Alternative Picks: Week 1, 2020

Well, we’re finally here. After one of the weirdest offseasons in history, taking place during one of the weirdest years in history, we’re finally going to have football. At least for now.

I think picking games this year is going to be harder than ever before. We may not know until well after post-time in some situations if, say, for example, Matt Moore will be starting at QB for Kansas City because Patrick Mahomes has the COVID. But throwing darts can be fun. So, WTF. Here we go.

Tony won the toss and elected to defer to picks two and three. So, Andy picked first.

1) Andy: Colts over Jaguars – Jacksonville doesn’t even want to win. That’s clear with the cutting of Leonard Fournette and trading of Yannick Ngokoue. And I think the Colts are going to have a pretty solid year.

2) Tony: 49ers over Cardinals – The first week is tough even in a non-pandemic year. I think the Cards got better, but they didn’t completely close the gap between them and the 49ers. Even a beat up 49ers.

3) Tony: Ravens over Browns – Lamar Jackson picks up where he left off … in the regular season. Like the Cards, the Browns got better, but they need time to gel.

4) Andy: Steelers over Giants – The Steelers should be solid with Ben Roethlisberger back. The Giants are starting over. Again.

5) Tony: Bills over Jets – I’m not super confident about the Bills … but I am about Adam Gase.

6) Andy: Chiefs over Texans – Weird things happen in the Thursday night openers sometimes, but Kansas City is comfortably the better team.

7) Tony: Eagles over … Football Team? – We’ve avoided using their mascot name for years … but only Washington can manage to 1) screw up finally re-branding the team by not actually giving themselves a new name, and 2) actually have it not be the biggest distraction of the off-season, with seemingly half the front office leaving (and hopefully selling the team) because of sexual misconduct accusations. Ceding control of most football decisions to Ron Rivera will help, but he’s got a long history to overcome.

8) Andy: Seattle over Atlanta – I’m not ridiculously confident in this, but Seattle has been better than Atlanta in recent years and I haven’t seen any reason to believe that won’t continue to be the case.

9) Tony: Cowboys over Rams – Dallas opened their new stadium in 2009 with a loss to the Giants, so they hope to pass along the favor to the Rams in their new stadium.

10) Andy: Saints over Bucs – We’ve come up with some weird reasons for picking games before, but I’m not sure any weirder than that last pick. I’m sure that loss to open Jerry World has really stuck with them over the last decade. I’ll go Saints here because their aging QB has been around the team and has some familiarity with the organization versus Tampa’s aging QB being new to the team. Brady is great and he has some talent around him but it’s been an unusual training camp and even he is going to need some time to get timing down, etc.

11) Tony: Patriots over Dolphins – You doubt that Jerry Jones could be a petty man who holds a grudge for something stupid? Even if not … everyone wants to come in and knock off the home team in a new stadium … hell, Eli Manning signed the wall in the Cowboys’ stadium after the win. In other news, the Patriots are opening 2020 with a new quarterback for the first time since 2002. The Dolphins can be added to the list of teams that improved in the off-season (hard not to have), but until they prove that they can regularly beat the Pats, gotta go New England.

12) Andy: Bengals over Chargers – I’m gonna call it here: Joe Burrow will prove himself to be the real deal. He’ll bring back fond memories of Boomer Esiason and Ken Anderson. Maybe even that one great year Greg Cook had before he wrecked his arm. It won’t happen right away, but fans will get a glimpse of the future in week one when he proves himself better than Tyrod Taylor.

13) Tony: Lions over Bears – Andy got his first snipe of the year … I almost went with the other NFC North match up, but decided it was easier to pick against Mitch Trubisky than make that call.

14) Andy: Packers over Vikings – Green Bay didn’t really get better this offseason, most notably not finding a second WR for Aaron Rodgers. But the Vikings’ entire offseason was band-aiding salary cap-derived problems. These teams are close, but, especially early on, teams with continuity from last season are going to have an advantage. And I’m expecting my hometown team to have a tough year.

15) Tony: Panthers over Raiders – I actually meant to take this game with my previous pick, after you sniped the Bengals upset–I think the Raiders are the better team, but traveling east is usually tough, and probably even more so in a COVID year–and the Panthers can use CMC to keep the ball out of the Raiders hands.

16) Andy: Titans over Broncos – Tennessee came together at the end of 2019 and made a nice run in the playoffs. They seem to have found their formula: run Derrick Henry 40 times a game and only have Ryan Tannehill hand the ball off. If they stay close to that, I think they can take it to a Denver team that is better but still flawed.

And, then, straight up picks: