The other day, my Spotify Discover Weekly tossed me the song, “Seeing Double at the Triple Rock” by NOFX while I was in the car with my wife. If you haven’t heard it, it’s got some pretty awesome guitar riffs. Enough riffs that it made me say out loud, “Goddamn, this song is nothing but tasty licks.”
“Tasty licks” is a phrase that I seldom use, and that’s because a song’s licks have to be undeniably tasty to be certified as a tasty lick. It’s in the fucking name.
Here are some other songs that are nothing but Tasty Licks:
1. Detroit Rock City by KISS
2. Long Cool Woman by The Hollies
3. Black Betty by RamJam
4. House of the Rising Sun by The Animals
5. Aint no Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
After I said that the song was, “Nothing but tasty licks,” my wife looked at me like I had a stroke and started speaking Babylonian. She had no idea what a tasty lick was, and I had no idea how to define a tasty lick. I just started going through songs whose licks were certifiably tasty because I couldn’t come up with a real definition. That’s when it dawned on me…
You can’t put into words what a tasty lick is. It’s something that you feel and you know when you hear it.
And that’s the excitement for football season.
If you ask me why I’m excited, I’ll probably crack wise and say some bullshit about how I love to get pissed off when the leaves are changing colors.
But the real reason is very different.
It’s the feeling of football season that makes you feel alive, and you know it when it hits you. It’s when you “motherfuck” Jalen Reagor when he botches his second punt return in a row during a playoff game. It’s when the Cowboys lose to Derek Carr on Thanksgiving and makes the pie taste better. It’s when you see Derrick Henry come back from an injury, and he says he’s okay, but you’re like “there’s a goddamn plate in your foot, my man. You’re almost certainly not okay” It’s when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop on a Thursday night and you know Tom Brady will start to get sleepy after halftime. It’s waiting for Pat Mahomes to get brought to the ground in the backfield, but he pulls some witchcraft shit and hits Travis Kelce with 13 seconds left in a divisional playoff game. It’s when you took the Ravens Moneyline in Detriot because “There’s no fucking way they can lose this one” but they almost lose until Justin Tucker breaks the record for the longest field goal as the ball hits the crossbar and bounces through. I can’t singularly define the excitement, but it’s football season.
And we’re back, baby.
Buffalo @ LA Rams (Buffalo -2.5 O/U 52)
Kinda fucked up that we get this one on the Thursday island and then we have to wait 2 days for more. That’s like letting someone freebase Cocaine, then giving them a candy cigarette when they ask for more.
On a surface level, I think the line should be 3.5.
The Bills’ offense hasn’t changed a whole lot this off-season. They’re still going to be entirely reliant on Josh Allen. He’s gonna throw it for a million miles (not yards), and he’s still going to be the main piece of their running game. And hey, that works for them, so I’m not gonna knock it.
Their defense has gotten better though. They got Von Miller, and I think he’s going to be a big contributor to this game. That’s because the Rams’ offense has taken a significant step back. They don’t have that old bag of bones Whitworth anymore, and it sounded like he was kind of THE guy on their offensive line that held everything together.
The interesting thing here is that Sean McVay is 5-0 ATS and SU in week 1s, but the Bills are 7-2 ATS and SU against the Rams in their last 9 games (going back to 1989). Something has to give here.
And because of that, I’m staying away from a side here, and that’s because we’re taking the Over.
In those same last 9 games between the Bills and the Rams, they’ve gone over 8 times. I know that’s some old guy talk because nothing that happened 32 years ago matters now, but I like these two offenses and I think they’re going to light it up.
Over 52.