Last Week: 8-6

Season: 80-38-1

Green Bay Packers (5-2) at San Francisco 49ers (4-4)

Friday 2.20pm NZT

A little bit late on the picks this week, apologies for that... though still not as late as Nevada polling results. Nah best steer clear of election talk. Way too much of that going on, although there will be a lot of very upset NFL owners right now and you love to see it. Absolutely love it.

This game never had me wondering whatsoever. Doubt I’ll have this published before the game kicks off, although I’m writing this well before then, but trust me when I say there was a zero percent chance I was ever gonna pick the Niners with the injury toll they’ve been racking up. Injuries and also a bit of covid... the Titans rallied through this a while back but they had their star QB and RB to carry them while the Niners are gonna be without Jimmy Garoppolo and George Kittle for a while. Jimmy G was playing crap and clearly still hobbled so dunno how much benefit of the doubt he gets. The guy did lead them to within a quarter of a championship last year so like... talk of them moving on from him entirely seems harsh. At least let him have a crack with two functioning ankles. He’ll miss 4-6 weeks according to Kyle Shanahan while Kittle’s got a broken foot and is looking at more like eight weeks. Kittle is an elite tight end both in the passing game and also as a blocker... if anything he’s harder to replace than Garoppolo. And it ain’t like they’re the only absentees either.

More than a third of teams have at least one rona case including both these teams... the Packers also have three guys on the covid reserves list. It’s not pretty. Rising cases around the United States. Maybe the new president will actually take things seriously... although the horse has probably bolted by now. Too late to do lockdowns, that political licence has long since been burned.

This is Aaron Rodgers taking a game-ending sack last week... really strikes you how brutal this game can be sometimes, like looking at the angle his arm gets into there getting his as he tries to throw. It was one of those horror movie moments where you could see the dude creeping up behind him on the telly but Rodgers had no idea.

Should have more of an idea here, at least.

Wildcard’s Pick: Packers by 13

Denver Broncos (3-4) at Atlanta Falcons (2-6)

Monday 7.00am NZT

I didn’t realise that Phillip Lindsay was on such a tear but the numbers add up. He’s coming off a win over the Chargers where he only had six carries but bagged 83 yards on the back of a 55 yard score... remember that Lindsay missed a lot of the first half of the season with injury so he’s actually only had 45 rush attempts all season, that’s a rather decent scope for Denver to get a lot better the rest of the way.

Drew Lock is healthy too and while he was far from fantastic last week he did throw three scores and he’s a mile better than any other QB on that roster. The Broncs have always had a solid defence and after only getting two turnovers in the first four weeks they’ve bagged six in three games since. I dunno, it’s curious. They’ve got no hope of catching the Chiefs but maybe, with the extra playoff spot this year, they could sneak into a wildcard at like 9-7 or something. That’d mean getting six wins from this remaining run of fixtures...

Falcons (A), Raiders (A), Dolphins, Saints, Chiefs (A), Panthers (A), Bills, Chargers (A) & Raiders

I mean... yeah maybe not. Chiefs away is a scheduled defeat. Everything else is a close contest though so unless they get lucky with injuries then they’re gonna have to win a lot of close games, the likes of which they were losing to start this season. Three wins outta four most recently though. They’re a chance.

As for the Falcons, Tak McKinley’s not a happy chappie, is he?

The weird thing about the Falcons is that if they hadn’t utterly bottled comfortable wins then they’d be on a three-game winning streak right now with a 4-4 record and room to push for a playoff spot after their bye week next week... and that’s disregarding if they win here as well as close losses to the Panthers and Bears earlier in the season. A few tweaks, some better execution, and they could be 6-2 instead of 2-6. But you don’t get points for almosts and they are where they deserve to be.

Wildcard’s Pick: Broncos by 3... but this does feel like one I might regret on Monday morning

Seattle Seahawks (6-1) at Buffalo Bills (6-2)

Monday 7.00am NZT

Remember when Josh Allen was an MVP candidate? Those were fun days while they lasted. He didn’t actually have much to do against the Patriots last week as the Patriots did it all for him, Allen only attempting 18 passes. But he’s gone consecutive games (both wins, interestingly enough) without a passing touchdown after having multiple in each of the first six games.

Allen’s last four starts he’s a passer rating of just 79.2 (4 TDs & 4 INTs) compared to a sizzling 122.7 rating across those first four weeks (12 TDs & 1 INT) so yeah coming back down to earth there. Clearly that first month was unsustainable...it’s just funny that people made such a noise about him then like he was suddenly one of the very best quarterbacks in the sport and now that he’s settling into more of a settled middle ground the chat’s all disappeared.

Russell Wilson on the other hand...

71.5% COMP | 2151 YDS | 26 TD | 6 INT | 11.8 AY/A | 120.8 RATE | 83.4 QBR

And a 6-1 record to boot. With two game-winning drives.

That’s still one game shy of a full half season too so you can pretty much double those numbers that he’s got there and that’s still not what he’s on pace for. Only Peyton Manning (55 in 2013), Tom Brady (50 in 2007) & Patrick Mahomes (50 in 2018) have topped a half-century of touchdown passes in a season and ol’ Russ is tossing them at a rate of 10.2%... meaning one in every ten passes this season has been for a touchdown. If he can stay above that 10% mark then the only dudes above him in the history of the sport are a trio of lads from the 1940s... Sid Luckman, Frankie Albert & Tommy Thompson. All extremely first-half-of-the-twentieth-century-America names aye? For Wilson to be doing that in such a pass-heavy era is just incredible. He missed out on the MVP last year because of Lamar Jackson’s breakout dominance. Hard to see him missing out this time if he stays even close to this pace.

Must be those Thanksgiving blowouts, aye?

Wildcard’s Pick: Gotta be the Seahawks by 7

Chicago Bears (5-3) at Tennessee Titans (5-2)

Monday 7.00am NZT

Here’s an extremely Chicago Bears story: Mitch Trubisky played one snap against the Saints, just one snap, and on that one snap he managed to injure his shoulder and now the Bears are worried that there could be “significant structural issues” and he’ll potentially miss several weeks now. Cheeky reminder here that while Trubisky was playing pretty awful, so is Nick Foles right now and Trubisky does at least offer a bit of running ability. The Bears are 2-3 since Foles took over. They were 3-0 with Trubisky.

But there’s no debate if one of them’s injured... really not liking this matchup against a team who can run all day, who make a lot of clutch plays, and whose crippling weakness over the last few weeks has been their inability to defend the pass... which Chicago are incapable of executing anyway so this is basically a perfect bounce-back for the Titans after unexpectedly losing to the Bengals in the first real downbuzz game of their season.

I’m trying to figure out what was up with the Titans last week. To be fair the Bengals are no mugs, they’ve been in most games this season and with a little more experience they’d have won a couple more of them too. But that note about the Titans’ pass defence is pretty relevant as well. Sixth most yards allowed, fifth most passing scores allowed. For a team that won its first five games that’s a lot. The kind of thing you can only really get away with by doing what the Titans do and keeping other teams off the field with a strong rush game and limiting turnovers (they only have four offensive turnovers, second best).

But even more concerning for that defence is that they’re literally last in third down defence, allowing conversions on 61.9% of 3Ds (to go with 5/7 conversions on fourth down against them) and are third worst in the red zone with 21 touchdowns from 26 defensive stands. I like this Titans team but those are very concerning stats for when it comes to crunch time.

Wildcard’s Pick: Titans by 9

Baltimore Ravens (5-2) at Indianapolis Colts (5-2)

Monday 7.00am NZT

So... trade deadline was pretty boring right? Maybe just take my word for it. The Patriots got a wide receiver, the Vikings picked up Yannick Ngakoue, the Titans picked up Desmond King from the Chargers which is a welcome addition to that secondary, the Saints nabbed Kwon Alexander from the Niners in exchange for Kiko Alonso and a conditional pick, the Steelers in maybe the best of all these moves got Avery Williamson from the Jets. Must be nice to go from the only winless team to the only undefeated team just like that.

More interesting were the trades that didn’t get done. Stephon Gilmore remains a Patriot with the price just too much there. Same deal (or lack thereof) for Will Fuller who the Texans simply asked too much for... which meant no rumoured move to the Packers, sadly. The Cowboys did flip Everson Griffen away (a few months after paying six mill for him) which makes sense given he wasn’t helping them anyway but otherwise they sat on their hands rather than throwing in the towel and hoarding assets. To be fair, they already have a supreme offence if everyone’s fit (Dak mostly, but also crucially the offensive line) and there are good pass rushers there so their work will be done in the draft with a top ten pick looking likely. Ryan Kerrigan wanted to leave Washington but no dice there. All in all kinda boring for a trade deadline. It clashed with election day in the USA so everyone was too busy frying their brains watching Fox/CNN waiting on a result that was never gonna be confirmed that day.

So the Ravens were thiiiis close to probably beating the Steelers...

They seem to have a habit of coming up just short in the biggest games... tough learning curves for Lamar Jackson who I thought had a shot at the first down there if he’s taken it outside after the initial cut but so it goes. I just wish they’d drawn up a passing play there – played into the Steelers hands with the designed QB run. But I reckon there’s a chance they dish up a big statement win here. The Colts have an excellent defence but they also haven’t faced anything comparable to the threat of Lamar Jackson and Jim Harbaugh yet. Wins over Kirk Cousins, Sam Darnold, Nick Foles, Joe Burrow, and Matt Stafford (and losses to Gardner Minshew & Baker Mayfield) are not quite playoff tests.

Love having Darius Leonard back in the line-up though...

Wildcard’s Pick: Ravens by 6

New York Giants (1-7) at Washington Football Team (2-5)

Monday 7.00am NZT

Actually I did wanna say a couple things about Washington last week when they were on their bye. First one is shout out to Ron Rivera as he finished up his chemo. Love that dude, he’s great, wishing him all the best.

The other is that nobody really seems to know much about this fella because he plays for Washington and has thus never caught a catch from a decent quarterback but Terry McLaurin is honestly one of the best wide receivers in the league. Just got unanimously voted team captain for the rest of the season and he’s only in his second year as a pro. As a rookie last year he caught 58 passes for 919 yards with 7 touchdowns. He already has 43 catches for 577 yards this year and keep in mind that this is the breakdown for his 101 career catches...

• Case Keenum (28/41 | 436 YDS | 5 TD)

• Dwayne Haskins (53/84 | 819 YDS | 3 TD)

• Colt McCoy (3/7 | 51 YDS | 0 TD)

• Kyle Allen (16/26 | 185 YDS | 1 TD)

• Alex Smith (1/4 | 5 YDS | 0 TD)

There are a bunch of dudes ahead of him on the receiving yards chart since McLaurin entered the league. Julio Jones leads the way with 1978 yards, followed by DeAndre Hopkins with 1869 and Travic Kelce with 1839... with McLaurin way down in 25th with 1496 yards. Hence how underrated he remains – take another look at that list of quarterbacks he’s had to deal with. The fact that he’s caught passes from five different dudes in 21 career games is already astounding. Keep an eye peeled for Terry McLaurin is all I’m saying. Soon enough people are gonna realise how good he is.

Wildcard’s Pick: There are no winners here but Washington just had a bye so WFT by 3

Carolina Panthers (3-5) at Kansas City Chiefs (7-1)

Monday 7.00am NZT

I find it pretty interesting that the Panthers haven’t really dropped off in average rush yards while Christian McCaffrey’s been out. A bit of that’s been Teddy Bridgewater though... and Curtis Samuel on the end-arounds. Mike Davis has 350 yards at 4.2 per rush (he was 1 rush for 1 yard while CMC was active) but hasn’t had a 100 yarder on the ground and in the last three losses he’s only at 3.4 yards per attempt, with a lost fumble, and only eight catches in the passing game. McCaffrey should be back now and he’ll raise the bar but at 3-5 it’s a pity it looks like they might have dug themselves too much of a hole.

Did I say 3-5? That’ll probably be 3-6 come Monday afternoon. Will be a bit interesting to see how KCC go with their running backs – Le’Veon Bell only has 46 yards from 12 rushes since he joined but the team in total only had 50 rush yards last week against the Jets. It was all they needed, burning then through the air instead. Clyde Edwards-Helaire has responded pretty well to the extra competition, asserting himself as the top dog, though when you’re the RB for Patrick Mahomes you’re not really gonna get too many goes of it. He has 14 rushes in the past two weeks to Bell’s 12 (for 67 yards with a TD).

By the way, Patty Mahomes has 21 touchdowns to one interception this season. And he’s doing that with 289 yards per game completing at 66.9% so... yeah, wow. The Chiefs have beaten the Bills, Broncos & Jets all in a row by a combined score of 104-42. Their rush defence is pretty crap, good news for CMC, but they have a defensive turnover in every single game. Just can’t see how the Panthers can keep up with that.

Wildcard’s Pick: Chiefs by 10

Detroit Lions (3-4) at Minnesota Vikings (2-5)

Monday 7.00am NZT

Probably not the best preparation to have Matt Stafford going into the coronavirus precautions as a close contact of a positive case, he’ll be able to be activated on Sunday and play if he tests negative between now and then but there is a chance he misses this one. I expect him to play but keep on eye on that lil drama.

Dalvin Cook, ladies and gents. 163 yards from 30 rushes (5.43 per rush) with three touchdowns and another 63 yards through the air from two catches with another touchdown in that win over the Packers. He has 10 rushing TDs from six games played. He has three games of 130+ rush yardage. Dalvin Cook is the heart and soul of this Vikings team and if he’s the focal point again versus Detroit then this one should go the way of the home team.

Wildcard’s Pick: Vikings by 2

Houston Texans (1-6) at Jacksonville Jaguars (1-6)

Monday 7.00am NZT

Gardner Minshew has a thumb injury. Rookie Jake Luton is gonna start for the Jags instead. This was already a salvage-some-pride game for the Texans but now they really oughta roll away with it.

Wildcard’s Pick: Texans by 14

Las Vegas Raiders (4-3) at Los Angeles Chargers (2-5)

Monday 10.05am NZT

The answer is a resounding no. Although he is playing pretty nicely and the Raiders have been going good. Wins over the Panthers, Saints, Chiefs & Browns. Losses to the Patriots, Bills & Buccaneers. No easy games there, the Chargers will be the worst they’ve faced yet (although they’re better than their record), and other than getting torched by Tom Brady one time they’ve been competitive in all games. However it does say a lot about the type of quarterback that Derek Carr is that his favourite target is a tight end (the excellent Darren Waller) who he’s thrown to 61 times... 27 more than anyone else. You don’t win MVP with checkdowns over the middle, man. 41 catches by Waller with a longest completion of 23 yards.

The Chargers lost 31-30 to the Broncos. They were up by 21 points mid-3Q and conceded 28 points in the last 22 minutes of the game. Almost won it on their goal-line but for a pass interference call and Drew Lock hit KJ Hamler with one second left on the clock to win it.

Meaning you can chuck that on the list of bad beats for a team that has twice gone down in overtime this season and whose other two losses were within a touchdown. Five defeats by a combined margin of 19 points. Must drive ya crazy if you’re Anthony Lynn. Hopefully they do the coach a favour and get thrashed here.

Wildcard’s Pick: Raiders by 6

Pittsburgh Steelers (7-0) at Dallas Cowboys (2-6)

Monday 10.25am NZT

Nope. Not interested. Don’t wanna look. Don’t wanna hear anything about it. I’ll still most likely watch the game... but I’ll be doing so with a hope/aspiration level of 0.00% - there is no realm of Steelers victory which could possibly surprise me. I mean, the Cowboys will be starting either Cooper Rush or Garrett Gilbert. Last week they had Ben DiNucci who was abysmally out of his depth. Put all the Steelers playmakers in your fantasy team because they’re all gonna dine out.

Wildcard’s Pick: Steelers by all the points

Miami Dolphins (4-3) at Arizona Cardinals (5-2)

Monday 10.25am NZT

Further news from the Leftorium...

First lefty to start at quarterback for five years since Kellen Moore did so for the Cowboys. First lefty to throw a touchdown pass since... Jarvis Landry earlier this season, lol.

Wildcard’s Pick: Cardinals by 7

New Orleans Saints (5-2) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (6-2)

Monday 2.20pm NZT

Quick word on Will Lutz who missed his first kick of the season last week, he’d been perfect on field goals and PATs up until then. The only kicker remaining who hasn’t missed from either still is Jason Sanders of the Miami Dolphins... so there you go, the Fins leading a stat category! Chris Boswell (PIT) and Mason Crosby (GBP) are still perfect from FGs but have missed a point after.

But let’s be honest that’s not what we’re here to focus on... we wanna watch The Fight again!

Mate, the fact that CJ Gardner-Johnson (aka Chauncey Gardner) just kinda stood there bemused after getting punched in the face is arguably more humiliating for Javon Wims than if he’d turned around and dropped him in return. That slap at the start was him trying to snatch his mouthpiece (you know the ones they have attached to their helmet grills or whatever) as CJGJ had done to him a few plays earlier. He failed at that too... which is even sadder considering that by a few plays earlier I actually mean the previous possession which was how long it took for Wims to get another chance to line-up against CJGJ after the first little mini-altercation. Like, bro, at some point you must have chilled out enough not to wanna punch a guy in the head in a helmet? Nope.

Yo, check it out, Tom Brady put Antonio Brown up with Tony Robbins hahaha. Sign a dodgy fella with a weird personality and some concerning issues in his past (even aside from imploding in preseason 2019) but all goods because he’s sat through a few lectures now about self-confidence and making better decisions or whatever. That’ll do it.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m sceptical about this Antonio Brown thing. Sceptical for a few reasons, I suspect he’ll be on his best behaviour but I also don’t like the idea of a guy being out of the game for that long and coming back and being the dude he once was. The Buccs have already had that with Gronk this year, he’s only in the last few weeks started to be a genuine factor again (three weeks in a row with a TD!) and Gronk doesn’t have those other question marks.

I don’t think it’s much of a risk for Tampa though, worth a crack as long as you can handle the moral implications of signing a dude with domestic violence allegations against him. They can cop it if he flames out... they’ve got Mike Evans doing incredible things already. Brady has had trouble getting Evans involved consistently but in the red zone he has seven targets, six catches for six touchdowns. It’s almost automatic. Evans’ seven total TDs are tied for the most in the league with DK Metcalf, Tyreek Hill, Adam Thielen, Tyler Lockett & Davante Adams. Bit of a who’s who there.

Yes and of course it’s Drew Brees vs Tom Brady. The two oldest quarterbacks in the league, surely this’ll be some kind of record, and two guys who have been going back and forth swapping the all time passing touchdown record between each other all season. Tom Brady is at 561, Drew Brees is at 560. Peyton Manning is third with 539 while the next active player is Philip Rivers on 407 in sixth (Brett Favre and Dan Marino are fourth and fifth). Should be a goodie then... but expect to get sick of the focus on those two old bastards by about the third possession of the game.

(These telly graphics are really on a new level in 2020, aye? Some of them have been straight up savage)

Wildcard’s Pick: Buccs by 7

New England Patriots (2-5) at New York Jets (0-8)

Tuesday 2.15pm NZT

Nothing got better for the Patriots last week, they continued to look awful on offence and after talking up the idea that he was playing for his job Cam Newton showed zero signs of improvement. It’s far from all his fault and they did swoop for a new wide receiver in Isaiah Ford, trading a seventh rounder to the Dolphins to nab that dude for some extra help. But money is tight and talent is even tighter at the moment for the Patriots who are kinda dealing with what happens when you’ve been making win-now moves for so long and suddenly can’t seem to win in the now any longer. But having said all that... they still were in a great position only for Cam to go and do this...

That is not how you win games. Absolutely brutal, especially after all the talk that week about his struggles. Lucky for him the schedule is kinder this time around because if they can’t get it done against the Jets then I don’t even know what to say.

“Nice hat” is what I’ll probably say, come to think of it.

Wildcard’s Pick: Patriots by 10

BYE: Cincinnati Bengals (2-5-1), Philadelphia Eagles (3-4-1), Cleveland Browns (5-3) & Los Angeles Rams (5-3)

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