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For a second year, Eric Jensen and Matt Kucera joined forces to enter the Westgate Las Vegas SuperContest. After finishing outside the money in 2018 with a record that had them just above the .500 mark, the two longtime friends from Nebraska decided to give “the ultimate football handicapping contest” another go in 2019. It’s a good thing they did, because their entry, ‘IT AINT BREEZY,’ finished atop the record field of 3,328 entries to win the $1.469 million first-place prize.

Jensen and Kucera finished with a much better record this time around, going 58-25-2 for just about 70% winners. Jensen and Kucera aren’t professional sports bettors, though. Both have regular jobs, mentioning on the Gridiron Gamble football betting podcast that they “dabble” in sports betting but are “not heavy hitters.”

Every year, sport betting enthusiasts from around the world enter Vegas’ most storied handicapping competition, the SuperContest. Entry costs $1,500 and every week contestants pick five games against the contest point spread. A cover is worth one point, a push is worth a half point, and failed covers are worth nothing. At the end of the 17-week regular season in the NFL, the contestant with the most points wins first place.

Breezing To Victory

The duo entered the final week of the NFL regular season with a 1.5-point lead over the field. ‘CRISPR.’ was the closest competitor, and Jensen and Kucera admitted to doing their due diligence when it comes to holding off their nearest challenger. Although they didn’t really change up their strategy, they did do some digging into the picks CRISPR. had made the last few weeks of the contest to get an idea of where he might look to go for Week 17.

As a result, Jensen and Kucera shared four of the same picks with CRISPR., so it was impossible for CRISPR. to catch them in Week 17.

Jensen and Kucera did have to worry about ‘TUCO,’ who entered Week 17 in third place. TUCO could catch them because he had much more of a unique card. The big game was the New Orleans Saints versus the Carolina Panthers. Jensen and Kucera had the Saints (-13), and TUCO had the Panthers (+13). New Orleans got the job done and covered, winning 42-10, which, combined with the New England Patriots failing to cover as 15.5-point favorites over the Miami Dolphins, locked up the SuperContest victory.

It was a fitting result, because Jensen and Kucera picked the name IT AINT BREEZY partly as a nod to one of their favorite players, Drew Brees.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Kucera said on the Gridiron Gamble podcast. “It was a relief, honestly. A big relief. It’s been about a week of restless nights’ sleep thinking about it. You just watch the games and try and make everything go your way, but we knew the Saints were going to cover if they got to 35 or 38 points, and they did, so we were happy with that.”

Staying Consistent

To start the 2019 SuperContest, Jensen and Kucera went 2-3 in the opening week and then 3-2 the next time out. It wasn’t an ideal start, but it wasn’t the end of the world, either. Over the next three weeks, they combined for 13-2, including 5-0 performances in Week 3 and Week 5. That had them at 18-7 entering Week 6 and feeling positive about the start.

“It felt pretty good,” Jensen said on the Gridiron Gamble podcast. “It’s the way you want to start. The further in the hole in this contest, the more you gotta do later. Me and Matt were real happy with the Week 3 and 4 after the bad Week 1, and we just kept chopping away at that log, working hard, and trying to be consistent.”

Consistency is important in the SuperContest, and it’s not the first time a SuperContest winner has talked about it. James Salinas, who won the SuperContest in 2015, spoke at length about the importance of consistency.

Following the conclusion of each week, Kucera said that Jensen would send him the picks that he liked for the following week. After a few days passed, the two would hop on a phone call on Thursday or Friday to run through the slate and determine their picks.

“Usually, it was either Thursday night or Friday night we always got together,” Kucera said on the Gridiron Gamble podcast. “We never once played a Thursday game. We’d get on a phone call after we put our kids to bed.”

Kucera talked about how the two would go over their selections for a couple hours starting at about nine o’clock. They’d start at the top of the schedule with the earliest games and work their way through one by one.

“Going through them, there’s always three or four games that we just did not like at all,” Kucera said on the Gridiron Gamble podcast. “We would just stay away from them and really honed in on the ones we both kind of liked.”

“There’s always disagreements, Matt being a favorites bettor and me, I like the dogs a little more,” Jensen added. “We were always battling over the Jacksonville Jaguars. He hates them and they kept killing us. By the end of the season, that wasn’t even an option anymore.”

Kucera said the disagreements were more banter between the two friends than anything else, although there were times when Jensen would completely disallow a pick.

Kucera also pointed out that he was a fan of consistent teams, because inconsistency can cause a bit of worry. He also gave nod to his partner, saying that Jensen does very well with being able to spot advantages that may not be visible on the surface and why the duo should target certain teams.

Climbing the Leaderboard

As the season wore on, IT AINT BREEZY remained in contention. The good start through the first five weeks had them in a tie for 50th place on the SuperContest leaderboard. They dropped back to 110th place with a 2-3 result in Week 6, but then bounced back with 3-2 and 4-1 results in Week 7 and Week 8, respectively. That had them sitting in a tie for 25th place. Out of a record-breaking field size of 3,328 entries, the pair was doing quite well halfway through the season.

Kucera said that he wouldn’t look at the standings at all, claiming superstition. Jensen checked the standings once per week to get a gauge of where the team was at. The more the season went on, the more Jensen checked in with the SuperContest standings.

They had three weeks in a row of going 3-2 in each, which kept them consistently moving up the SuperContest standings, and then a 4-1 result in Week 12 had them in fourth place.

All the while, TUCO was crushing. Up until Week 15, TUCO had been in first place every single week but one. He was on a remarkable run, but Jensen remained confident.

“I had my doubts,” Jensen said about catching TUCO. “I just knew that he was eventually due to regress. He was dynamite the first half of the year, and even the next four weeks. I guess, yeah, I did have my doubts, but I did believe we could catch him if we just kept consistent and just waited for him to stumble, and it eventually happened. You can make up three points in one week when things like that go for the other guy, and we went on that run.”

Becoming SuperContest Champions

Week 15 hit and TUCO went 2-3 to slip from first to third. The door was open and Jensen and Kucera started to push through, going 5-0 with their card to move into second place. Jensen and Kucera followed it up with a 4-0-1 result in Week 16 and all of a sudden they had a 1.5-point lead entering the final week.

Jensen said he actually declared themselves champions going into the final week with a 1.5-point lead, and Kucera told him to “shut up,” although the exact phrasing may have had one or two more choice words in it.

“He knew a little bit earlier than he’s admitting, because I had friends start calling me about Week 15 and Week 16 to say, ‘I heard you’re doing really good in this contest. You’re going to be making some money,’” Kucera said. “I was like, ‘Who told you?’ But then I knew who told them. EJ did.”

For the final week, Week 17 of the NFL regular season, both were at their own homes. Kucera was watching his daughter and Jensen was celebrating Christmas with his family, they said. They actually didn’t watch one football game together all season, but they exchanged plenty of messages back and forth.

“I’d say 40 to 75 texts back and forth, and we’d call a couple times,” Kucera said of how they communicated during the games throughout the season.

After the Saints locked up the cover against the Panthers VSiN’s Dave Tuley tweeted that IT AINT BREEZY had locked up the SuperContest win. That’s when Jensen called Kucera to let him know the news, but Kucera wasn’t exactly ready to believe it just yet, knowing there was still plenty of action left. Eventually, it all started to sink in, especially in the days that followed.

“I’m beginning to accept it a little bit more, but I don’t think I’m going to fully accept it until we fly out [to Vegas] and I see that check,” Jensen said.

“I think I’ve started to accept it considering how many beers I have to buy my friends now,” Kucera added.

A score of $1.469 million will certainly buy a lot of beers.