Here’s what’s crossing my mind as I get ready for a day of football action:
1. The Saints are favored by 10.5 in Atlanta. Can you imagine how crazy you would have thought I was if I had told you that that was going to be the spread back in July. Crazy, crazy stat – In the last eight years every team in the NFC South has gone from last one year to first the next – including New Orleans this year.
2. Seattle at Houston – in the spirit of the upcoming bowl season, why don’t we dub this one the Underachievement Bowl.
3. The winner of the Denver-Indianapolis game will be, in my mind, the AFC coach of the year. Sean Payton has the overall award wrapped up.
4. Green Bay at Chicago should be an exciting, fascinating game. It’s really not.
5. Mark Sanchez is out due to injury. Matthew Stafford likely is, too. Am I the only one who still isn’t entirely convinced that starting an underclassman rookie on a bad team is a good idea?
6. There was a time when Buffalo at Kansas City would have been a game to get excited about. This is definitely not one of those times.
7. How bad are the Rams? They are 13 point underdogs against a sub-.500 team. Ouch.
8. If Dallas loses, and I personally think they will, then they are in a fair bit of trouble in terms of the playoffs given their remaining schedule. It’s mind-boggling to me that that team with their talent is in this position. If they lose this one then they might as well fire Wade Phillips right then and there to end his suffering.
9. Need proof that the Patriots are the ultimate public team? They have lost three of four, they have injury issues, their quarterback will be at least a little distracted because he had a kid this week, the coach flipped out and over-disciplined his players on Wednesday, and on and on – yet they are still favored by as many as two touchdowns in some spots. That’s a college football spread, not an NFL one.
10. Is there a quarterback who needs to have a big game more than Joe Flacco does? He’s been forcing things far too much lately, and just isn’t playing as loose and comfortably as he was at his best last year. Similarly, Adrian Peterson could really use a breakout performance against the Bengals. He hasn’t been terrible by any means – he still has more than 1100 rushing yards – but he has only had one 100+ yard game in the last six games, and he’s coming off a dismal 13 carry, 19 yard performance. He’d be doing great if he was mortal, but we know that he isn’t.
