Alright! Wasn’t that an awesome Week 1, everybody? Was that not an excellent reminder of how much fun watching games of professional football is? Is it not one of life’s simple pleasures to marvel at the superhuman feats of athleticism on display during each and every snap? Does a full slate of Sunday games not fill you with the joy of what it is to be? Surely, each contest left us newly awake to the possibilities of the human spirit, and not curled up on the couch like a pissed off gargoyle, stewing in your own day beer drunk sweat and fetid man-baby rage seeing some bullshit display of futile fuckery as the team you cheer for god only knows what fucking reason because they’re a bunch of shitsticks who will never win a goddamn thing so long as you shall draw breath chokes on their own smegma against a clown car squadron of first-round washouts and transient training camp bodies, while your impotent animus flails harder and harder at the walls of your psyche in the knowledge that your dog dung-ass fantasy team is somehow doing even worse.
Gee, I’m sure glad that I don’t relate to that latter scenario one tiny bit! That sounds terrible. I am pleased that Week 1 brought me nothing but fulminating happiness, and I am even more pleased to know that I must have done well with my Week 1 picks, because I always do well with my Week 1 picks. Just let me bring up this list of scores from around the league, that I may begin counting up the points…
Wait, what!? Oh no. Oh god. Oh fuck. FUCKI, NO! WHY!?!?!? WHAT THE FUCKING ACTUAL ASS FUCKING FUCK SHIT GODDAMIT PISS GAHHHHHHH
….
Ahem. What I meant to say is that it appears I may have been moderately overconfident in making last week’s picks. It would appear that those picks were entirely obliterated, as though exploded with lasers from space. I am left with no recourse other than to assume that everything I presume to know about the sport of football is entirely wrong, and that nothing less than a total purge of these operational premises will prove sufficient to get my season point total back on the right track.
Therefore, for my Week 2 picks, I am going to conduct an experiment. Previously, I have made it a point to insulate my thoughts and my picks from recency bias. My thinking was that each individual game, or short streak of multiple games, is but a small sample, and making decisions on the basis of small sample sizes is the first step on the road to ruin. And when I say that, I am not referring to the Ramones’ fourth studio album, which gave us such classics as “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do” and “I Wanna Be Sedated.” Rather, I am referring to the actual road to actual ruin, a path strewn with overdraft fees and and terminations for grossly unprofessional conduct and car accidents and protracted divorce proceedings and long nights spent sitting in the dark guzzling cheap gin straight out of the bottle and quietly sobbing.
However, it has become apparent to me that, both in Week 1 and throughout the course of last season, it is this very line of thinking that has left my picks in tatters. This past week alone, I slept on the Chargers and I slept on the Cardinals and I most certainly slept on the Saints, and for what? (I also slept on the Raiders, as it turns out, but at least I acknowledged as much at the time.) Seven correct picks and a measly 65 points!?
Fuck that! It’s time for me to change my ways! My week 2 experiment, therefore, shall be an exercise in Wild Overreactions, baby! It’s time for me to cast off the shackles of my rigid intractability and step into the light of total chaos, where week to week fluctuations are all that matters! Soon I shall transcend this mortal shell and become a being of pure hot take energy! My flesh shall melt away, leaving only a series of decontextualized, football adjacent reactions to an unbroken flood of decontextualized, football adjacent stimuli! When is Sean Payton going to stop overpaying his superstars and focus on salary cap sustainability? Can Josh Allen prove that he has the schematic chops to make the playoffs without Drew Brees? And can Jerry Jones prove that he has what it takes to become an elite quarterback in this league?!?!?
Wild Overreactions, baby, wooooo!
(Please join me next Wednesday, for the Wild Overreactions to the Wild Overreactions. Uhm, baby.)
Week 1 Correct Picks: 7/16
Season Total Correct Picks: 7/16
Week 1 Points: 65/136
Season Total Points: 65/136
16 Points: Buccaneers over Falcons
Old Rob would be a wet blanket, here, and point out that there is no such thing as a true mismatch when it comes to a divisional matchup. But New Rob stabbed that guy in the eyes with a spork, because Old Rob sucks at making picks. Wild Overractions, baby!
But seriously, I think we can all agree that the Falcons are butt flavored butt topped with butt sauce, and there is no way to spin last week’s complete face plant that I am aware of. Perhaps the new offense will find its footing as the season progresses, and perhaps I will sprout both a set of wings and a matching set of adamantium talons. Don’t you dare laugh! Once my adamantium talons have grown in you’ll see! YOU’LL ALL SEE!@*($*!
15 Points: Chiefs over Ravens
What’s that, you say? Even good teams lose close games on the road against competent but unspectacular opposition, and they do so all the time? That sounds like a bunch of boring bullcrap to me! Wild Overreactions, baby! The Ravens are the new Browns, while the Browns are the new Bengals, while the Bengals are the new, uh…also Browns, I guess? Shut up!
But seriously, it was good to see Patrick Mahomes back to doing Mahomes things after that disaster of a Super Bowl performance. There’s nothing quite like watching the guy heave a touchdown bomb across his body after getting flushed all the way out of the pocket. Also, there is no greater sign of respect for the sheer terror the Chiefs inspire than the Browns’ responding series, in which they treated their two-point lead as though it were a 17-point deficit, because when you’re playing the Chiefs a lead that small may as well not exist.
14 Points: Rams over Colts
13 Points: Steelers over Raiders
Party like it’s 1975! Obviously, since both defenses will ensure that the ground game results in a mutual stalemate, the real question is whether or not Terry Bradshaw can thread the needle through the eye of a brutal Oakland secondary and get the ball in the hands of Lynn Swann and John Stallworth. Oh God, what’s happening
12 Points: Seahawks over Titans
Here’s a thought a failed to examine before making my week 1 picks: The mere fact (well, it’s an opinion but shush) that the Titans seem like the only team with a chance of winning the division does not entail that the Titans will necessarily be good.
11 Points: Browns over Texans
10 Points: Cardinals over Vikings
I’m not a prop bets person, but if you are I urge you to exercise caution if you’re thinking about taking the over on whatever gaudy-ass line is being given for Chandler Jones’ sack total in this game. Jones will absolutely dominate, make no mistake, but he won’t be credited with a sack when he is held in the end zone for a safety. That’s gonna happen a lot.
9 Points: Saints over Panthers
8 Points: Chargers over Cowboys
7 Points: Eagles over 49ers
Wild Overreactions, baby! Since the 49ers barely escaped Detroit with a win while the Eagles looked dominant against inferior opposition, and since I think Kyle Shanahan is overrated and I want to see him fail, and because Nick Bosa is a racist and I want to see him fail, I am pleased as punch to be dragging the 49ers at the first real opportunity.
6 Points: Broncos over Jaguars
5 Points: Patriots over Jets
4 Points: Dolphins over Bills
Wild Overreactions, baby! Surely one point road victories are the long-sought, sustainable path to success that the Dolphins desperately seek. And surely, losing by a single touchdown after a blocked punt indicates that, after seeing the light of success and experiencing what it feels like to be relevant to the sport, the Bills decided that all that attention is too scary, and they don’t want any part of it.
3 Points: Football Team over Giants
2 Points: Bears over Bengals
1 Point: Lions over Packers
Wild Overreactions, baby! As it is now clear that the entire NFC North is utter dogshit, it is time to embrace the chaos. I hereby predict the Lions will take the division crown with an overwhelmingly powerful 6-9-2 record. At least, I’d like to. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that we don’t deserve such anarchy. All we deserve is the Bears winning the division with a 7-10 record, so that’s what we’ll get. Also, WHO CAN STOP BARRY SANDERS???? OH GOD IT’s HAPPENING AGAIN OH NOOOOOOO
Rob Writes About Whatever 