Yes I hit my Philly + 8 bet BUT it really came down to pure luck and a missed FG

Yep, sure.  It's all about finding small edges if you are going to be a winner long run in this game.  Many of lines out there are probably very close to a coinflip and you don't even have an edge one way or another after you factor in the juice.

I know I sound like captain obvious here and I'm only a casual player in this game but it's frustrating to go through so many posts in these forums and read things like "sure thing" or "lock", etc so at least you seem in touch with reality.

It didnt came down to pure luck, you were covering the whole game.

A lot of these games are coin flips...and Vegas cashes in the long run.

Winners spend their cash and put more on the next games til they lose, losers just lose their cash and go to the atm.

Sad but true for the vast majority.

99.75% of the gambling population is littered with a wide range of losers. It's a virtually impossible mathematical task to beat the books over the long run unless you are part of the 0.25% club. Gambling should be for entertainment but too many mistakenly believe it's a way to make a living or get rich. My advice is to find more profitable endeavors for your money.

I am prepared for the 0.25% club to suddenly turn into the 20% club because this is, after all, Covers!

It’s that shoe string tackle on Kamara on 3rd down that won that cover for you. If that philly defender doesn’t make that tackle saints win that game 27-14.

Surprisingly, most people are just better off working a normal job than trying to achieve a "living" at gambling or investing their time spent with gambling into more meaningful endeavors. Like you said, being a winner in anything related to gambling is near to next impossible.

So true. You know, a while back I was debating with myself (I know, I'm kinda crazy) What if the analytical skills we used to arrive at the outcome of an event was merely an illusion and the outcome of that event was based on another random, trivial variable? It would be funny if a more intelligent, omnipotent being that was capable of analyzing ALL aspects of the game (some aspects that we would have never have thought of whether large or small) told us that the reason why team A won was not due to the information that we found but due to something trivial, something that was cause and effect. Like "Oh, that team won b/c this fan in the 4th row clapped/screamed/sat down in their chair, which caused this to happen and that to happen, which resulted in that team winning. The result of the game was never due to the information that you found.." This data that we sift through is just all an illusion that causes us to think that some event will occur the way it should when in reality, it's just still randomness and we happen to coincidentally be on the correct side when arriving at an conclusion.

No.  He would have dropped to the ground after getting the first down and the Saints would have still ran out the clock..