Tonight: Rams +3 over Niners

Hey, remember that time Sam Bradford was a #1 overall pick?

Tough one tonight.  I literally went back and forth about 5 times.  San Fran has looked downright terrible the past two weeks.  Kaepernick looks like a rookie QB, which shouldn't be shocking given that tonight will be just his 11th NFL regular season start.  I may or may not have just benched him in fantasy for Terrelle Pryor.  The Rams, on the other hand, looked putrid last week against Dallas in a game I thought they'd compete in.

In any event, make it easy on yourself: it's two 1-2 teams in a divisional match-up, except the home team's getting a field goal instead of giving it.  Plus, the line moved toward St. Louis, so the smart money's on the Rams.  So is my pick.

THE PICK: Niners 21, Rams 19

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Week 2 Picks

Think they ever punted?

I'm in a pool where I have to pick 6 games against the spread, and one of them is my "key" pick that's worth an extra point.  So far this year, I've made the Thursday night my key pick.  And as you know if you've been following this blog, I was wrong in both week 1 (thanks, Ravens' D) and week 2 (thanks, Aaron Dobson).  Not a good sign.  Thankfully, I was able to salvage a decent week last week.  Week 2 is below.  Enjoy the games:

LAST WEEK: 9-5-1 against the spread, 13-3 outright
THIS WEEK: 0-1 against the spread, 1-0 outright

EAGLES -7 over Chargers: Believe the hype on Philly.  I absolutely love watching this team.

BILLS +3 over Panthers (Bills to win): Not sure Carolina should be giving a FG on the road to anyone just yet.

Rams + 5 over FALCONS (Falcons to win): Atlanta may not be very good at this point.  Roddy White at less than 80% looms large.

Redskins +7 over PACKERS (Packers to win): Not sure we know if either of these teams is good this year.  Take the points.

Browns + 6.5 over RAVENS (Ravens to win): Ugh.

Dolphins + 2.5 over COLTS (Dolphins to win): Miami might win the AFC East.

Titans + 8.5 over TEXANS (Texans to win): Houston scrapes by again; along with the Pats, they'll be an underwhelming 2-0 team.

BEARS - 6.5 over Vikings: Minnesota was way worse than the score indicated last week against Detroit.

CHIEFS - 2.5 over Cowboys: The Arrowhead home field advantage makes the difference.

Lions - 2 over CARDINALS: Detroit scored like 8 touchdowns last week, except 4 got called back due to penalty or Calvin Johnson violating the Calvin Johnson rule.

Saints - 3 over BUCS: "Captain" Josh Freeman leads the Bucs to v . . . oh, wait.

GIANTS +4.5 over Broncos (Broncos to win): Vegas overreacting on both teams.

Jaguars + 5.5 over RAIDERS (Jaguars to win): Chad Henne ends the Blaine Gabbert era with a convincing win against the Raiders.

Niners + 3 over SEAHAWKS (Seahawks to win): Two evenly matched teams.  Home field is actually worth a little less than 3 points these days though, so take the points.

BENGALS - 6.5 over Steelers: As much as it pains me . . .

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Week 11 Preview and Picks

Cheer up, Raiders fan.  A win over the lowly Raiders mean more to a team than a win over a contender.

With the calendar turning to mid-November and most of the playoff field largely-decided, we turn for a moment this week to the NFL’s grand prize, the Lombardi trophy.  A decade ago, one could correctly point to a playoff bye as a key step to a Super Bowl title.  A team who only needed to win two games to make the Super Bowl (at least one of which would be at home) would only be helped, the thinking went, by the extra week of rest.  But the importance of getting a bye has proven less and less important since 2005, as 5 of the last 7 Super Bowl champs (and 4 of the last 5) were playing during Wild Card Weekend.

The most important factor, experts say?  How a team plays down the stretch.  Since we’re not “down the stretch,” yet, we obviously can’t assess that for 2012, so we’ll table it for six weeks.  Instead, we’ll look at another piece of conventional wisdom: that Super Bowl-contending teams typically blow out crappy teams, something that has absolutely held true in the past 10 years.  Some facts after the jump:

Week 10 Preview and Picks

Andrew Luck's 1st Half of 2012 is nothing short of remarkable

Following last week’s emotional 23-20 victory over the Dolphins, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the Colts.  Consider that the Colts:

·         Went 2-14 last year

·         Parted ways with Peyton Manning, maybe the greatest quarterback of this generation

·         They had the second-worst offseason in the AFC according to our metrics

·         We had them at 2.8 expected wins for the year, good for third-worst in the league.  And we weren’t alone.

·         They went 2-3 in their first five games and had a point differential of -45.

·         They’re starting a rookie quarterback.

·         They announced their coach was diagnosed with leukemia and was leaving the team indefinitely.

·         His interim replacement, Bruce Arians, prompted a Facebook group asking for his firing while offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh (Steelers fans got Todd Haley – hmmm . . .)

So it’s really nothing short of remarkable that the Colts sit at 5-3 and would make the playoffs if they started today.  What’s particularly surprising is that the Colts are doing all this with the #1 overall pick starting at QB from opening day.  We’ve seen recent examples of rookie QBs carrying their teams to success (Joe Flacco and Mark Sanchez both guided their teams to conference title games in ’08 and ’09), but those guys were either later draft picks (Flacco) or were picked by teams who were at least decent the year before (both). Because a team has to have the worst record in the previous year to get the number 1 pick (translation: they stunk then, they’ll probably stink again), it’s far more rare for a team at the top of the draft to even smell the playoffs.  In fact, it’s only happened once since the merger.

Performance of QBs Drafted Number 1 Overall Since 1970

	Player	Year Drafted	Team	Record Through First 8 Starts	Team Record in First Year	Playoffs?
1	Andrew Luck	2012	IND	5-3	?	?
2	Michael Vick	2001	ATL	4-4	7-9	No
3	John Elway	1983	DEN	3-5	9-7	Yes
4	Carson Palmer	2003	CIN	3-5	8-8	No
5	Jeff George	1990	IND	3-5	7-9	No
6	Jim Plunkett	1971	NE	3-5	6-8	No
7	Terry Bradshaw	1970	PIT	3-5	5-9	No
8	S. Bartkowski	1975	ATL	3-5	4-10	No
9	Eli Manning	2004	NYG	2-6	6-10	No
10	David Carr	2002	HOU	2-6	4-12	No
11	Alex Smith	2005	SF	2-6	4-12	No
12	Jamarcus Russell	2007	OAK	2-6	4-12	No
13	Drew Bledsoe	1993	NE	1-7	5-11	No
14	V. Testaverde	1987	TB	1-7	4-11	No
15	Peyton Manning	1998	IND	1-7	3-13	No
16	Tim Couch	1999	CLE	1-7	2-14	No
17	Troy Aikman	1989	DAL	0-8	1-15	No

We tried to project Luck against this group back in April when he was drafted.  Through 8 games his performance – at least as reflected by the team’s record – is outpacing everyone in a fairly distinguished group.  Only Elway’s ’83 Broncos made the playoffs, and they were bounced by Seattle in the first round (back when Seattle was in the AFC) and really had a platoon play at QB with Elway and Steve DeBerg.  And only Michael Vick won even half of his first 8 games – and many of those were in his second season.

In short, especially in a weak AFC, Andrew Luck and the Colts could well make history this year.

UPDATED PLAYOFF PROJECTIONS

Despite all the accolades we just bestowed upon Andrew Luck, we’re not quite ready to put Indy into the playoffs.  San Diego has snatched the 6 seed in the AFC from Miami on the strength of their convincing (at least via score) win over Kansas City.  Our 2 projected 6 seeds – San Diego and Tampa – square off on Sunday, and it’s likely that the loser will drop from the projected playoff field.

(Projections are 60% weighted Pythagorean expectation and 40% preseason ranking.)

AFC Projections

Seed	This Week	Last Week	Start of Season	If Playoffs Started Today
1	Texans (11.6 wins)	Texans (11.1)	Jets (10.9)	Texans (7-1)
2	Ravens (10.3)	Ravens (9.9)	Steelers (10.5)	Ravens (6-2)
3	Patriots (9.9)	Patriots (9.8)	Chargers (9.3)	Patriots (5-3)
4	Broncos (9.4)	Broncos (8.9)	Titans (8.3)	Broncos (5-3)
5	Steelers (9.9)	Steelers (9.6)	Ravens (10.2)	Colts (5-3)
6	Chargers (8.6)	Dolphins (8.6)	Bengals (10.0)	Steelers (5-3)

NFC Projections

Seed	This Week	Last Week	Start of Season	If Playoffs Started Today
1	Falcons (13.34)	Bears (13.0)	Niners (14.3)	Falcons (8-0)
2	Bears (13.33)	Niners (13.0)	Saints (14.0)	Bears (7-1)
3	Niners (12.9)	Falcons (13.0)	Packers (12.3)	Niners (6-2)
4	Giants (9.9)	Giants (10.5)	Eagles (9.3)	Giants (6-3)
5	Packers (10.9)	Packers (10.4)	Bears (11.6)	Packers (6-3)
6	Bucs (8.7)	Bucs (8.1)	Cardinals (10.6)	Seahawks (5-4)

Last week, we saw a gaggle of six teams within a half a game of the 6 spot.  This week, that total has been cut to three, with the Seahawks (8.7), Lions (8.5), and Saints (8.3) all remaining in the hunt. 

Also, San Francisco becomes the odd-team out in the race for an NFC bye.  Atlanta – stuck at #3 in our projections despite their undefeated season --  leapfrogged the Niners and Falcons, which is less a function of their win over Dallas (which was unconvincing) as it is of their relatively weak preseason projection (10.4 wins, vs. 11.6 for Chicago and 14.3 for San Fran).  That figure becomes less and less important over the course of the year in our projections, which is good for the Falcons and bad for San Francisco.  This week, we reached the tipping point.

"The BQB didn't even give us a bye before this week?"  "I dunno, he said something about only
scoring 2 points in the playoffs or something . . ."

YOU SHOULD READ THIS

Justin Halpern may have flopped with his TV show, but his “hacked” segments on Grantland are fantastic.  If you missed it, here’s a look at Tim Tebow’s inbox.  Belichick is probably my favorite.

WEEK 10 PICKS

Missed our top 3 picks last week, went 9-2 otherwise.  Weird.

LAST WEEK: 9-5 against the spread, 10-4 outright

SEASON: 68-60-5 against the spread (.531), 82-51 outright (.617)

(picks in order of confidence against the spread, outright winner in parentheses)

BEARS -1 over Texans (Bears)

JAGUARS +3 over Colts (Jaguars)

SAINTS +2.5 over Falcons (Falcons)

PANTHERS +3.5 over Broncos (Panthers)

NINERS -11 over Rams (Niners)

BENGALS +4 over Giants (Bengals)

EAGLES +1 over Cowboys (Eagles)

Jets +6.5 over SEAHAWKS (Seahawks)

Bills +11 over PATRIOTS (Patriots)

Raiders +7.5 over RAVENS (Ravens)

Titans +6 over DOLPHINS (Dolphins)

Chiefs +11.5 over STEELERS (Steelers)

Chargers +3 over BUCS (Bucs)

Lions -2 over VIKINGS (Lions)

Think we’re crazy?  Think we’re brilliant?  Speak up in the comments!

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