Week 11 Prognostications - The Gloves Come Off

Difficult slate of games last week, and some puzzling results. This year, the NFL gets to have its cake and eat it, too – they get both a clearly dominant team and mind-boggling parity. After Week 10, the Dolphins and Jets are out of playoff contention. That’s it. The Rams, 49ers and Raiders are right behind them, holding on by the tips of their embarrassing divisions, but virtually everybody else needs at least a couple of weeks to be eliminated.

Van: Bill’s almost right; everyone in the NFC West will be in contention until the final gun of the final game of the regular season, and then it’ll take a quantum physicist using a tie-breaker formula more complicated than the tax code to figure out who the winner is…
Van has a couple of weeks left, too.

Van: Bill has a better chance of catching a pass from JaMarcus Russell this Sunday than he has of catching me this season. See for yourself.

As Patton said, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

Van: As Mitch Hedberg said, “My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.” Now that we’re done quoting useless quotes that won’t gain you anything in the overall standings, shut up and take your beating like a man.

Here I come.

Cleveland at Baltimore
Bill’s Pick: Cleveland
Van’s Pick: Cleveland
Once upon an autumn Sunday, while I wondered what the hell Brian Billick was doing, suddenly his head appeared. “He’s probably announcing that Kyle Boller’s starting,” I muttered, slapping myself upside the head, “don’t they have another option?” My meter is a little off, but tell me you were not thinking the same thing. By the way, their third quarterback is Buckeye Smurf himself, Troy Smith. Although both teams are coming off of losses, there really are different degrees of losses. Cleveland went into Pittsburgh and very nearly beat them. Pittsburgh is really good, particularly at home. Baltimore had Cincinnati at home and never competed at all. Cincinnati is really bad, particularly on the road. This one’s easy – I pick the team I predicted would go 4-12 to go on the road and demolish my pre-season Super Bowl winner. Hmmm.

Van: Here’s your drinking game for this Sunday: drink every time someone mentions anything about Derek Anderson being a Raven before he was a Brown. If Anderson does something positive and someone says something about how he could have been a Raven, drink once. If either Baltimore QB does something negative and Anderson gets referenced at all, drink twice. You will be blissfully drunk by halftime.

Arizona at Cincinnati
Bill’s Pick: Arizona
Van’s Pick: Arizona
The Bengals must be confounding to people who employ secondary and tertiary methods of picking NFL games. A tiger can take 95% of the league’s mascots, and Cincinnati’s uniforms are sweet. Unfortunately, by all primary methods (usually some variety of “can this team play football?”), Cincinnati is horrible. Chris Henry is back, which will help them a lot if he can step straight into the strong-side linebacker spot and produce, but if they intend to play him at receiver, it seems that T.J. Houshmanzadeh has already adeptly filled Henry’s goal line receiver role. I am not crazy about Arizona, but I like their heart. Lotta heart trumps gutless almost every time.

Van: The only way Chris Henry can help this squad is with his employee’s discount at Dope Dealers R Us. If I’m the next Bungles head coach, I keep Houshmandzadeh and Carson Palmer. The other 51 idiots can hit the bricks. Arizona, because they are in the limbo that is the NFC West, continues to believe that they have something to play for. No, really, they do. Really. I won’t tell if you won’t…

New Orleans at Houston
Bill’s Pick: Houston
Van’s Pick: New Orleans
Why is New Orleans always going to Houston? How come Houston never gets to go to New Orleans? Houston has been a presentable team without a single decent skill position player, but now they get Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson back and Ahman Green has had a couple of weeks to rest his 95 year-old knees. On the other side of the ball, New Orleans might do anything, and I mean really anything. Sybil thinks New Orleans is a little unpredictable. Some misguided people are going to hype this game as the matchup of the top two picks in the 2006 draft, but that’s a subplot with no meat. They have neither been busts, nor would a rational person spend a top-two pick on either one with the benefit of hindsight. New Orleans certainly could win this game, but I have to go with the team that we know will actually show up for the game.

Van: Both Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson have been recently broken. That tells me that they will both be at less than themselves in their first full game back. Meanwhile, New Orleans comes in with something of a chance at making the playoffs. (Thanks, Coach Mora.) And again, I won’t believe that Ahman Green is actually playing until I see him carted off the field with some other undiagnosed ailment.

Kansas City at Indianapolis
Bill’s Pick: Indianapolis
Van’s Pick: Indianapolis
If you listen to the experts slobber all over Bob Sanders, you might come to the conclusion that he is better than Dwight Freeney. He is not. Freeney is better than Sanders right now and he cannot even walk. This is a bigger injury than Joseph Addai was or than Marvin Harrison is. Indianapolis is a team whose best case scenario is a late January tilt in Foxboro, and now they will have to do it without their second-most vital player. I heard somebody on the radio comment that Indianapolis might have a great defensive end stashed somewhere on their roster that we are about to find out about. Given what an incredibly stupid thing this is to say, I assume it was Sean Salisbury. See, defensive linemen do not play every down. Guys like Freeney and running mate Robert Mathis rarely play more than two-thirds to three-quarters of the defensive snaps, meaning that if there was another stud there on the roster, he would play a little mote than half the game already and we would know about him. Besides, they signed Simeon Rice, who just got cut from the Broncos 28th-ranked defense. Now that I have all of that off my chest, Tony Dungy could suit up at defensive and annihilate Brodie Croyle, Priest Holmes and the rest of the Chefs.

Van: Brodie Croyle…The Relic Formerly Known As Priest Holmes…Tony Gonzalez could sue the Chiefs in divorce court for lack of support and win. The problem is that he’d likely win the Chiefs. Damn. And what would you like to bet that we won’t see two more acts of God like last weekend, like Peyton throwing six picks AND Adam Vinatieri missing a gamer from extra point distance? KC picked the wrong week for a road trip.

San Diego at Jacksonville
Bill’s Pick: Jacksonville
Van’s Pick: San Diego
It is really easy to overrate San Diego after they beat an excellent Indianapolis team, but unless they plan to take monsoon season with them everywhere they go, they are still a team with a bad quarterback, a perpetually befuddled defense, an idiot coach, and the reigning NFL MVP who is inexplicably not permitted to defend his title. David Garrard is back for the Jags, who were not half-bad with Quinn Gray (who is way more than half-bad) at the helm. The nice thing here is that Norv The *&%$ing Idiot Turner and Jack Del Rio will have quorum to decide the future direction of HCWHNIWTBOPI.

Van: San Diego wins this game for one simple reason: they mutiny. According to published reports, Norv “Al Gore” Turner went into the locker room after last week’s narrow escape from the jaws of death and announced that their season had turned the corner…to the sound of rolling eyeballs throughout the locker room. These guys are sick of the pockmarked lout and are ready to take matters into their own hands. They will win because the veterans will surround Philip Rivers and tell him to run LT on every play from scrimmage, no matter what the guy in the headphones says. The first time Norv “Al Gore” Turner says “Hey! I didn’t call that play,” he gets speared by Quentin Jammer.

Pittsburgh at New York Jets
Bill’s Pick: Pittsburgh
Van’s Pick: Pittsburgh
There are martial disciplines out there, forms of kung fu practiced by strange little expatriates living in yurts in Asian countries, that traffic in the idea that a little person can kick a big person’s ass. You know what? It’s really not that easy. The Jets can run the Princeton offense or engage in guerrilla warfare or use the Steelers’ weight against them, but they will still get crushed.

Van: Last weekend Pittsburgh almost got surprised at home by Cleveland. This weekend, the surprise will be if anyone in green is standing in front of them after the playing of the National Anthem. Like KC going into the lion’s den in Indy, the Jets might have picked the wroooong week to play Pittsburgh. It sez so right here that the Steelers make this a Patriot-like statement game. (And for the record, while I live in one of those little Asian countries, I’ve had opportunity to see actual street fights. NOT ONE of them breaks down into spinning back kicks and praying mantis kung fu. These are a people that are trained in martial arts from the moment they can walk, and when they get drunk they brawl just like Red Wings fans after losing to the Avalanche, all flailing arms and heads held back. Pathetic.)

New England at Buffalo
Bill’s Pick: New England
Van’s Pick: New England
What I need here is a concept. I obviously have nothing to say about this game – with J.P. Losman playing and Marshawn Lynch not, Buffalo’s cut of the gate drops to like 30%. I was going to discuss what it would take for Buffalo to win, but a lot of people are sensitive about plane crash jokes, so that’s out. Usually my go-to schtick here is either a Shakespeare allusion or a Republican joke, but I am having a hard time making any relevant to the situation. The Who could not fit a concept to this mess. I wish my mother-in-law was here.

Van: Even with all hands on deck, Buffalo had Bambi’s chance against Godzilla. And then Don Shula opened his hundred-year-old flytrap about asterisks…just in time for the second half of the season. I would not be surprised at all if New England scored 100 in this game.

Tennessee at Denver
Bill’s Pick: Umm…Denver?
Van’s Pick: Tennessee
Why would you ask me this question? How the hell would I know? The Mastermind just cut another defensive tackle (Antwon Burton), bringing the team to a negative three guys at that position, which is necessary because they have to pay fourteen receivers just to get three to dress for each game. In each of the last three games, Brandon Marshall has writhed on the ground as though shot, apparently just to see all the color drain from Mike Shanahan’s face (insert funny comment here). This is something Michael Jordan used to do…and I just can’t seem to stretch the comparison any farther. Jay Cutler will eventually be good and Kellen Clemens will not, but otherwise the Donkeys are just the Jets. That does leave the question dangling out there – how does Denver win games? I have watched every play of every game and I do not know. No idea. I do not know who the Broncos are, I do not know what they do or why, much less could I adequately predict their future. At least I’m not a Bears fan. Meanwhile, in Nashville, I will say it since nobody else will – the Titans would be a better team right now with Kerry Collins under center (and I am not a Kerry Collins fan). With a bad wheel, Vince Young is a dropback passer, and not quite as good at it as I am.

Van: At least you’re not a Bears fan, eh? This from a guy whose head coach is giving lie detector tests to dope smoking profligates and brawling thugs as though that proves anything? This from a guy whose team rolled over and died…at home…to Norv “Al Gore” Turner 41-3? Whose team rolled over and died on the road…against the LIONS? Let’s not forget that the Donkeys hadn’t even bothered to score for the better part of 57 minutes against a team that will probably finish the season below .500. And, uh, let me reintroduce you to Mr. Contract Year his own self, Albert Haynesworth. He’s likely to do a riverdance on Jay Cutler before this one is over.