I even had a decent week picks-wise and am almost back at .500! Let's see if I can do any better this week...
Thursday, October 16
Jets at Patriots (-9.5): I'm expecting the streak of good Thursday night games to end at one. The Patriots have been on a mission since people in the media started declaring them dead, trouncing the Bengals & Bills in consecutive weeks. Tom Brady's back to being Tom Brady & he's facing an inept Jets passing defense that Julius Thomas himself said is so easy to score on. He also remembers that the Jets inexplicably got the win last year in Foxbrorough thanks to a random penalty that somebody made up, and that just can't happen again. Patriots win another Thursday night blowout.
I guess I'm supposed to talk about Geno Smith and all the stuff surrounding him, but really what's the point? Guy's proving why he isn't a starting NFL quarterback on & off the field. I don't think that really comes as a surprise to anybody outside the borders of West Virginia. The Jets will find another option this offseason & the beat will go on.
Sunday, October 19
Falcons at Ravens (-7): The Falcons went from sucking on the road to sucking at home as well last week, losing to the Bears in the Georgia Dome. The Bears are pretty good, but that Falcons offense is quickly losing that punch they showed on that Thursday night game that feels like ages ago. Matt Ryan's playing like just a guy, there's nobody to run the ball, and that defense isn't stopping anybody. Falcons fans would be more worried about it if anybody else in the NFC South was doing anything of note.
Steve Smith Sr. has been a solid addition to the Ravens, especially against NFC South teams. He treated the Panthers like red-headed stepchildren, he ran all over the Bucaneers last week, and he should have no problem with this bunch. Justin Forsett's quietly become the Ravens running back of note & has been performing well the last three weeks...since the Falcons have the worst rush defense in the league I expect that to continue. Ravens in a walk.
Titans at Washington (-5.5): At this point the Washington football season is only notable for keeping track of the schmucks Dan Snyder brings into his owner's box to try & make himself look good. Last week it was Ben Shelly, the president of the Navajo Nation. He won't be president much longer, as he finished in seventh place in the primary election held in August. Part of Shelly's downfall with the Navajo was his connection with Snyder, whose football team's nickname doesn't sit well with the majority. Also there was some conspiracy & theft stuff going on, which people tend to frown upon. This week Dan will be welcoming Glenn Beck, who is apparently still alive. I'm not sure if I'd rather listen to Beck for three hours or watch this game for three hours.
Not sure who wins this, but I think it's a field goal game so I'll roll with the Titans. I have nothing more to say about this that is either relevant or true.
Seahawks (-7) at Rams: Austin Rivers Davis is in the midst of learning what it's like to be an NFL quarterback. This week he gets a Seahawk team that just lost to the Cowboys and is gonna be pissed. You get the feeling that all those Cowboys did was wake up a sleeping giant.
Seahawks got this covered.
Browns (-5.5) at Jaguars: After this trip to Jacksonville to play the Jaguars, the Browns will go home to host the Oakland Raiders & Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That means there's a very good chance the Cleveland Browns will be 6-2 when they head into Cincinnati on Thursday, November 6. How did this happen? A lot of it has to do with the Browns effectively running the ball. Their combination of Ben Tate, Isiah Crowell & Terrance West along with others is third-best in the league.
Good blocking by the o-line has also made life easy for Brian Hoyer, who isn't exactly setting the world on fire but also isn't losing games for the Browns. He's thrown one interception & fumbled the ball once. He's managing the game & managing to hold on to his gig. People are starting to notice that Hoyer will be a free agent after this season, and it'll be interesting to see whether the Browns try to re-sign him, or continue on with the original plan of John Manziel taking over next season. If the Browns keep on doing what they doing & end up having a winning season, it's going to be a tough decision.
Here's my Bold Prediction: The New York Jets will have either Brian Hoyer or John Manziel on their roster next season.
The Cleveland defense hasn't done a whole lot except last week against the Steelers, and that could prove to be their downfall. I think they win the game, but a surprisingly pesky bunch of Jaguars manage to beat the spread. They will get a win at some point...honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they get one next week thanks to the Dolphins laying an egg. They tend to play up or down to their competition.
Bengals at Colts (-3): A.J. Green will likely be out again this week, but the Bengal offense didn't seem to miss him too much last week against Carolina. They focused more on the running game, giving Gio Bernard a ton of work & having enough left over for Jeremy Hill to make his presence known. Also, Mohamed Sanu's breakout season continued as he got over 100 receiving yards. They'll need a lot more of that from him with Green on the sidelines & Marvin Jones now being out for the rest of the season.
The Bengals offense has adjusted to the situation, but the problem with the team since the bye week has been the defense. They got lit up by Tom Brady & Cam Newton, and it's hard not to envision Andrew Luck having an absolute field day with them. This is going to be a high-scoring game pitting two solid offenses against two defenses trying to find themselves. I think the Colts win by a touchdown.
Vikings at Bills (-4.5): The Vikings stunk last week but that kind of got swept under the rug because of what was going on in the announce booth. It seemed like the same people called games on CBS & Fox for the past fifteen years or so, because for the most part, they did. This year both networks have been trying out some new guys due to some of the old guys retiring, and the results have been mixed. CBS gave Cincinnati Local 12's Brad Johansen a shot at calling the Bengals/Titans game a couple of weeks ago, and he did a good job with it. It helped that he has a ton of previous experience calling Bengals games on the radio & currently does their televised preseason games, so he was put in a position to succeed & did so. Local guys can be homers sometimes, it was tough to tell if he fell into that trap or not because the Titans didn't do much of anything to get excited about. It'd be interesting to hear him on a more competitive game.
Fox gave Mike Goldberg a chance to call the Lions/Vikings game last week. He's known as the play by play guy for UFC telecasts, and with UFC being on Fox now it made sense to put him on the NFL if they needed somebody. He's done Arizona Cardinals preseason games before. Unfortunately for people watching the game, Goldberg & his partner Brendan Ayanbadejo combined for one of the most putrid calls of a football game in recent memory. Constantly misdentifying people, calling Mike Zimmer Don Zimmer, forgetting who was on which team, not knowing how many yards were gained or lost...you know, the basics. I don't think people familiar with Goldberg from UFC telecasts were especially surprised by any of this. I'd compare him to WWE's Michael Cole, in that he's much more effective at reading advertisements & hyping products than he is at talking about what's happening right in front of him. Once he has to talk about the event itself, he's lost.
Ayanbadejo will get another chance this week alongside Tim Brando, but Goldberg has been removed from coverage after getting into it on Twitter with people that didn't like his coverage. After years of working with UFC, Goldberg's adopted their mentality that it's perfectly fine to cuss out everybody that disagrees with you on anything. Dana White loves that stuff, but the people at NFL on Fox aren't nearly as keen on it. The Mike Goldberg Era is over, and I doubt you'll hear his voice on any kind of NFL telecast again. There's way too much talent out there for networks to take chances on guys like that. Fortunately Mikey still has his UFC work, and I bet Dana's even higher on him now than he was before. Yeah, he showed those NFL fans who's boss!
I talked about that to avoid talking about this game. Bills should handle Minnesota at home. Teddy Bridgewater gets another tough defense to go against & the o-line's not going to help him out at all. They might trip him again.
Dolphins at Bears (-3): The Bears have yet to win a home game this season, which seems strange. Especially since they played the Bills at home in Week 1. If they lose this game & go 0-3 at Soldier Field, it'll be the first time that's happened in ten years. Miami will be motivated this week after a close loss at home to Green Bay. The Dolphins excel at stopping the pass, but they only have three interceptions this year. That number might increase, but I like the Bears to be the better team at home this week.
Saints at Lions (-3): It's really strange looking at fantasy football articles telling me that Drew Brees isn't projected to have 20 points this week. I don't remember this happening at any point during his stay with the Saints. It makes sense though...other than Cam Newton & somewhat inexplicably Kyle Orton, nobody's gotten anything done against the Detroit Lions defense. Add in the fact that the Saints offense is not clicking the way it generally does, and you get things like the Lions being favored over the Saints.
The Lions have been super effective on defense & that's masked a lot of their flaws, like not having Calvin Johnson do his usual thing, nobody really running the ball that much, and their field goal kickers not being able to kick field goals. None of that stuff matters because the Lions aren't letting teams score on them. They look like a pretty good team...but they still do things like lose to the Bills at home.
I like the Lions this week due to the Saints offense not being the normal Saints offense. No Jimmy Graham certainly doesn't help things for them.
Panthers at Packers (-7): The Panthers tied the Bengals last week in a game that they (& the Bengals) both had multiple opportunities to win but failed to do so. The Packers beat the Dolphins in a game that they probably should have lost but took advantage of an opportunity to win. Sounds like a Packers kind of game to me. The point spread doesn't bother me because Carolina has a great defensive player, not a great defense. There is a difference.
By the way, Aaron Rodgers has 15 touchdowns & 1 interception this year. No wonder he's relaxed.
Chiefs at Chargers (-4): The Chargers are now getting respect from the media, which is interesting since they nearly blew that respect by trying to lose to the Raiders last week. The Chiefs are 2-3, but it's a deceptive 2-3 as they've been competitive in their losses except for that ridiculous Titans game in Week 1. This should be a pretty darn good divisional clash between two teams that figure to at least be in the wild card picture at the end of the season. Their Week 17 game in Kansas City just might decide things there...
Kansas City's not getting much out of their passing game. San Diego is, and Branden Oliver looks to do big things against the Chiefs rush defense, which hasn't been so great thus far. I think the Chargers win by a touchdown.
Cardinals (-3.5) at Raiders: Hey, the Raiders are alive! They came within a field goal against San Diego! Does this mean Derek Carr & the gang have a chance against Arizona?
Closer spread than I would have thought for the Cardinals on Carson Palmer's homecoming.
Giants at Cowboys (-6): I'm more of a Twitter guy these days, but before I got into that I was quite the Facebook poster. I was new to social media since I didn't really get into MySpace, so I made the rookie mistake of accepting any & every friend request I got. I think most of them were people that read me at 411mania.com, but I can't say that with any degree of certainty. What I can say is that when I checked my Facebook feed on Sunday is that I had no idea so many people were Dallas Cowboys fans. Everybody & their brother was going to their Facebook to talk about the Cowboys. Oddly enough I didn't have this problem on Twitter, where I'm a lot more selective about who I follow.
Basically what I'm saying is man the Cowboys bandwagon is out in full force. People that haven't talked about football ever (or talked about other teams in some cases) are going gaga since the Cowboys got that big win in Seattle. I've made fun of Giants fans before for some of their ridiculousness, but they're nothing compared to this. I'm seeing people with Yankee logos as their display pics going "HOW BOUT DEM COWBOYS". It's kinda ridiculous. You forget how annoying Cowboys fans are when the team stinks for a decade.
The Giants got absolutely smoked by Philly last week & lost Victor Cruz for the season. I don't really like their chances this week, but I think a six-point spread could be beatable. You gotta remember that they had a 3-game winning streak going into that game & I seem to remember people complaining about Cruz before he got hurt. Cowboys will win, but the Giants are the right play here.
49ers at Broncos (-6.5): The Denver Broncos are now the most popular team in America according to a poll taken where more than half of the participants don't follow pro football. I don't know exactly what that means, but I do know the Broncos are pretty damn good this season. Peyton Manning doing Peyton Manning things, the defense doing a much better job than they did last season...it definitely feels like this is their year.
This week will provide one of their tougher opponents this season as the 49ers make their way over to Denver. Jim Harbaugh's bunch has responded well from that two-game losing streak at the start of the season, much to the dismay of the otters over at offtheteam.com. I'm not really a 49ers fan, but I end up rooting for them because those crazy otters get their panties in a bunch over Jim Harbaugh. I think the Broncos win the game, but the 49er defense will do just enough against Peyton to keep things close. Take the points & the 49ers.
Monday, October 20
Texans at Steelers (-3.5): The Steelers currently sit in 4th place in the AFC North, and based on what I've seen from the Bengals, Browns & Ravens this season, that's probably where the Steelers are going to end up. People have a tough time accepting this. Like my good friend Jeremy Lambert, who said before the season that the Steelers would win the AFC North because they're the Steelers. He had no real reason, which seems to be the common thread tying Steeler believers these days.
Another common thread tying Steeler believers these days.
I'm not even sure the Steelers are bad, but I don't think they're as good as the other teams in the division. They'll probably wind up somewhere around 8-8 while the players claim they should have been 11-5. The Texans played Indy close on Thursday night, eventually. They've come back to earth after losing to Dalls & Indianapolis, but showed a ton of fight in both games. Enough fight, in fact, for me to take the Texans and the points here. Could be a field goal difference, which I'm sure ESPN execs would love to see.
Last Week: 9-5-1 (Katy Perry went 7-7-1)
Season Record: 43-45-3
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