NFL Week 9 Picks

As posted at ESPN's Pigskin Pick'em site (straight picks, no spreads, etc., and I've created a group for those who would like to play along with me):

• Pittsburgh Steelers beat Tennessee Titans
• Kansas City Chiefs beat Miami Dolphins
• Atlanta Falcons beat Minnesota Vikings
• Cleveland Browns beat Arizona Cardinals
• Green Bay Packers beat Los Angeles Rams*
• Washington Commanders beat New England Patriots
• Chicago Bears beat New Orleans Saints*
• Seattle Seahawks beat Baltimore Ravens*
• Houston Texans beat Tampa Bay Buccaneers*
• Indianpolis Colts beat Carolina Panthers
• Las Vegas Raiders beat New York Giants
• Dallas Cowboys beat Philadelphia Eagles*
• Cincinannti Bengals beat Buffalo Bills
• New York Jets beat Los Angeles Chargers*

"Upset" picks -- that is, where my pick disagrees with the majority of Pigskin Pick'em players -- are marked with asterisks. I usually pick three or four. This week I've got six. I wouldn't read too much into that, though ... I'm just going with my guts, not with a close analysis of injury reports and so forth. If I make any changes, they will be made before the game in question kicks off, and specifically noted in an update to this post.

I'm not especially confident in the Chiefs beating the Dolphins, but I always pick the Chiefs. As of my initial picks, 52% of Pigskin Pick'em players had the Chiefs (AFC West), 48% the Dolphins (AFC East). I consider it this week's "big game," as there's a reasonbly good chance it will be a dress rehearsal for the AFC Championship game.

This is the part of the season where things start getting weird.

You get a pretty good idea which teams are good and which teams aren't for the year, but some of the better teams have been so good because they've been willing to get beat up and leave everything on the field. Injuries are starting to pile up.

Remember, these are huge, physically fit guys who spend all week eating their Wheaties, pumping iron, and practicing plays, then several hours one day a week trying to kill each other. After eight weeks of that, they're beat all to hell.

But some of the worse teams may not be as beat up, precisely because they didn't have their shit together early on. Passes were getting missed instead of receivers getting tackled, etc. Then they manage to buckle down and find a better plan, and suddenly they're beating teams that were much better four weeks ago because they've got all their guys on the field instead of half of them sitting on the bench in body casts.

Which is a long way of saying that I'm even less certain of my picks this week than I was in, say, Week 4.

For example, I've got the Vikings to lose, in part because quarterback Kirk Cousins went down in Week 8 with a season-ending injury. But look at last year -- Brock Purdy, "Mr. Irrelevant," last man drafted in his year, third string, came in and took the 49ers from "losing team" to the playoffs. Maybe backup Jaren Hall -- or Josh Dobbs, who just got picked up by the Vikings in a trade -- will be this year's Brock Purdy. Either way, I'm predicting that the Vikings will have a bad week this week while settling in their new quarterback.  But who knows? Until Sunday, nobody, that's who.