NFL Survivor Picks Week Nine: Packers, Seahawks, and Falcons

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It was role reversal last week in Arizona, with Jake Delhomme quarterbacking the Arizona Cardinals, and Kurt Warner taking charge of the Carolina Panthers. Delhomme went ahead and threw five interceptions, not unheard for him, and the Cardinals lost the game on a six-love turnover differential.

That wasn’t Delhomme? It was Warner? It must have been an out of body experience then, because going into that game we sure expected Delhomme to be more the INT-machine than Warner. The end result was a loss amongst my three picks from Week Eight , and simply some hope that you read the text, and picked one of the first two choices instead.

I did say I was “a little sketchy on backing the Cardinals in this game”, but amongst the available choices last week it still seemed like one of the safer bets to come through. How many times have we seen a team come off a big emotional win like the Cards did beating the New York Giants back in Week Seven, only to stink it up the very next week? Too many times to count, and the Cardinals fell right into that trip, and took me along with them.

The other two picks did come through, though. The San Diego Chargers allowed the Oakland Raiders to stay within striking distance all game, which further supports the Chargers poor running game, and run defense is making them little more than average this year, but a win is a win, as they say.

The Chicago Bears crushed the Cleveland Browns, 30-6. No surprise there, and nothing really to be proud of for Bears fans. If you own Matt Forte in your fantasy league, it is time to sell, sell, sell if you can convince a gullible owner that he’s “back”.

On to Week Nine, we have more bad teams on their bye this week, including the aforementioned Raiders, and Browns, plus the St. Louis Rams, and to a lesser extent (i.e. less bad), Buffalo Bills, and New York Jets. Choices may be slim again, but lets see what we can do if you are still alive in your survivor pool heading into the second half of the season.

Green Bay Packers over Tampa Bay Buccaneers (stats )

Similar to how I assess the Chargers this year, the Packers look like a pretty good, but not elite team. For the most part they have destroyed weak teams in the league, like the Browns, Lions, and Rams. On the other hand they’ve lost to, but hung around with, top teams like the Vikings (twice), and Bengals.

Well, I think we know which category the Bucs fall into this season. With the Rams, and Tennessee Titans winning last week, the Bucs remain the lone winless team. In proposing to break the streak, the Bucs are going to roll out their third QB of the season this week, rookie Josh Freeman.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think Freeman is going to be an improvement over the prior two. This is a total team effort of poor play this season, on offense, and defense, so slotting in a new QB—a rookie who the team felt should be third string out of training camp—is not going to spark this team into a surprisingly productive offense.

And he definitely will not help the defense, which has been giving up a ton of yards on the ground to opposing rushers. Ryan Grant has been feeding off of weak teams this year. Expect 24 carries, or more, and over 100 yards for him.

The one issue I have backing the Packers is that QB Aaron Rodgers is still getting hit a ton. Last week the Packers-Vikings broadcasters relayed from coach Mike McCarthy that with the game he felt he called, Rodgers should not have taken so many sacks in the prior game against the Vikings. Maybe, but Rodgers still took another six sacks last week, so whether it is the play calling, or protection, or Rodgers holding the ball too long, it doesn’t really matter, the guy is getting beaten up.

When do those sacks turn into an injury where Rodgers misses time? When do those sacks turn into a fumble returned for a TD? It could be anytime.

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