Week 10 picks

There are some big games this week, the now-defeated Bears going to New York to take on the Giants, the irrepressible Saints paying a visit to the reeling Pittsburgh Steelers, and St. Louis facing divisional rivals Seattle are all important games for the teams involved and should provide plenty of entertainment. The biggest game of the week though is the NFC East clash between the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles, as the two teams in the bottom half of that division will battle it out as they both attempt to fight their way back towards the top.

Baltimore Ravens vs Tennessee Titans
In week 9 the Titans got flattened by Jacksonville while Baltimore kept Cincinnati very quiet (despite what the 20 points Cincy put up may suggest.) Everything points to a Baltimore win here: a good defence facing a young quarterback who’s still finding his feet as an NFL starter, Steve McNair facing his former team in his new home, and the fact that Tennessee and Baltimore’s records are reversible (2-6 and 6-2 respectively) doesn’t make for happy reading if you’re a Titan, and I’m not going to go against the grain here. Baltimore take a strong victory.

Buffalo Bills vs Indianapolis Colts
As if I wouldn’t have picked this outcome anyway, the Colts enter this home game with two road victories at their biggest AFC rivals, with a 34-31 win over the Broncos in Denver and then beat the Patriots 27-20 at Foxboro. They’re looking good and they’re emphatically displaying their Super Bowl credentials. The Bills simply won’t handle them.

Chicago Bears vs New York Giants
This isn’t the sign of me jumping on some anti-Bears bandwagon that may or may not have started rolling since the Bears lost their undefeated record. No, since their skin-of-the-teeth win over Arizona, there’s been a suspicion that something like their embarrassing home defeat to the Dolphins was coming. While I’m not expecting a second consecutive clumsy performance such as that, and while the Giants only managed to beat the Texans by four at home, I’m still going for a New York win in this one. If the Bears do keep losing the ball again, Manning and Barber will deliver the punishment in response, while if the Bears are less turnover-happy (which they ought to be) I think the Giants have shown they have what it takes to force through a result at home. It’ll be a hard game and they’ll miss the presence of Strahan (for character as much as anything else), but I’d call Giants for a win as Tiki Barber gets another 100+ rushing yards.

Cleveland Browns vs Atlanta Falcons
The Browns lost last week but still put up a fight against San Diego. The Falcons lost last week and looked reasonably tame against the Lions in Detroit. Still, form doesn’t count for everything, and unless the Browns build a rushing offence out of something, then Cleveland will struggle, as even against a passing defence as poor as Atlanta’s has been this season, Charlie Frye is unlikely to put a defence to the sword. Michael Vick will be better this week after crashing back to earth against Detroit, and will lead the Falcons to 6-3, as the Browns notch up a 7th defeat of the season.

Green Bay Packers vs Minnesota Vikings
Another game with two teams coming off losses. The Packers after a two-game winning streak lost to the Bills after a poor performance, while the then 4-3 Vikings contrived to get only 3 points against a 49ers defence that had recently shown all the containment capability of a sieve. Still, they’ll improve at home. The Packers will make enough mistakes on offence to prevent them putting a big challenge through the course of this game and Minnesota will improve vastly, the only way is up right? Vikes for a double-figures win.

Houston Texans vs Jacksonville Jaguars
Don’t expect an action replay of what happened a few weeks ago when the Jags lost by 20 points in Houston. That was a blip for Jacksonville and nothing more. They’ll remain in similar form as the past couple of weeks when they’ve beaten the Titans and Philedelphia, and Houston will struggle as they have since the big win against the Jaguars. Jacksonville will taken this one without too much discomfort.

Kansas City Chiefs vs Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins aren’t suddenly a great team any more than the Bears are suddenly a terrible team. Damon Huard has done very, very well in place of Trent Green and he should have another good day along with Larry Johnson in Miami, against a home team that may have got a little ahead of itself after that big win over the Bears. There will be no miracle turn-around for the Dolphins this season, and they’ll succumb to another typical defeat against the Chiefs.

New Orleans Saints vs Pittsburgh Steelers
This is possibly the toughest call of the week, for me. My gut feeling says the Steelers will cut down the turnovers and pull out a win here. There’s not much logic to support this “instinct”. Sure, Pittsburgh are the champions, but they’re giving the ball away too much and too easily, and while they’re at home they face a team in the New Orleans Saints who are looking like they feel they can beat anybody, and will have no qualms about visiting the Super Bowl winners and taking the game to them as early as they can. I know I’ve said this before and been wrong this season, but I have a feeling things will just hang together a lot better for the Steelers this week. Big Ben will hand the ball to the opposition less, the defence will impose itself on the game more, and Pittsburgh will get a win over the Saints who could well give them a scare if Brees and Colston keep hooking up as well as they have thus far.

New York Jets vs New England Patriots
The Jets are very deceptive. They have four wins and a .500 record after eight games, but they haven’t really beaten anybody yet that you wouldn’t expect them to beat. On the brighter side, of Indianapolis, New England and Jacksonville (the only real in-form teams they’ve played thus far) they’ve given both New England and Indy very close games. Still, they were both home games. The Patriots aren’t deceptive. They’re very good, and the Jets won’t (I’ll refrain from saying “can’t”) beat them, or run them as close as they did last time.

San Diego Chargers vs Cincinnati Bengals
I really want to say that this will be the week we see the Bengals of 2005, but I’ve said it a couple of times and been very wrong, so I’m going to wait until if and when they do find that sort of form and then talk afterwards about how I’ve seen it coming the whole time and hopefully seem very wise to the reader who doesn’t commit my past predictions to memory. The Chargers will have a tough game on their hands here, but even if Rivers might not win his duel with Carson Palmer, Tomlinson will be far and away the best running back on the field to hand the edge to San Diego.

San Francisco 49ers vs Detroit Lions
Even that morale-boosting, hair-raising, thunderously entertaining 9-3 defeat of Minnesota can’t convince me the 49ers are suddenly a water-tight defensive unit. Jon Kitna and Kevin Jones will have a much better day against their defence than the Vikings did when Detroit take a good win from San Francisco.

***Game of the Week***
Washington Redskins vs Philadelphia Eagles
Before I start, understand this: One win over their biggest rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, does not convince me that Washington are about to turn into a force to be reckoned with. Everybody raises their game for thir most hated rivals, and that’s what a lot of that win was about… well, that and the Cowboys going to sleep in the dying moments of the game. Their opponents are in somewhat of a slump, with three consecutive defeats before their much-needed bye in week 9. They’ll come out strong in this game though. The NFC East is a very tight division and they know they can’t afford to lose a divisional game at home, so the Eagles need to start the match all guns blazing. If they try to take it too cautiously, and the ‘Skins hang on, then they could suffer a similar fate as the Cowboys did last week, so Philly need to try and kill the game as early as they can with big numbers in the first half (Donovan McNabb could have a great game against the ‘Skins passing D.) This will put the pressure to score on a less-than-inspiring Mark Brunell, which should be the downfall of Washington.

The game might not go quite like this, and if the Eagles do build up a big lead early, expect a hell of a second half as the Redskins try and rally. After all, the game is more important for the Redskins as they sit at the foot of the division and desperately need to put a string of wins together, but if that is going to happen, I don't expect it to begin this week.

Denver Broncos vs Oakland Raiders
Oakland’s terrible performance against Seattle on Monday Night has exposed the flaws they showed in the win they somehow threw together against Pittsburgh in week 8, and expect Denver to shut them down without too much problem to start the ball rolling on a run of three consecutive divisional losses over the next three weeks for the Raiders. Plummer and Javon Walker should have another great day between them, and whoever’s in at running back should enjoy themselves for the most part.

Dallas Cowboys vs Arizona Cardinals
Since their bye, the Cowboys have a win-loss pattern as follows:

W – L – W – L – W – L – Week 10

I wouldn’t be so foolish as to make a prediction on the basis of such a pattern, but it’s still interesting because that pattern will be maintained this week. The solid Dallas rushing defence will put the onus on Matt Leinart to lead from the front and bring the team to a victory, and while he’s showed a lot of promise thus far (and suffered a few losses that might or should have been wins) I don’t think this is a good game for him. Stranger things have happened though, and if the ‘Boys have allowed that late defeat against Washington to get to their heads then maybe it will be Arizona’s day. Man for man though, I just don’t think the Cardinals can take this one.

St. Louis Rams vs Seattle Seahawks
After starting so well, the Rams are currently on a three-game losing streak that started against Seattle back in week 6 when the ‘Hawks scored 23 second-half points against them (including a field goal at the buzzer) to take the victory. Since that game, Seattle have lost twice before getting the Monday night win over Oakland, and even that wasn’t particularly convincing.What to make of all that I’m not quite sure, but I do think Seattle will get out of the game with the win provided they toughen up a little, which I’d imagine they should. It could be another close one like in week 6, but I don’t see the Rams escaping Seattle having ended their losing streak.