Alternative Picks: Week 10, 2021

One week after possibly the most lopsided loss in this segment (a 12-3 shellacking by Andy), and we’re right back to … tying. Not a typical tie where we both nailed all our picks, of course — no, an ugly tie that featured misses on the top three picks. Ugly indeed.

1) Tony – Steelers over Lions – Despite Big Ben looking to be 103 years old, the Steelers have quietly remained relevant in a muddled AFC, currently sitting in the 2nd wildcard spot. The Lions are coming off a bye week that had many NFL Meme sites posting that they unfortunately lost to the bye week, 27-24.

2) Andy – Bills over Jets – Buffalo was brutal in a loss to yucky Jacksonville, but over the course of the whole season, they’re still among the league’s best teams. New York has looked a bit better the last couple weeks, but not enough so where they should mount much of a threat here.

3) Andy – Ravens over Dolphins – Normally I try to avoid Thursday games being this high, but Baltimore is on a mission. Lamar Jackson again last weekend willed his team to a win over a better team than Miami. The Dolphins did eke out a win over Houston last week, but remains among the biggest disappointments of 2021 so far.

4) Tony – Buccaneers over Football Team – Both teams are coming off a bye. The Buccaneers have Tom Brady who spent stewing for two weeks over an ugly loss to the Saints and his predecessor Jameis Winston. Washington has Tyler Heinicke who spent two weeks stewing over whether or not his job is safe, wondering if Kyle Allen will get another shot, and/or if Ryan Fitzpatrick will step right back in as the starter. Not a difficult choice to make.

5) Andy – Colts over Jaguars – Outside of playing Tennessee, Indianapolis is surging. Jacksonville sprung an upset against Buffalo last week. It feels like they’re probably good to go back into hibernation for a while.

6) Tony – Cowboys over Falcons – The Cowboys had a bit of a hiccup on Sunday, but if they lose to the Falcons, while they’ll still likely coast into the playoffs in the athetic NFC East, you can mark them down as a one and done. Even if they beat the Falcons on Sunday, you can probably mark them down as that — but that’s more of a Mike McCarthy issue.

7) Andy – Titans over Saints – Tennessee put up a good performance in its first game sans Derrick Henry. The Saints did not put up a good performance in its first game sans Jameis Winston. And now Alvin Kamara is apparently trending toward not playing. I feel these results have the makings of a trend and will continue.

8) Tony – Cardinals over Panthers – I had no idea when I derided the line for the Cardinals game last week that Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins might not play. They didn’t, and the Cardinals lost Chase Edmonds early too. Then proceeded to whoop the 49ers at a final lien of +5.5 and money line of +200. You know who’s not as good as the 49ers? Carolina.

9) Andy – Broncos over Eagles – It wouldn’t be all that out of character for Denver right now to follow up a huge blowout win over Dallas with an embarrassing loss to Philadelphia. The thing here is that when really playing well, the Broncos are good enough defensively to choke off any offense and, thus, beat anyone in the league. The same is not really true of the Eagles.

10) Tony – Rams over 49ers – I had to triple check our picks…how did this game slide this far? Sure, it’s a divisional matchup, and San Francisco is at home. And the Rams just dropped a doozy against the Titans. But we’re still talking about the 7-2 Rams taking on a Jimmy Garoppolo led 49ers team.

11) Andy – Packers over Seahawks – Let me start with this: Aaron Rodgers is a jackass and the league proved its cowardice in its handling of the jackass regarding his lying about his vaccination status. Rodgers is a malcontent whiner. And I’m tired of him. … But he’s still a great QB. And he’s angry. And the Seahawks aren’t that good.

12) Tony – Chargers over Vikings – The Vikings have a lot of trouble playing defense on the road, giving up at least 27 points in each of their road games this year. The Chargers have been a bit helter-skelter this year, but no reason to think they won’t continue Minnesota’s streak of road woes.

13) Andy – Raiders over Chiefs – Yeah, with a bunch of potential COVID issues on top of general road defensive woes, that would have been my pick — or ideally an earlier one — too. Instead I’ll go here. Kansas City just doesn’t look quite right yet and well, the Raiders have stumbled a couple times throughout the season, but they seem to get up for the Chiefs and they keep playing hard no matter what obstacle you put in front of them.

14) Tony – Browns over Patriots – Not so sure that the loss to the Giants last week wasn’t the start of the crack for the Raiders. The Chiefs haven’t looked good, but the Raiders have also lost to the Bears in the last 5 weeks. In New England, the Browns might be without three of their top four RB — and still would possibly have the best RB on the field, with Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson both battling concussion issues. Add in the ongoing relief of not having a loose cannon in OBJ to deal with, and I think the Browns might be able to go on a bit of a roll.

Straight up picks, unsurprisingly, were uninspiring, with both missing the first three games–but the Falcons win over the Saints gave Tony a one game advantage:

Week 10 hopefully promises to be a little bit better …

Week nine already? It seems like just two months ago …