NFL Picks Week 7: Which Teams Have Absolutely No Shot at Victory?

Sometimes an opponent is so powerful and so talented that no matter a team's best efforts, they just cannot pull out a win. There are three teams that seem to have little chance to pull off Week 7 victories, simply because they're up against significantly superior squads.

The Arizona Cardinals host the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday afternoon, and it's not going to look like the Super Bowl rematch it is, when the out-classed Cardinals fall to the surging Steelers by no small margin.

The Steelers have shown exceptional improvement from their slow start, now fielding a top-five defensive squad that's No. 1 against the pass and getting better every week against the run. At the same time, they've been able to return to running the ball, allowing quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to utilize play-action passing, one of his greatest strengths.

Arizona is clearly stronger at running the ball than they are at passing it, but neither are going to come easily against a Pittsburgh defense looking more and more like the championship squad of recent years with every game.

Defense will also be the name of the game when the Baltimore Ravens travel to Jacksonville to take on the Jaguars on Monday night. The Ravens will seek to dismantle the Jaguars' weak offense component by component on their way to a likely win.

Jacksonville's offense is the worst in the league, ranking 32nd in passing and 24th in rushing, despite relying on running back Maurice Jones-Drew, who has 118 rushes for 572 yards and nine catches for 75 yards on the season.

Even with the return of receiver Mike Sims-Walker, it's unlikely that the Jaguars will be able to shore up their weak passing game with still-learning rookie quarterback Blaine Gabbert under center.

All the Ravens have to do to win this game is to continue to play as they have through the first six weeks of the season, while the Jaguars would need a wholesale transformation of every player on the team to pull out a victory on Monday night.

Thus, all signs point to Baltimore winning this easy contest.

A number of rookie quarterbacks are starters in the NFL this season, but one—the Minnesota Vikings' Christian Ponder—is being thrown into the fire this week as he gets his first full game as a starter against the undefeated Green Bay Packers.

It's clear that Ponder is getting the start because veteran Donovan McNabb hasn't been performing well—even if Ponder doesn't prove to be much of an improvement, he's likely to continue starting only because he's the future of the franchise and deserves as much on-field experience as he can get.

And he's going to get quite a schooling in professional quarterbacking on Sunday, as he'll get to watch the Packers' Aaron Rodgers again display why he's the best passer in the league this season.

The Vikings and the Packers are worlds apart in terms of talent, coaching, team cohesiveness and certainly morale. It would take the most amazing sequence of circumstances for Minnesota to earn their second victory of the season by beating the league's best team.

While few things are impossible, the odds of this happening are as close as one can get to it this week.