Football Cat’s Week 3 NFL Picks ’25

Posted on September 19, 2025 by naop Leave a comment

Happy Upton Bell Day!

Every September 19th all of Patriots Nation gather together with their family and friends to celebrate the legacy of their one time wunderkind General Manager Upton Bell. Back in February of 1971, Billy Sullivan hired the snot nosed 33 year old Bell to be his GM. The most memorable moment of Upton’s brief reign of terror was when he forgot to mail out contracts to all the team’s impending free agents, thus instantly granting them their freedom. The Upton Bell era came to an abrupt end in December 5, 1972 when he was unceremoniously fired after amassing a putrid 9 – 19 record. Sure that is a bad record, but really damning fact is that Upton was so incompetent that he never worked in the NFL again. Imagine how awful his reputation within the league must have been to never get another front office job. This was the son of former NFL Commissioner and Eagles owner/founder Bert Bell, and after being fired at the age of 35 his career in the league was over.

Today the 88 year old social media maven has morphed into a modern day Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen. The list of famous (all dead) people Upton has met includes Burt Reynolds, Jane Russell, Hedy Lamar, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Stephen Hawking, Patricia Neal, Jack Nicholson, Richard Nixon, Anthony Hopkins, Angie Dickerson, Arnold Palmer, Alan Shepard, Ted Turner, Seiji Ozawa, Donna Reed, Hedy Lamarr, Carely Simon, Yo Yo Ma and three (THREE!) Tuskegee Airmen. The list goes on and on. We didn’t even bother with listing the sports figures he claims to have known/discovered, but rest assured if they’re dead Upton claims he interacted with them.

And if Upton didn’t meet them, rest assured his mother did. Per Upton, his mom, Broadway “star” Frances Upton, had close encounters with Charles Lindbergh, James Cagney, Florenz Ziegfeld, George Gershwin, George Burns, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Lefty Gomez and Al Capone. According to Upton, when Bert Bell, his father, dropped dead Universal Pictures wanted to make a movie about him with Danny Thomas as the lead, but Frances turned it down (of course she did!). The aforementioned Bert Bell invented the NFL Draft, coined the phrase “On Any Given Sunday”, brought the entire Eagles team with him on his honeymoon, proposed local TV blackouts, and in 1958 came up with the idea of sudden death overtime – which is ironic because he dropped dead less than one year later while attending a football game.

So celebrate today the Upton way by forgetting to send out important legal documents on time, or by getting you rugs cleaned or by lying on social media about all the famous dead people you’ve interacted with. Happy 9-19 to all who celebrate!

Sunday Lunch Time
Falcons (-5.5) at Panthers
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Packers (-7.5) at Browns
Packko over Flacco