NFL Picks Week 1: 3 Overhyped Teams Guaranteed to Fail This Week

When the NFL season starts, every team believes that it has a chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy at season’s end, because all it takes is a couple of things to go right for that team to become a contender.

Take the Green Bay Packers last season: They won the games they had to win but needed help from other teams to get into the playoffs.

As the 2011 season begins, there are a number of teams that have lofty expectations but will fail to live up to those expectations because they are not as good as we originally thought.

Here are three overrated teams that will be exposed in Week 1.

New York Jets

The Jets, for all their talk and swagger, have never been a great regular-season team. They won 11 games last season, but they lost a number of games in which the offense looked abysmal only to be bailed out by the defense.

Mark Sanchez is having his fun as a GQ cover man, but he still has those plays where he looks completely lost. In fact, if he did not play in New York, people would compare him to Jay Cutler, who often plays like he has no clue what is going on.

The Cowboys are going to feature one of the best offenses in the NFL this season, led by Tony Romo and Felix Jones, and will look to make a statement early in the season.

The Cowboys offense will overwhelm the Jets defense, the ‘Boys will score a big win and Rex Ryan will be left searching for answers.

Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens have been a staple of the AFC playoff picture for the last decade, but that once rock-solid defense is getting older and will need to hope that a weak secondary can come to play for 16 games.

The Ravens are going to be solid up the middle with Haloti Ngata and Ray Lewis leading the defensive line and linebackers, respectively, but it is the group of players behind them that leaves something to be desired.

The team drafted Jimmy Smith, who some had pegged ahead of Prince Amukamara as the second-best cornerback in the draft, but he will struggle early as he adjusts to the NFL.

The Steelers have a bevy of playmakers on offense, particularly Mike Wallace, and they will have a field day against the Ravens secondary en route to a dominating victory against their division rivals.

San Diego Chargers

Everyone is hot for San Diego this season, and the Chargers certainly have as much talent as any team in the NFL. But until they prove that they are capable of beating the teams that they should and can be competitive against teams who are as good as or better than they are, they can’t be trusted.

Perhaps last season was just one of those fluke seasons where every break in a game goes against the Chargers. Perhaps they are as good as the numbers say they should have been.

But with the Minnesota Vikings coming to town, the Chargers will have their hands full trying to prove that. Adrian Peterson is going to have a field day against this defense, though it will be hard to top his 296-yard performance against them from 2007.

I expect Peterson to run for 200 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Vikings to a stunning 27-24 victory.

And all that goodwill the Chargers have built up in the offseason will be gone after the first week of the season.