St. Louis at San Francisco

San Francisco has treated us very nicely this year and I'm backing them for the fourth straight week on Sunday Night Football. Despite being 0-3 and getting shell-shocked last week, they have played well enough to cover the spread 2 out of 3 times this year. Before last week they were outgaining their opponents and they have a solid defense, ranked 13th in the league. If you haven't figured this one out yet, St. Louis is not very good. The public seems to think they'll return to their Greatest Show on Turf days but they are long gone. Mike Martz is, in my opinion, a poor coach. He makes too many mistakes and has single-handedly ruined Marshall Faulk's career and his team along with it. It doesn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out that if you have Faulk on your team and you run him a lot you win. If you don't you lose. Why Martz "saves" him I do not know. Let's look at the last three games for St. Louis... In game one, Faulk had 22 carries and 128 yards and the Rams won. In games 2 and 3, he's averaged 12 carries for 32 yards and guess what? Yeah, they lost both games. I sense a pattern. What the hell is Martz thinking? About 3 times a season he decides to hand Faulk the ball 25-30 times. I hope he keeps up his crazy ways and doesn't decide to do that this week. On the other side of the ball, the Rams are 30th in the league in stopping the run. Kevan Barlow could have a big game. If San Francisco can establish the run and get up early, Martz will feel his phantom pressure to throw the ball 50 times. If that happens, San Fran can pull the upset. Winless dogs of 3.5 to 10 points are 44-18 over the past 10 seasons. One unit on the Niners at +3.5 and one unit on the win.