NFL Week 7 Results

My Week 7 picks, green for correct ones, red for incorrect ones:

• Denver Broncos beat New Orleans Saints*
• Jacksonville Jaguars beat New England Patriots
• Atlanta Falcons beat Seattle Seahawks
• Buffalo Bills beat Tennessee Titans
• Cincinnati Bengals beat Cleveland Browns
• Green Bay Packers beat Houston Texans*
• Miami Dolphins beat Indianapolis Colts*
• Minnesota Vikings beat  Detroit Lions*
• Philadelphia Eagles beat New York Giants
• Las Vegas Raiders beat Los Angeles Rams*
• Washington Commanders beat Carolina Panthers
• Kansas City Chiefs beat San Francisco 49ers
• Pittsburgh Steelers beat New York Jets
• Baltimore Ravens beat Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• Los Angeles Chargers beat Arizona Cardinals

Ten right, five wrong. For the season, I am 68 right, 39 wrong and rank in the 90.4th percentile among players of ESPN's "Pigskin Pick'em" game.

We're now at that point in the season where injury reports truly become a main focus. They affect my picks when it comes to every team except the Kansas City Chiefs.

The obvious reason that injuries don't affect my picks when it comes to the Chiefs is that I'm a diehard Chiefs fan and will never pick any team but the Chiefs to win a game the Chiefs are playing in.

The less obvious reason manifested itself in a big way this week when the Chiefs went to San Francisco and took on their opponents from last year's Super Bowl, the 49ers.

Both teams have been positively hammered by injuries. The Chiefs came into the game missing several of their best players on both offense and defense, and lost more injured players during the game. Ditto the 49ers.

But there's something about the way the Chiefs do things.

The commentators phrase it as "Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes find ways to win games with whoever they have on the field."

Travis Kelce is part of that. When everyone's healthy, he's a threat because the possibility that he could be used means defenders have to pay extra attention to him. When everyone's not health, the possibility turns into a reality, which means even more attention on him ... and which gives rookie replacements, sometimes playing in their very first games, opportunities to shine.

Yes, other teams aspire to that same kind of flexibility. But the Chiefs excel at it.

Why? Because they're a tight unit. They value all their players. They try to give every player a chance to be The Man whenever possible. And every player repays that sentiment with the best effort possible, if for no other reason than that once you've been The Man, you get even more opportunities to be The Man.

A corollary: Watch the play-calling. When a player gets a chance to be The Man and messes up, within three plays or so Mahomes will go right back to that player with another chance. You don't get just one chance. You get a mulligan and a shot at redeeming yourself if it doesn't work out. You have to be a really bad player, or cop an attitude and indicate you don't care, to not get to be a full participant in victory. If you're a really bad player, you never got on to the team in the first place. If you have a bad attitude, you aren't on the team for very long.

With the exception of quarterbacks who know they'd be stuck in the "break glass in case of severe Mahomes injury" cabinet, I doubt that there's a single NFL player who doesn't privately wish he was on that team.

It's not that the Chiefs couldn't win games with Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and the local high school junior varsity squad filling out their roster. They probably could. But they don't have to, because they attract people who have the talent, the skill, and the ambition, and then they reward those people with glory.