely blown out in the first round of the NFL playoffs, I think this past season was my most enjoyable as a long time Browns fan. Obviously, that statement alone says much about the sorry state of this franchise since the evil Art Modell stole the original Browns and departed for Baltimore. 

Flash back to week two. Browns manage to lose to their dreaded rivals the Pittsburgh Steelers 26-22 despite only allowing NINE first downs the entire game and Pittsburgh not running a single play inside the Browns 30 yard line. And to make matters worse, star tailback Nick Chubb suffered a gruesome knee injury and was lost for the season.

In my mind, the season was lost. It was over. I had made peace with the fact that the Browns were going to suck. Again.

But somehow, 5 QB’s later, the Browns finished 11-6 and made the playoffs. I should add that they also lost both offensive tackles and both their backups (!) to injury. If Kevin Stefanski doesn’t win coach of the year they should just get rid of the award. And if there is some kind of award for GM then Andrew Berry should run away with that trophy too. 

On a personal note, my son Owen and myself attended the Thursday night game where Joe Flacco lit up the New York Jets in primetime securing the Browns’ playoff position. For one rare moment, the factory of sadness was a place of joy. And Owen and I witnessed it first hand. Check that off the bucket list. No amount of painful losses in the future can take that memory from us. That alone made 2023-24 a successful season for this Browns fan. Woof.  

Now, it’s up to the Detroit Lions to carry the banner for the sad sack franchises moving forward. I’m truly excited for all my Lions friends and I hope they can get it done this weekend at home vs former Brown Baker Mayfield and the Bucs. 

As for a prediction going forward, my value bet would be the Buffalo Bills to win it all. (+450)

Jeremy Porter (Musician, fast-food Mexican connoisseur, terrible gambler, Pencil Storm Co-Editor in Chief)

Long-suffering Lions’ fans are in heaven these days. Audio levels at Ford Field for their first playoff win in 32 years against the Rams last weekend were at record, jet-airliner engine levels. The city is abuzz with the unprecedented success the Lions are enjoying under the discipline and motivation of Dan Campbell, and God help us if they continue to advance!

Me? Well, I had to detach emotionally a couple years ago. I explained to friends that I was abandoning hope. They’re still my team, I still want them to win, and I’ll continue to watch and root for them, but I am no longer able to hold onto the dream that they would ever be good enough to contend. I was just done with the expectations and subsequent disappointment year after year, decade after decade. And here we are. It’s unreal. Maintaining my “no-hope” moniker has become more difficult as the weeks pass, especially now, after the Rams win. I’m still expecting to wake up and read that they’re 6 & 10, or that they lost the game on a horrible call the likes of which ONLY happen to the Lions. (Wait, didn’t that just happen…AGAIN?)

So we’re facing down The Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday and most aren’t giving the Bucs a chance. I’m not in such a hurry to dismiss them, again back to that battered-Lions-fan syndrome thing maybe. They’re on a roll for sure. But I can’t bet against my own team, and I hope they win (wait, did I say “hope”? I meant “think!”). Lions -6.5 parlayed with Goff throwing for at least 2 TDs seems like a good bet at +150. The under (48.5) seems solid, but the over/under has decimated my MGM balance in recent weeks, so I’m not touching it.

In the other NFC game, I can’t imagine Green Bay getting past San Francisco, but I didn’t see them making the playoffs a few weeks ago either. 9.5 is a lot of points – and I don’t feel comfortable either way with that spread. So how about the 49ers with the money line and Green Bay’s Aaron Jones scoring a TD for +180. Both of those things seem very likely, so it’s an interesting and somewhat safe parlay involving both teams, neither of which I really care about. But a Lions-Packers conference final? Can you imagine? Not likely.

On to the AFC. I like the Ravens. Lamar with 2 TDs and the Ravens money line at +120 against Houston seems like a safe bet. He’s one of my fav QBs and they’re rested and ready. Houston feels like they’re over-achieving, and they’ll be in a hostile, cold environment.

Like the over/under recently, the Chiefs are my Achilles’ heel, my kryptonite, when it comes to betting, so I may sit this one out, but I’ll be rooting for the Bills. I don’t hate the Chiefs. Watching Mahomes cry over that bad (was it even bad?) neutral zone call a few weeks back, which would be just another series in the history of the Lions, was nauseating, but it’s not like they’re the Cowboys or the Patriots or any team that Aaron Rogers ever played for. It could be the best game this weekend. 

Ricki C. (Colin Gawel roadie, occasional musician, full-time old guy, devotee of Long John Silver’s, Pencil Storm Copy Editor)

Not to get all “Okay, Boomer (Baby, not Esiason)”/SNL Drunk Uncle here, but I’ve been watching NFL football for 65 years, since I was 5 years old in 1957. I saw Jim Brown play live and up close when my sainted Italian father would bring my 15-year old brother & me to Cleveland to see The Browns. (Was that like seeing Jimi Hendrix play genius guitar with the Experience in 1968? Yeah, it kinda was.)

Anyway, my team picks for this weekend of the playoffs would be the Chiefs, the Packers and the Lions, in that order, and none of them are playing each other, so that just makes it all that much cooler.

The NFL - of course - have partially ruined the Chiefs Experience for me with all the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce bullshit. Don’t get me wrong; you’re never gonna hear me say one single negative word about Taylor Swift. Young girl grows up in West Reading, Pennsylvania, gets ahold of a guitar and becomes the Biggest Name in American Show Business? That’s cool with me.

What isn’t cool is the NFL Publicity Machine seizing on that fame and exploiting it to the nth degree for their own purposes. But I’ve loved Patrick Mahomes since the first time I saw him play, so fuck the NFL and their Taylor/Travis infatuation; Chiefs over Bills.

My day job from the mid-1970’s to the late 1990’s (so I could make virtually no money at night playing original songs and still afford to eat & have an apartment) was in the warehouse of a now-defunct catalog showroom called Service Merchandise; unloading trucks, pulling orders & doing shipping. All through the 90’s the UPS driver (who shall remain nameless) that delivered to the store would bring us spot cards; a pre-legalized betting scheme that involved picking the winners of X-amount of NFL games for big payouts. Our FedEx driver (a proud Wisconsin boy by birth) got in on the action and his mantra - which I have never forgotten, and adhere to right up until today - was, “Take the Pack and the points.” My pick for Saturday evening? Packers over 49ers. (Plus I never liked Joe Montana; too Christian or something.)

Lastly, how can you be a Midwest rocker and not root for the Detroit Lions? I loves me a good underdog story and - sorry, Jeremy, I mean this in the nicest possible way - who’s more underdog than the Detroit Lions? Plus The MC5 and The Stooges (two of my five favorite bands of all time) are from Detroit, so that’s good enough for me. My early Sunday pick? Lions big-time over the Buccaneers. (And - by the way, in closing, my last word - fuck any team that ever employed Tom Brady.)

I’m out.

Breaking News from Bet$ For Realz! Big $ just checked in from an unlisted barstool somewhere in the Northeast Ohio area. The text is as follows: Houston +9.5 , San Fran - 9.5 , Tampa Bay + 6.5 , KC + 3.