Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Somebody is going to play the spoiler this week.

It may be the Rams, who have a knack for upsets and already pulled one off this month. Perhaps it will be the Redskins, who are eager to do what their NFC East competition couldn't—beat the Falcons—and use it as a springboard toward a division title. The Raiders have a chance to end a 14-year drought against Peyton Manning. The Cowboys are getting some football players back this week—"football players" is the best thing we can call some of them—and have a slim chance to upend the Patriots.

The Seahawks aren't exactly spoilers. But they aren't exactly the team that won the NFC for the last two seasons, either. Maybe it's the Bengals, undefeated but unappreciated by a nation with a long memory for playoff losses, who will play the spoiler role against their one-dimensional guests.

Meanwhile, the winner of the Saints-Eagles game will spoil everything for the loser.

These game previews are listed in the order that you should read them. All times Eastern.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

The Super Bowl ring is more powerful than a Green Lantern ring and the Lord of the Rings ring (which just turns everyone into invisible junkies anyway) combined. It deflects criticism, creates an impenetrable shield of rationalization and even clouds the minds of officials in the back of the end zone.

The Seahawks offense is terrible. Russell Wilson is having the kind of season that gets Cam Newton criticized—all scrambles, no sequence, sacks and fumbles at the worst possible times—but his ring protects him from his harshest critics.

The ring is the only thing that protects him. Monday night's telecast revealed that there's a media fixation on the fact that Jimmy Graham can't block. The entire Seahawks offensive line can't block, folks. Graham can catch touchdown passes. What's everyone else's excuse?

The Seahawks defense keeps thumping along at a field-goal-per-week-allowed clip, so naturally we keep the Seahawks in the picture as contenders. They are proven winners. (That's the mesmerizing power of the ring talking.) As long as their defense plays like the 1985 Bears or 2000 Ravens, all will be well.

The 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens never returned to the Super Bowl. The Bears defense remained awesome in 1986 and 1988 (a strike caused confusion in between), but their offense kept letting them down in the playoffs. The Ravens fielded outstanding defenses in 2001 and 2003, but their offense kept letting them down in the playoffs.

Right now, the Seahawks offense does not look good enough to reach the point where they can let them down in the playoffs. They need more than controversial touchbacks. They need Marshawn Lynch (that won't happen this week), upgrades along the offensive line and a wake-up call about just how sustainable an offense built around miracle scrambles really is. Maybe Randall Cunningham could join the staff as a consultant: He led many excellent defenses to finishes short of the Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, the Bengals are undefeated, balanced on both sides of the ball and coming off a string of wins against better opponents than the Jimmy Clausen Bears or snakebit Lions.

The Bengals have recorded 11 sacks and surrendered only two, have scored seven rushing touchdowns and allowed zero. They are outscoring opponents, 66-13, in the first half. They are one of the best goal-to-go teams in the NFL, with eight touchdowns in nine opportunities.

Andy Dalton is second to Aaron Rodgers in the NFL in efficiency rating, second to Ben Roethlisberger in Pro Football Reference's QBR, second to Tom Brady in Football Outsiders' DYAR.

But the Bengals have the opposite of a magic ring: a cursed amulet of playoff losses. So what do they hear after their month of dominance? Hardy-har, the Bengals are playing make-believe contender again. Maybe they'll surprise the Patriots in the playoffs and keep the score within 30. How about those Falcons?

The Bengals are better than the Seahawks right now.

The Bengals are also at home on Sunday afternoon. Yes, this angle again. Short weeks, cross-country flights and home-field advantages matter, particularly for these two teams. The difference between 1 p.m. in Cincinnati and prime time in Seattle is probably worth about 13 points for this particular matchup.

Or maybe that's just the magic ring whispering in my ear. The Seahawks "get it done" in big games. The Bengals don't.

We can talk about championship mettle and stage fright, or we can talk about a team that can actually play both defense and offense well. The past matters, but spells and curses eventually wear off, and it is never wise to let the past completely cloud their vision of the present.

Prediction: Bengals 19, Seahawks 13

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Jeff Fisher used an air horn during practice to keep defensive linemen from jumping offsides, according to Pro Football Talk. His goal was to prepare them for Aaron Rodgers' hard count, which he has used several times this season to coax overaggressive defenders offsides.

So wouldn't a tape of Rodgers' voice be more effective? Maybe someone could sample his voice into a synthesizer or mixing board and play it at various pitches and rhythms on the sideline. Hip-hop producer Girl Talk could be an assistant coach! Play his cards right, and he could be in line for the Dolphins job!

No, air horn it is. Fisher should also consider a cattle prod so his chunkier linemen don't draw 12-men-on-the-field penalties when lumbering toward the sideline on a Rodgers quick snap. Or big posters of the 49ers captioned: "YOU DON'T WANT TO END UP LIKE THESE GUYS."

Fishers' St. Louis Spoilers have notched wins over the Seahawks, Broncos, Colts and still-great-at-the-time 49ers and Saints in the last three years. When underdogs by seven points or more, they are a respectable 8-11-1 straight up in the last three seasons, 12-8 against the spread, according to OddsShark.com.

Their problem, of course, has been an inability to be much more than spoilers, which is why they are often touchdown underdogs. A spoiler who beats several playoff teams per year becomes a playoff team that must worry about spoilers.

Back-to-back road upsets would require back-to-back solid games by the young offensive line, back-to-back star turns by still-on-the-mend Todd Gurley, back-to-back weeks where Nick Foles and Tavon Austin perform like a normal quarterback-receiver tandem and (least likely of all) a flat performance by Rodgers in Lambeau.

It's too much to ask, but the Rams are definitely making progress. That air horn used to keep players awake when watching the offensive game film.

Prediction: Packers 22, Rams 17

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After a championship offseason, three convincing early-season wins, what they chose to interpret as the complete exoneration of their team for any PSI monkey business and a bye week to reflect on the wonder of it all, Patriots Nation is on a bit of a sugar high right now.

Having appeared on some Boston radio shows and surveyed the message board/social media landscape, the tone of conversation among Patriots fans currently runs along the lines of:

Will the Patriots ever lose again?

Will Tom Brady ever throw an interception again?

Has Tom Brady ever thrown an interception, or were those just a bunch of pass-interference-aided turnovers that the jealous referees just refused to call?

Is this team better than the 2007 Patriots, who were the best team ever and didn't have to win the Super Bowl to prove it because they won so many other Super Bowls?

Will Tom Brady play until he's 60, or a more plausible 48, or just long enough to drive a Super Bowl parade over Peyton Manning's tombstone?

The good times are almost certain to keep rolling for the Patriots this week. The Cowboys are an injury-plagued, discombobulated mess on both sides of the ball. Greg Hardy and Rolando McClain return this week—get your Walter Payton Man of the Year Awards ready—but the Cowboys need Tony Romo and Dez Bryant to beat the Patriots, not the goon squad.

So the sugar high will keep going for another week. That will make the crash extra nasty. What happens if the Colts beat the Patriots in two weeks? The Broncos in Week 12? Both? What if Brady suffers a Romo-Roethlisberger injury?

None of these events are highly likely, but I cannot help but picture a guy in a Mike Vrabel jersey riding the Green Line, reading this paragraph on his smartphone and saying "Nevahh evahhh happen" out loud. It's one thing to not want something to happen or expect it to happen, but another to deny the possibility of it happening.

Ever see a preschooler throw a fit after a third piece of birthday cake because the flower got smudged? Ugly.

At least there's little chance of that happening this week.

Prediction: Patriots 34, Cowboys 24

Matt Rourke/Associated Press

We've lost three games by 15 points. So you hit two kicks, and we're sitting here at 3-1 and everyone's happy. It's razor-thin, so you don't throw the baby out with the bath water and say, "OK, we're going to change our offense, change our defense and change everything we're doing with our approach." We need to settle down, take a deep breath, and when we have an opportunity to make a play, make a play.

That's Chip Kelly from Monday's press conference. When Kelly invokes a-kick-here-and-a-kick-there wisdom, you can almost hear all the Joe Philbins, Marc Trestmans, Doug Marrones, Pat Shurmurs, Rob Chudzinskis and Greg Schianos crying out from the coaching graveyard: "JOOOOIIIIIIN USSSSSSS. BECOME OOOORRRRRDINARY…"

Being two field goals short of a winning record is like being six credits short of a degree. You are still just a college dropout. Kelly was affirming his plan to remain unconventional, but he was doing so in the most conventional way possible. It's part of the friction that is grinding away this Eagles season: The NFL is beating Kelly faster than Kelly can beat the NFL.

Nothing has been quite the same for the Eagles since they lost to the Saints in the playoffs two years ago. Then again, nothing has been the same for the Saints since they lost to the Seahawks a week later. The Eagles entered that playoff game on a 7-1 hot streak, their offense the talk of the NFL. The Saints had won just three road games that year, and Philadelphia was encased in ice that January evening, creating an inhospitable environment for a Southern dome team.

History shows the Eagles were a field goal away from winning that 26-24 game. History does not care. Last season started optimistically for the Eagles but fizzled fast. So far, the Eagles look like a team that peaked at the start of free agency. They are indeed two field goals away from first place, but they are also about a half-dozen touchdowns away from the team Kelly clearly thought he was building as well as one easy up-the-gut sack away from more Mark Sanchez.

The Saints have been worse than the Eagles since that playoff meeting. Like the Eagles, they made a series of daring trades this offseason. The Saints were massaging their salary cap, but like the Eagles, they were also trying to improve the team's chemistry by getting rid of guys who, say, thought touchdown catches excused them from their blocking responsibilities.

The Saints' initiatives of the last two years have flopped as badly as Kelly's offseason transaction spasm. Dannell Ellerbe has done nothing, Jairus Byrd (a 2014 acquisition) is just a money pit and Max Unger hasn't done much to upgrade the offensive line. The Eagles offense may be a collection of predictable plays and missed blocks, but the Saints defense has become a collection of missed assignments and pass interference penalties.

But there are differences between the Saints and Eagles: 1) The Saints have Drew Brees. 2) The Saints have a recent Super Bowl ring. 3) The Saints never claimed to be changing the way NFL football is played; they just played it exceptionally well, right up through that playoff win at the end of the 2013 season.

If the Saints drop to 1-4, we'll speculate about the Sean Payton-Rob Ryan friction, question general manager Mickey Loomis for recent moves and drafts and joke about how the Jimmy Graham trade hurt all parties. If the Eagles drop to 1-4, we'll assume Kelly is going to Texas and taking his loopy ideas with him. Kelly is daring to challenge old ideas. Payton and the Saints are squandering the last great years of a Hall of Fame quarterback's career.

Maybe the levels of criticism should be reversed.

Kelly may lose the Eagles and lose his job, but he should never stop being Kelly. Plenty of coaches fail the conventional way. Kelly's only chance to succeed is by doing it his way.

Prediction: Eagles 27, Saints 24

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Vegas has taken notice of the 4-0 Falcons. Or more precisely, bettors who head to Vegas to place Super Bowl bets because they love the adrenaline rush of waiting several months for a payoff have taken notice of the Falcons.

As Vaughn McClure noted for ESPN.com, the Falcons opened with 30-1 odds to win the Super Bowl. Those odds improved to 20-1 last week and 14-1 this week. The Redskins' odds, for all of you speculators and masochists, have ping-ponged between 100-1 and 200-1. Here's the full list.

While you cannot get any action on any of the following bets in Vegas, Game Previews' resident point-spreader, Uncle Carmine, has calculated some other Falcons-Redskins related odds:

• Odds that the brother-in-law with the borrowed convenience-store draft guide who selected Devonta Freeman in the 14th round of the draft will win your fantasy league: 5-2.

• Odds that he pronounced it "DUH-von-TAY FREED-man, or whoever this guy is from Atlanta" when he made the pick but now trumpets the choice in emails like he recruited Freeman out of high school: 5-2.

• Odds that Kyle Shanahan's name will come up in connection with the Dolphins' head coaching job: Even.

• Odds that Shanahan wants to leave Matt Ryan so he can discover whether Ryan Tannehill really holds up his paycheck to scout-team defenders and says "neener-neener-neener." 5-1.

• Odds that Shanahan misses Washington even a little bit: 200-1.

• Odds of either Panthers-Falcons game in December getting flexed to Sunday night: Even.

• Odds that anyone involved for a moment thought a Panthers-Falcons game would be flexed to Sunday night: 200-1.

• Odds the Redskins will stay in the NFC East race until the final game of the season: 5-4.

• Odds that the national storyline will be "The NFC East is so bad that the Redskins are still in the race in the final game of the season:" 2-15.

• Odds of an "Is Ryan elite" debate dominating the news cycle in the next few weeks: Even.

• Odds of an "Is Ryan elite" debate sparking logical, insightful discussions about the attributes of successful quarterbacks and the challenges in evaluating them: 600,000,000-1.

Odds the Falcons will beat the Redskins: The spread is hovering around a touchdown, though it dropped early in the week from nine, per OddsShark.com. Rather than throwing money at a Super Bowl long shot, let's keep things simple.

Prediction: Falcons 30, Redskins 21

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The future Hall of Famer is now 39 years old, and he's clearly not the player he was a few years ago. He may not be mentioned in many "elite" discussions anymore. But he has adjusted to his new coaching staff and learned to compensate for his declining physical gifts. Look past the storylines and the old-guy jokes, and you can still see him making game-winning plays late in fourth quarters.

You guessed it: We are talking about Charles Woodson, who turned 39 this week. Woodson has an interception in each of the past two games, including a crucial fourth-quarter pick against the Browns. Like the famous 39-year-old quarterback he faces this week, Peyton Manning, Woodson can no longer take over games by himself. He needs help that doesn't always arrive.

The Raiders rank 26th in the NFL in pass defense, according to Football Outsiders, largely because of their inability to cover tight ends and running backs. Veteran inside linebackers Curtis Lofton and Malcolm Smith look creakier than Woodson when dropping into coverage or attempting open-field tackles. (And Woodson's tackles are starting to look like Peyton's deep balls.)

Just as Peyton needs better line play and a running game to survive the season, Woodson needs more support from the linebackers in front of him. Coaches Jack Del Rio and Ken Norton may be closer to Woodson's demographic, but the Raiders are in trouble if they are also two of the best defenders on the payroll.

Woodson has never intercepted Manning. The Raiders have only beaten Manning's teams twice: in 2000 and 2001, when Tim Brown and Jerry Rice were Raiders (as was Woodson) and Amari Cooper was seven years old. A game-winning interception would be a heck of a birthday gift for Raiders fans and a real changing-of-the-guard moment, perhaps for the whole league.

But we may have to settle for a competitive game between Manning and one of his few remaining contemporaries that ends with a familiar result.

Prediction: Broncos 26, Raiders 17

Tanier Art Studios

Let's not talk about the batted ball. The Lions have stopped talking about the batted ball. The batted ball got boring by noon Tuesday. Bad call. Weird rule. Calvin Johnson fumbled anyway. Get over it.

Let's not talk about how good the Lions are by the standards of a 0-4 team, how tough their recent schedule has been or (ugh) how they are a few plays away from being 2-2 or something. Jim Caldwell may be guilty of many things, but excuse-mongering has never been one of them.

Let's talk about Johnson and Golden Tate averaging a combined 10 yards per catch.

According to Football Outsiders' internal database, Matthew Stafford has completed two of 10 "deep" passes to Megatron and Tate combined for 43 yards. The boundary for "deep” passes on the official play-by-play is 15 yards, and the yardage total shows that these weren't really deep passes, just mid-range tosses. Johnson and Tate have each drawn a pass-interference call, but the Lions need more than some stray pass-interference calls from these two.

Predictability is part of the problem. (No, we're not talking about how opponents know the Lions playbook again, either.) Most of the Lions' deep shots against the Seahawks were bombs along the left sideline. Richard Sherman usually plays on the offensive right, so moving Johnson to the left and sending him deep is an obvious tactic. Maybe too obvious.

The diagram shows a 3rd-and-14 play from the second half of the Seahawks game. Putting Johnson and Tate on the left, then having them run a pair of predictable deep routes, is like baking Kam Chancellor a "Welcome Back! Sorry about the $$$" cake. His read could not be any easier.

Chancellor begins backpedaling before the snap, but not because he knows the Lions' signals. If you saw Johnson and Tate on the same side of the formation, you would backpedal too.

Lance Moore, Eric Ebron and Tim Wright have all caught semi-deep "deep" passes this season, and it's always encouraging when the Lions get their secondary weapons involved. The Lions may be on the verge of finally balancing out their offense. They lost the vertical element while working the kinks out of the short game. It shouldn't be that hard to bring back the long game. No one is holding out hope for the running game.

The Lions defense has stiffened after some poor early-season showings, and the start of a three-game homestand should allow them to fix things that were bound to stay broken on the road in Seattle. There really isn't much difference between the Cardinals and Lions, just a weird call, a mistake here and there…

Oh, those were the things we weren't going to talk about.

Prediction: Lions 26, Cardinals 21

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The Bills are on pace to commit 232 penalties this season, a slightly high total for even a Rex Ryan team. Ryan's previous penalty high was 127, committed by last year's Jets. His high before that was 126, committed by the 2013 Jets. In other words, this problem is getting worse.

Jerry Hughes already has five penalties for 50 yards this year: two unnecessary roughness fouls, unsportsmanlike conduct, a facemask penalty (it was half-the-distance to the goal, keeping his yardage total low) and encroachment.

Ryan said in his early-week press conference that he would briefly bench players for foolish penalties. He also said that he has already benched Hughes once this season. Hughes missed a total of five snaps in the two games where he committed roughness fouls. Clearly, these are the kind of disciplinary timeouts the parents at the mall use. (No Auntie Anne's pretzel until you stop screaming and biting that saleswoman's ankle! Well, OK, if it will get you to stop.)

The Bills also spent the early part of the week complaining about Odell Beckham Jr.'s cheap shot, calling him a "prima donna" and saying, "He's not Sammy Watkins," per Tyler Dunne of the Buffalo News.

No, he's not.

He's been visible this year. "His world is based on hype and that one catch," said Stephon Gilmore of Beckham. Gilmore's world right now is based on the fact that his head coach used to coach Darrelle Revis and eats dog biscuits for charity.

A Rex Ryan team commits penalties and says stupid things after losses: not exactly a stop-the-presses revelation. At least all the chatter keeps things interesting.

Per Jason Wolf of the Tennessean, Marcus Mariota spent the bye week visiting with his parents and watching college football; it's boring to even write about how boring he is. Mariota is not going to sucker-punch anyone or whine to goad the Bills into penalties this week. Then again, winning is the most interesting thing a quarterback has to do, and expect some pretty interesting reactions when the Titans hand the Bills an upset.

Prediction: Titans 27, Bills 24

Gary Landers/Associated Press

Alex Smith has already been sacked 18 times this season, putting him on pace (72) to challenge the NFL record of 76 sacks. Let's meet the men trying (and failing) to protect him. (All sack totals allowed are courtesy of Pro Football Focus):

• Donald Stephenson, left tackle (two sacks allowed): Stephenson is a former third-round pick from Oklahoma who gained and lost starting jobs in past seasons due to PED suspensions and inconsistency. The Oklahoma alum worked out with former Sooners Adrian Peterson and Trent Williams in the offseason to improve his strength and quickness. Maybe he was the spotter.

• Ben Grubbs, left guard (four sacks allowed): A veteran trade acquisition from the Saints, Grubbs probably got lots of congratulatory text messages for leaving New Orleans from Jimmy Graham. He has celebrated by being just as much of a factor.

• Mitch Morse, center (two sacks allowed): The second-round rookie out of Mizzou has played well for a rookie. He has a habit of throwing up before games; it gives Andy Reid fond Donovan McNabb memories. Morse explained the phenomena in Chiefs Digest. Get it? Digest! (Not all of the jokes are winners, folks).

• Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, right guard (three sacks allowed): Reid has a thing for Canadian guards like Duvernay-Tardif; he once drafted a firefighter from British Columbia named Danny Watkins in the first round. Canadian guards and lumpy-brainy centers are to Reid what Navy guys and lacrosse stars are to Bill Belichick. The difference is that Belichick doesn't tell Tom Brady to play behind a line of Navy guys and lacrosse stars.

• Zach Fulton, right guard (one sack allowed): He's either the second-year sixth-round pick who recently replaced Monsieur Duvernay-Tardif at right guard or the inventor of the steamboat.

• Eric Fisher, right tackle (zero sacks allowed): The first overall pick in the 2013 draft was on the midnight train to Bustville before stringing together two half-decent games this year. If Fisher were a New York quarterback, he'd already be on the back-page "deserves to be punched" list.

• Jah Reid, right tackle (two sacks allowed): Andy Reid threw on a uniform and played right tackle under a silly alias for two weeks. No, this is the former Ravens practice-squader who got arrested in 2014 for punching a security guard at a strip club. Definitely not Andy Reid.

Alex Smith is totally safe if attacked by angry Canadians, strip club security guards or the Ty-D-Bol Man. The Bears are so eager to trade away defenders, that may be who the Chiefs face this week.

Prediction: Chiefs 24, Bears 20

Bill Wippert/Associated Press

Bills defenders called Odell Beckham Jr. a "prima donna" last week and complained that he delivered several sneaky sucker-punches when the referees weren't looking.

Wait…prima donnas throw punches now? Has opera gotten more interesting since the last time I watched Great Performances? Last I checked, prima donnas don't sucker-punch people; they sing arias, and their Viking helmets are purely decorative.

Bills experts assured me that Gilmore was referring to Beckham's complaints every time a Bills defender jammed him. Wide receivers who hate contact? They are almost as rare as Rex Ryan defenders who talk too much after losses.

Beckham's antics are ripe to be immortalized in video-game form. My friends in the gaming industry (OK, the seventh-grade boys who never leave my family room) have provided the following probably-not-factual list of Beckham-related Easter eggs that can be unlocked by gamers with great dexterity and even greater time on their hands:

Swivel left highlight stick, left trigger, square button: undetectable kidney punch.

Down, down, triangle, up, up, right: Whine at Jerry Hughes until he attempts Sub-Zero's Mortal Kombat fatality in full view of a referee.

With the ball in the air, quarter-turn left highlight stick while holding both triggers and taking two ibuprofen for the arthritis in your fingers: The super-rare two-handed catch. Beckham actually tries to make a normal catch instead of purposely stopping, turning and leaping like a superhero.

Left, right, triangle, Konami code, call 12-year-old son to do the rest for you: Beckham pulls a hamstring and misses so many practices that Tom Coughlin bursts into flames.

The 49ers don't have much of an offense right now, limiting their video game highlight stick potential, though Trent Baalke may be heavily featured in a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph.

Prediction: Giants 24, 49ers 9

Don Wright/Associated Press

The Ravens will probably be without all of the skill-position players you have heard of and half of the ones you haven't. Who's left, besides Joe Flacco and Justin Forsett?

• Justin Tucker: The J.J. Watt of kickers.

• Chris Givens: An early-week trade pickup from the Rams. Givens was on your 2013 fantasy team; he was an early version of Martavis Bryant after catching some long touchdowns from Sam Bradford in 2012. He fell to the bottom of the Rams bench when the team took two years off from scoring long touchdowns.

• Marlon Brown: A 6'5" sculpted specimen of athletic humanity who somehow gets less involved in the offense the more desperately the Ravens need receivers.

• Kamar Aiken: A shorter Marlon Brown.

• Darren Waller: A 6'6" rookie slab of sleek titanium who played wide receiver at Georgia Tech, which runs a flexbone-option offense that rarely involves the wide receivers. It's too soon to call Waller a taller Marlon Brown. He is more like the geometric mean of former Yellow Jackets receivers Demaryius Thomas (Woo-hoo!) and Stephen Hill (D'oh!).

• Maxx Williams: The top tight end prospect in this year's draft; he would stand out as an amazing size-speed-athleticism talent if we hadn't just run a gauntlet of gigantic wide receivers. Williams joins Luke Willson of the Seahawks on the All-Unnecessary Letters Tight End Team.

• Javorius Allen, Nick Boyle and Kyle Juszczyk: Did we mention Justin Tucker?

Browns news has officially splintered into two categories: stories that involve the Cleveland Browns and weird tangential Johnny Manziel stories that sound like episodes of 1980s prime-time soap operas. Game previews vow to focus mostly on the Browns stories, no matter how dreary or unprofitable they may seem by comparison.

Prediction: Ravens 23, Browns 20

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The last time Jameis Winston threw a four-interception game, last November against Florida, he bounced back with a 309-yard, three-touchdown performance against Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship.

That's a sign that Winston knows how to rebound from interception sprees and a backhanded reminder that few top draft picks have quite as much experience with the four-interception rebound as he does.

The list of rookie quarterbacks with seven interceptions in their first four games includes Peyton Manning (11) Steve DeBerg (11), Bert Jones (9), Ryan Leaf (8), Geno Smith (8), Scott Hunter (7), Carson Palmer (7), Norm Snead (7), Brandon Weeden (7), Winston (7) and Jim Zorn (7).

With six touchdowns, Winston actually has the highest touchdown total and efficiency ranking (71.2) of the bunch. It's one of those reassuring lists that reminds us a top prospect could go on to be a Hall of Famer, a distinguished veteran, head coach of the Redskins or…Scott Hunter? Wasn't he a GOP presidential candidate?

Also, Leaf, Geno and Weeden are on the list. Manning did a lifetime service for future turnover-prone prospects when he coughed up all those interceptions in 1998. It's an "Einstein got lousy math grades in high school too, Mom" thing.

In Jaguars news, Julius Thomas is close to returning to action, though a midweek reports from Ryan O'Halloran of the Florida Times-Union suggests he is still a week away. Remember Thomas? Broncos tight end, major free-agent signing, injured his hand at the start of the preseason? Remember Dante Fowler Jr.? Remember anything optimistic about the Jaguars?

The Jaguars are going to catch a break one of these years. In the meantime, they should try to catch some interceptions.

Prediction: Jaguars 20, Buccaneers 14

Ben Margot/Associated Press

Just how bad have Chargers injury reports been lately? "Sometimes I just go, 'Goodness gracious!'" Philip Rivers told the San Diego Union-Tribune's Kevin Acee.

Gosh golly, the Chargers really are banged up at wide receiver, on the offensive line and in the secondary. Gee willikers, it's unclear whether Malcom Floyd, Stevie Johnson, Jason Verrett, King Dunlap, Orlando Franklin, Chris Watt or Brandon Flowers will be available by Monday night. Flowers and Floyd took part in late-week practices, which is encouraging news because, by gum, many of their backups are also injured. 

At least Antonio Gates is back from his four-game suspension. But sakes alive! Bryant of the Steelers has upstaged Gates with his own return from a suspension this week.

Bryant does not play quarterback, center, defensive back or kicker, dagnabbit, so he may not have as great of an impact as the Steelers need. His eight-touchdown performance last year pushed him high on the fantasy football cheat sheets, but heavens to Betsy! The Steelers need more than a still-developing big-play machine.

Then again, what in tarnation are the Chargers going to do with an aging tight end when they need a whole offensive line and half a secondary?

With so many injuries, this game will probably be less interesting than just imagining Rivers talking like a character from The Andy Griffith Show.

Prediction: Steelers 23, Chargers 21