Far be it for me to tell someone how to live their life. But as I sat on my couch watching Week 6 unfold in the NFL, one question kept popping up in my head: Why would anyone gamble on pro football?

For the record, this isn’t about bashing gamblers because, to be brutally honest, I am one. In fact, anyone that shells out a little coin in office pools or even fantasy football is a gambler to some degree. So as it stands, I’m referring to myself when I write this.

This article is about shinning even more light on how unpredictable the NFL is, and how quickly a football game can turn on its head. It has to be easier to predict winning lotto numbers than it is to predict which teams will cover the spread on a consistent basis.

Below are just three examples from Week 6 of how snake-bitten you can be as a gambler of the NFL. And remember, I’m using just three examples from one week of the season. Think about how many times a gambler could get screwed over the course of an entire NFL season and it’s enough to lose your lunch.

After they beat division rivals Dallas and Philadelphia on the road the past two weeks to push their winning streak to four games, fans and pundits alike were ready to crown the Washington Redskins as an elite team in the NFC. But hold that thought.

The previously winless, hapless St. Louis Rams waltzed into FedEx Field on Sunday and beat the Redskins 19-17 on a Josh Brown 49-yard field goal as time expired. It wasn’t only the Rams first win of the season, but it was also their first win after head coach Scott Linehan was fired and replaced by defensive coordinator Jim Haslett.

Haslett’s previous tenure as head coach of the New Orleans Saints was up and down, but his players always played hard under him. You could see that again Sunday as Rams players rallied around their head coach and fought hard for four quarters. And when things took a turn for the worse when Redskins’ RB Clinton Portis scored a go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter, St. Louis didn’t give in like they might have under Linehan.

Washington took a step back with this loss, but every team has bad days. Maybe expectations should be scaled back a bit, but this is still a good team. Had they not turned the ball over as much as they did Sunday against the Rams, they probably would have walked away with their fifth win in as many games.

Still, it has to be awfully concerning to lose a home game against a previously winless Rams team. It’ll be interesting to see how first-year head coach Jim Zorn can rally his team in the wake of an embarrassing loss.