Unveiling the Bold Predictions for NFL’s Week 3

And we're back with some big, bold predictions for the week coming up.

Ed Cleese joins me as we make our predictions and you're gonna be shocked by some of these.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren.

He's of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And we are ready to give you some more NFL predictions.

Ed Cleese is joining me once again.

Ed, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hi, Darren.

Thanks for having me back again.

Yeah, this has been a lot of fun here.

So what are your thoughts after week two?

So I have.

I'm going to start the podcast today by issuing two separate apologies.

So the first one, you know, two of my.

Each of the first two weeks, I made a bold prediction that was essentially that the packers were going to lose.

Essentially.

And it was based on a preseason feel or prediction that the packers were a team that was a little bit overvalued.

Well, wow, you couldn't be more wrong than I have been in the first two weeks.

Not only have they, did they win both games, but I thought so far through two weeks, I think it's pretty clear they have been easily the most impressive and most dominant team in the league.

They really dismantled the Lions and then they took my guys apart on Thursday night.

And it wasn't just the physical that was impressive to me.

That was kind of obvious.

They really dominated up front, scheme wise.

They really had us tied up at knots on Thursday night.

The commanders really, you know, it's pretty much the worst game that Jayden Daniels has played in his career.

I don't think it's an accident.

Packers look really good on both sides.

They sure did.

I think we both took our lumps on that one this week.

Yeah, it was, it was, it's impressive.

And so my, you know, you try not to overreact too much.

Excuse me?

Try to overreact too much.

You're all choked up over this game.

It's really, it's really good.

Well, you know, we lose Darren and I lose all my faculties very quickly.

So you, you know, you don't want to overreact too much for the.

To the first two weeks.

But I'm already kind of drastically changing my opinion on the packers very quickly from sort of a wild card contender to maybe the best team in the NFL.

So I've seen enough already to make me, to make me change my mind there.

Yeah, they're an interesting team for sure.

Yeah.

Number two, I'm wearing my OU hat today.

I am a Sooner alum and I owe an apology to Baker Mayfield because at various points of his I actually was.

I did not think he deserved to be drafted first overall.

I thought it was going to be a. I did not think it was going to work out well in Cleveland.

I guess that part came to fruition.

And then I kind of buried Baker as I think on a group text with a bunch of my buddies.

I called him a pretty good backup quarterback.

And this would have been at the beginning of last year.

Okay.

Once he was starting for Tampa about midway through last year, I revised that sort of begrudgingly to, okay, he's a starter.

And I kind of left it at that.

I'm wrong.

I'm just wrong because he is.

I think he's top 10, top seven territory in the league now.

And at some point you just look at the results.

The numbers are phenomenal.

But then the eye test as well, you know, he's.

He gets it done.

He's exceptionally good late in games.

They're two weeks into the season.

He has two game winning touchdown drives.

There's a fourth.

And the Texans pass rush on Monday night was insanely good.

They were all over him and he took some lumps and they had to punt a lot during the game.

But then on that Last Drive, it's 4th and 10.

They send the blitz up the middle.

He doesn't panic.

He shakes it.

He runs for the first down.

As soon as he got that first down, that game was over.

It's over.

He is going to get them down in the end zone.

And it is a rare ability in the NFL when you have a quarterback at the end of the game where you're just like, this game's done.

They're losing, but it's over.

They're going to win because of him.

And that's where Baker is at this point.

They do have some very good receivers and I really like Bucky Irving as the running back.

But Baker is, you can put all this stuff about, oh, he's got a lot of moxie, he's tough.

That's all true.

But he's also bordering on elite now as well.

And tip of the cap to Baker because I was wrong about him.

Yeah, he was definitely putting some balls right on a dime, you know, to his receivers, especially those, those out path passes out towards the sideline, just, you know, going over the fingertips of defenders and right into the breadbasket of his receivers.

I mean, some of those were really amazing the whole game long and really.

For, you know, Baker has also had the propensity over time.

You know, he's got a little bit of gunslinger in him.

So he's, you know, the big mistake has sort of been a hallmark of Baker's career a little bit.

And last night, despite all the pressure he was under, he never did.

They never folded.

He was sort of content, like, hey, we're going to punt it on this one.

Our defense is playing pretty well.

They sort of played.

I mean, there was like eight possessions in a row in that game where the teams traded punts with.

The defense is kind of dominating.

Baker never gave the game away.

He hung, he hung, he hung and at the end he got it done, which is what a lot of the great ones do.

And there aren't many that can do it.

So Baker, man, great job.

Yeah, that's for sure.

All right, so.

So how did we end up doing last week with our picks?

You bet.

So I did have a couple other notes about week, week two.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's sort of, you know, one of my observations, you know, there's a lot of cliches, right, in the league.

And then one of the biggest cliches is that it's a week to week league, right.

You can't predict what's going to happen week to week.

Forget about, forget about the results of week two going into week three, and then forget about week three into week four.

And while I hate cliches, this one is accurate in the NFL, I'd say if you eliminate maybe like the, the extreme 10%, we'll say so, you know, take the two or three best teams in the league, take the super elite quarterbacks.

The week to week doesn't really apply to them and it doesn't really necessarily apply to the really bad teams on a given year.

You know, the two win teams, the three win teams, they're sort of consistently, consistently bad.

But for 90% of the league, it truly is week to week.

And I took some note here of some things that were just insane swings from week one to week two.

And I'll start with the Giants offense.

So in, in Washington, that was the first game in five years that Washington Held the team without scoring a touchdown.

And the narrative after that game was that Russell was.

Russell Olson's done.

He looks cooked.

He looks afraid to make a mistake, he looks risk averse and he's just like trying to get out of there.

He can't run anymore.

And when's Jackson Dart going to get his first start?

And then boom, we go to Dallas and not only is he playing well, he is an overtime big play away from throwing 500 yards in that game.

He went up a 433 last year in Pittsburgh.

That's all I got to.

Yeah.

No, kid, that.

That's what's crazy.

Yes.

I think you can chalk up some of it to sort of a porous Dallas defense, especially on their back end.

They're probably going to give up a lot of yards passing this year.

I think that that seems pretty clear.

But.

But still to do it, what Wilson did, he's got some great weapons there.

Neighbors is awesome.

But just the, the disparity between what that offense produced in week one and then what they produced in week two is sort of just baffling and it's very confusing and hard to figure out week to week.

And on that same, that same token, and this is maybe another little tip of the cap to the packers, would be the difference in the Lions offense from Green bay in Week 1 to home against the Bears in Week 2.

That offensive line, we talked about it last week that that Lions offensive line got dismantled by the packers in the first game.

They couldn't do anything offensively and they scored 52 against the Bears.

You know, no problem, no issues.

It's easy breezy.

They look like the Lions of the last two years, you know, and literally just a one week change.

Really, really kind of remarkable.

And another one would be sort of on the other end was the Broncos defense.

You know, they look amazing and they should be amazing.

They were good last year.

They completely shut down the Titans.

They win that game for Denver because their offense was not very good in that Tennessee game in Week 1.

The defense wins the game for him.

They go to Indianapolis and they can't get off the field.

Literally can't force a plan.

You know, they cannot stop Daniel Jones and the Colts, the Colts offense at all.

They can't stop him in the last drive.

They probably still should have won the game, but the Broncos defense completely gets shredded after being probably the best defense in the league in week one.

Yeah, you talk about apologies.

I owe Daniel Jones an apology because I disrespected him last week and bad Bad prediction.

But Daniel Jones pretty good job.

Yeah.

And then, so then you can look at the jets, right?

The jets really had a very sound effort against your Steelers in week one.

Their offense looked pretty good.

They looked, they looked solid.

That was nice.

That was kind of an oddly fun back and forth game.

One of the only games in week one that went over the total was that Steelers jets game.

Then they come out against Buffalo, whose defense looked terrible against the Ravens in Week 1.

And the jets are completely inept in Week 2.

They go from sort of feisty and spry in week one to just awful and embarrassing in week two.

Just like that.

Just like that.

Against probably what you would think on, on paper is a worse defense than what they faced from, from week one.

And then my last one would have been Geno Smith.

You know, Ghost has a career day in week one and then goes on Monday night.

And he looked so bad.

He looks so bad.

He was, you know, he, he should have done five interceptions that game.

They could not move the ball offensively at all.

He was, he was a mess.

They had a bunch of chances and he looked bad.

Well, that's one thing you can rack up to NFL defensive coordinators.

They watch, get film on you for week one and see what you want to do in week one.

They take it away from you in week two.

And it's the teams that can adapt and you know, that's the ones that are successful.

But yeah, so it's very hard.

It's very difficult to figure out, you know, besides, besides what we know is real.

You know, we know the Eagles are real.

You know, we know Josh Allen is real.

You know, things like that, it's very difficult to decipher year to year and week to week.

What, what is what I'm seeing today real?

Is it, you know, is this going to carry over or is this a one week anomaly and we sort of like have a clean slate and start over next week?

It's, it's very.

How about Josh Allen though?

He, he really didn't have a good game for him.

I mean, through for like a buck 65, didn't score a touchdown, didn't have a touchdown pass, you know, and the Bills win big, you know, over their, one of their rivals, right?

And sometimes, sometimes I think guys like Allen, they, they play to the, the game, you know, they, they play to the tone of the game.

Josh Allen did, just did what he needed to do in that game.

They win the game by 27 points or I'm sorry, 20, I guess.

Jets scored Late there.

But yeah.

So I think.

But that.

That's sort of my.

My overall observation is that just how not cliche that cliche really is because it's really real.

It really.

It is a week to week league and that's really what makes it very fun and interesting every week and why I'm always kind of so riveted by it all.

Yeah, most definitely.

All right, let's give our.

Get our results.

Let's see what we did last week.

All right, so results.

Let's go with.

We'll start with my results from last week.

So again, a little bit rough for me, Darren.

So we've already talked about the commanders going into Lambo.

That was my big bold.

My boldest maybe was.

Was.

Was those.

The commanders going in and winning.

That obviously did not happen.

It was ugly.

We kind of talked about that already.

So I get zero points on that one.

I'm also going to get zero points for my Mahomes throwing three touchdowns.

He threw zero.

Again, the.

The Chiefs, he should have thrown one there to Kelsey at the end.

Kind of.

Kelsey kind of sold him out.

But again, I was way off on that prediction.

I thought the Chiefs offense was really going to kind of respond and Mahomes is going to have a big day.

He absolutely did not.

Yeah, didn't.

Didn't look like the Patrick Mahomes from the last five, six years, that's for sure.

No.

And it's starting to get a little troubling there, I think with what we're seeing.

I also had a big upset prediction of the Titans over the Rams.

That one actually wasn't awful.

The Titans did have a halftime lead.

They had a lead late in the third and then the Rams really took over and kind of wound up running away.

There was a big fumble by Cam Ward midway through the fourth quarter.

That kind of shifted that game.

So I swung and missed badly at that one.

I also swung and missed at the Chargers winning a really close late game against the Raiders.

I'm not going to give myself any points on that because I predicted that the game would be really fun, really tight and the Chargers would win late.

And it wasn't at all.

The Chargers really kind of dominated that game.

They should have won by more than they did and that was kind of an easy breezy win for the Chargers.

But I will end with the one I did get right.

And I'll say that you can always count on the Cleveland Browns to come through for you when you really need them.

Because my last pick of the week was that The Ravens would beat the Browns by 17 or more points.

They did that fairly easily.

And I also said that the Browns would find a new way every week, and they did, once again, because they actually won that game on the stat sheet in a lot of ways.

If you look at it, they outgained them again.

Second time in a second week in a row.

The Browns out gained their opponent, but they had a block.

They had a block punt.

There was a big fumble.

There was a big interception.

So once again, the Browns found a way to kind of screw it all up, and the Ravens win that game going away.

So that gives me two points for the week.

It matches my two points for last week.

So through two weeks, I have earned a whopping four points out of a 20 possible.

Yeah, that was some tough ones for you, that's for sure.

Yeah, it was rough because I was.

Not only was I off, I was way off, Darren.

So now I move on to your picks, which were.

We can end the show right now, I think.

Well, you know what?

You're going to beat me again this week, Darren.

Okay.

You had the Commanders winning in the last minute.

We were both completely off of that game.

So that's a big goose egg for you.

That.

That game that I had talked about with the Titans and Rams.

No, the Titans did not win.

I gave you one point on that game.

You predicted that Stafford would have 330 yards and three touchdowns.

There was one or two plays that, you know, I thought he had it.

And then just.

I'm giving you a point because I think you were ultimately right about that.

I mean, he had about 300 yards.

He had two touchdowns.

He had a couple near misses.

He kind of.

He's the reason the Rams won that game.

So I sort of split the difference with you there.

And I did give you a point for your Stafford pick.

Okay, negative points for your Broncos holding the Colts to 15 or less because, again, they literally didn't even force a punt in the game.

So the Broncos guys.

Ugly pick.

Ugly.

That was ugly.

So a zero there for you.

I'm also giving you zero.

I did not give you any points for your.

Tampa wins by 10 or more.

You were kind of thinking it would be sort of an easy win for the Bucks, even though they did come back and win there at the end.

I'm giving you zero because you said 10 or more.

And then it would be sort of a easy game for Tampa.

And it was.

And again, with apologies, I disrespected CJ Stroud and the Houston defense at home.

And they really earned, you know, that close game.

You know, that was a good game.

I would say the CJ Stroud.

The CJ Stroud disrespect may have been warranted because he does not look very comfortable or very good through two weeks.

But their defense was really good on Monday night for sure.

So we'll end with the one you did get right and you nailed it.

You had a big day for the Lions, just kind of in general.

But you specifically said that Amon Ross, St. Brown and Jameer Gibbs would combine for three or more touchdowns and they actually combined for four.

St. Brown had four.

I'm sorry, three on his own.

And then Gibbs added one as well.

So you definitely get your two points for that.

So through two weeks that puts you at seven.

So you are winning through two weeks.

Seven to four is where we stand, Darren.

Okay, well, I appreciate that one point.

I wasn't expecting that one.

But yeah, that was a rough week for both of us there.

I decided not to grade you on too harsh of a curve there.

I think you kind of were on the right track with that pick, so.

So you got it.

So yeah.

All right.

Seven to four and it's time for some of these picks to.

It's time for me to pick it up because it's been just one each week and then the four I've missed have missed badly.

So this is where we start anew.

So okay.

Well, I think last week you went first, so I'll start first this week.

Okay, go ahead.

So we are going to start in Chicago this week where the 02 bears, who look very bad so far, are going to win a shootout at home against the Cowboys.

Dallas is going to be.

Now this is sort of goes against what I was saying earlier about, you know, just don't expect to see things week to week.

Well, I'm going to predict that Dallas winds up in a lot of shootouts this year.

I think they're going to be in one back to back weeks this week.

I think that Ben Johnson will get some things going for the Bears eventually.

Dallas's defense is sort of ripe for them this week, I think, and they are at home.

So I'm anticipating a close game.

A lot of points up and down the field and the Bears are going to win a shootout at the end of the game.

Well, you know, this is one that I think we have two brains thinking as one because I also.

I have one of my picks is the Bears get off the snide and they dump the Cowboys.

I was really looking at those 02 teams that I gave as a bonus last week, which all lost by the way, and I sit there thinking, God, I think two of them are going to get a win this week.

And the Bears I really loved and I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger, but I was going to take, I was going to pick the Browns over the Green Bay packers and I decided not to.

I just couldn't bring it, bring myself to it.

So that's not one of my picks, but I am going to take the Bears over the Cowboys.

Got it.

Okay, so we're aligned on that.

My, my second pick.

We're going to go down to Tampa, their first home game and I'm going to go back to the week to week league thing and say that against all odds, the New York jets with or without Justin Fields go down to Tampa and they stay within striking distance well into the fourth quarter quarter.

Now, I'm not bold enough to say they're going to win the game because I'm not going to pick pick against Baker right now.

But I do think that game will be close.

It'll be legitimately up in the air.

We'll say midway through the fourth quarter it will still be in doubt.

The jets will put up a really good effort in New York, I'm sorry, in Tampa and give the Jets a good game.

It'll be one of those games where you're flipping through the channels, you're like, wait, what it's a three point game in Tampa.

What is going on there?

That's going to be one of those games.

Well, who do you think is going to be quarterbacking for the Jets?

Do you think Fields is going to be at a concussion protocol or you.

Think it'd be Tyrone Matters particularly to be honest, it's either going to be Tyrod Taylor or Fields.

And so my prediction is not changing with regard My prediction does not change regardless of who's at quarterback.

Interesting.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I did not pick on that game, but I did go with a hot hand that the guy I disrespected last week and that's Daniel Jones.

I'm going to take Daniel Jones, he's going to throw for three scores in the game against the Titans.

I've been picking on the Titans every week, but I think this is legitimate.

I think the Colts are going to roll Daniel Jones with three TDs passes.

That's kind of funny because the tight I was going to stick with the Titans upsetting the Colts.

I went with the Titans upset the Rams.

Last week I was going to go again.

That was my last game that I cut, so that didn't.

That does not make my list.

But I would be opposite you.

I think that will be another game where we kind of throw our hands up and be like, how is this the same Colts team we saw for the first two weeks?

I'm not buying in quite yet, so.

Well, they can.

They can prove me wrong, but they don't have to because they're actually not officially one of my.

One of my picks.

What is officially one of my picks is that you're going to see a really fun game in the dome in Minnesota with two backup quarterbacks.

I don't know this for sure.

Obviously, I have no intel.

I think this might be a little bit of a convenient ankle injury for J.J. mcCarthy.

He looked.

He's played eight quarters so far, and in seven of them, he has not looked like an NFL quarterback.

He was amazing coming back on that first Monday night game of the fourth quarter, but he looked really, really, really lost against Atlanta, like, bad.

And I'm not saying that the Vikings are faking this injury, but I think it's sort of like, oh, no, you're.

Oh, yeah, I saw you rolled your ankle.

Why don't you sit out a few weeks?

That's kind of where I think we are with that.

I am, as somebody who's watched Carson Wentz play for my team fairly recently, believe me, I'm not over the moon here, but I think that Carson Wentz and Jake Browning Burrows, backup in Cincinnati, will combine to throw for four or more touchdowns in that game.

There's a lot of offensive weaponry in that game, a lot of receivers.

These are two pocket passers.

I think they're going to let it fly.

I think you're going to have big games from Jefferson and Chase and T. Higgins and all those guys, and I think you're going to see a pretty fun game that results in at least four touchdown passes total.

Okay, I like that game, too.

And I was leaning towards Wentz a little bit, and because I think coach up there in Minnesota is a bit of a quarterback whisper.

You know, you look at what happened with Sam Darnold last year and, you know, really reignited his career.

I think he helped Daniel Jones last year, even though Daniel Jones is on the bench.

And now Daniel Jones is coming to life, and I think Carson Wentz is in that same mold as those two, and he's really going to benefit from it, but he's not going to benefit because his offensive line is in shambles.

They're down three starters on that offensive line.

Luckily, this week, they're playing maybe a questionable defense in the Bengals.

But I also like Browning.

I like what he's done, and I have Browning taking the Bengals over the Vikings, and Bengals putting up over 30 points with.

With Browning at quarterback, Bengals win and score 30.

Wow.

All right, I got that.

Okay.

I'm going to move on to my number four pick and that we're going to go to.

What everybody's been talking about this week.

This is going to be sort of hard to explain, but I think we're going to have tush push drama in Philly this week.

So here's what I'm predicting, and I'll try to explain it the best I can.

Something negative is going to happen to the Eagles on the tush push this week.

I think there's been too much chatter.

I think the NFL is getting a little antsy about this.

I think they're getting a little embarrassed about everybody, you know, pointing out the obvious flaws in this play with the lining up of off sides.

And some people say it's, you know, too dangerous, too violent, etc.

I think something's going to happen this week that maybe starts to turn the tide.

The Eagles are going to get flagged for a penalty that they haven't been flagged for in the past, so they're going to fumble.

Something's going to happen.

Okay.

Something.

They're going.

They're not going to get it.

The Rams are going to figure out a way to stop it.

There's going to be something that turns the tide on the Tush push.

There's going to be negative tush push drama for the Eagles, and we'll define it next week, but that's the prediction.

Okay, well, you know, I couldn't be happier because I've been a proponent against the tush push.

Me having my.

My former officiating lifestyle, you know, I never liked that, you know, there's a rule aiding the runner, and that violates that rule.

And that's what traditional football is all about.

And they really.

And for me, yeah, it is.

It is.

When people talk about banning the tush push, I'm always like, okay, well, what do you mean?

You know, what, What.

What does that mean, banning the tush push?

Some runners, players coming behind the runner and pushing him through.

Aiding the runner.

Okay.

Pushing, pulling, doing anything to aid the runner in your thing other than blocking in a normal.

Would that be anywhere on the field or just within the line of scrimmage that's really.

That's anywhere on the field.

That's the way high school and college still play.

Well, maybe not college, because the whole Reggie Bush tush push thing is when it started, this whole thing, what, 15.

20 years ago, you know, sometimes when the.

It's down the field and the ball carrier is fighting for the end zone and the.

And the guard comes flying in and pushes the pile in, I think sometimes that's maybe going to be that.

That's a little hard to officiate because, you know, is he blocking high school?

That's a flag.

Okay?

That's a runner.

Well, at least you have a definition, because I think a lot of people just say ban it.

And.

And I don't really know what that means, but I think the first step is just call it.

You know, they're line.

They're clearly lining up offsides now.

The defense is lining up offsides, too.

The helmets are almost touching at the snap.

So you could.

I wouldn't be surprised this week if you see something where the refs throw the flag and they say offsetting penalties, both teams are offsides as sort of a way to make them do it again.

And now everybody's got to scooch back a little bit, right?

And then maybe they throw the flag again, offsetting penalties, both teams are offsides, right?

And then maybe.

I think that might be a way that the NFL is going to send a message to the Eagles is to flag them.

And maybe not just them, maybe like, you know, and then all of a sudden, it'll be interesting to see what the tush push looks like if they are forced to line up the way you're supposed to line up.

You know, I think history repeats itself.

And over 125 years ago, football banned the flying wedge.

And that's what this is.

It's a flying wedge at the line of scrimmage and somebody's going to get hurt, and it's going to be somebody that's going to be important to the game that like a significant player one of these days, and they're finally going to say, oh, yeah, we shouldn't have done this because this guy, you know, got maimed or whatever.

I hope.

I hope to God I'm wrong, but I fear for that and I fear for the player safety.

And I think just enforce the rules of traditional football.

No aiding the runner.

That go all goes away.

You can still have a quarterback sneak without aiding the runner, still have legal blocking, legal formations.

You know, you talk about them being over the line well, there's also illegal formations because some of the terminals are in the backfield.

If you look at that, they're almost in that wedge shape of the flying wedge.

So yeah, I, I hope you're right that something happens that non somebody not getting hurt that ends the tush push.

I hope you're right in that prediction.

Yeah, you'll see the tide turn this week.

Something's happening.

You heard it here first.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I'm going to stay with my popular.

Another popular pick.

I've been having a Lions.

I've gone back and forth with the Lions the first two weeks and I'm going to have the Lions upending the Ravens with a late score in Baltimore to send the Ravens to the one and two team because this is a battle of one on one teams, very good teams that one of them is going to go home with two losses.

Well, we are 100% head to head on this one because my last pick also ends in Baltimore on Monday night and my pick is that the Ravens win by seven or more and that kind of a subscript to that is that the game is not really a nail biter at the end.

Meaning, you know, midway through the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter it feels like the Ravens are in control.

They will not give it away like they did in Buffalo.

I think Baltimore is just so talented, offensively.

Special.

Very, very special.

I think I saw something today where Lamar is now has the number one, is number one on the all time list for QB rating and I think he's number three all time already quarterback rushing yards.

So we're talking about historic stuff from Lamar and they're at home.

Their defense is generally better at home.

I would not.

I don't think that what we saw from the Lions offense last week was a mirage or anything like that.

I actually think they'll probably do okay Monday night.

They will not be able to keep up with the Ravens is my prediction.

I think it's pretty high scoring game.

I think the Ravens score a lot.

I think they sort of overwhelm the Lions and they win the game by seven or seven or more.

Yeah, I'm going on the basis I know the Ravens over the last three or four years, definitely last year, they struggle in the beginning of the year.

They have.

They lose some games that you wouldn't think that they would lose.

They've already had that.

I mean that was a great shootout with the Bills a couple weeks ago.

I can't say that that's something that people weren't expecting is probably a 50, 50 game.

Bills are very good team, but the Lions are very good team.

But the Ravens defense is a little bit porous.

I think teams are scoring some points on them.

Cleveland put some points up against them, which you wouldn't think, but definitely the Bills did.

They've put 40 on them, I think so.

I think, I think the Lions have a better offense and they're getting things clicking.

Better offense than the Bills have at week one.

The Lions in week three are.

That's why I'm, I'm taking that upset.

All right.

Well, I think so far this year you're, you've beaten me in the head to head.

So I know week one we had one, so we'll see if I can even it.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I'm going to go something I haven't done yet this year and I'm going to pick my own team and this is probably jinxing them to all get out, but I'm going to have the Steelers have three touchdowns from their tight end room.

Whoa.

I'm not going to.

I don't know.

I think they're going to run a lot of 12 personnel in this and they have four very talented tight ends and they're going to get three scores out of them.

And I don't know who's going to get a. I'm not saying one person is going to get all three.

I'm not saying John is getting two and Washington one or you know, Fryer Moose getting all three.

No, I think the tight end room.

Three touchdowns this week.

Let me ask, I like that.

Let me, let me ask you a question though.

Will they let the ball bounce from the landing zone into the end zone and then just walk off the field again?

You know, this is like deja vu of like 20 years ago.

We had a rookie do a boneheaded thing on a kickoff very similar and it ended up costing a game.

It did it again this year and hopefully that's the end of that.

I hope you learned.

It's funny, it was probably bound to happen to somebody because with the changing kickoff rules, you know, a lot of these kids coming out of college, you know, they may, you know, they're, it's probably hard for the coaches to go over all of the different rules, you know, now, you know, it's different if it, it's kicked in the end zone versus if it lands in the landing zone and then goes in the end zone, you know, so ever goes out of bounds.

There's a lot of different.

There's a Lot of different things happening.

I, I know a lot of people think it's very goofy that the kickoff rules.

I actually really like it because it's, it's added an element of strategy and it's taken away a very, very boring play that had almost become like the extra point.

You know, it was just like the guy rears back, kicks in the end zone.

We have, you know, 75, 80% touchbacks, so I really like what they've done, but boy, and it's funny because that was such a big play in that game.

I mean, it literally may have cost the Steelers a win.

You know, you're down by three and all of a sudden you're down by 10.

And that, that changes the game significantly.

Yeah, change the whole momentum of the game, that's for sure.

Yeah, I, I also, I like the dynamic kickoff.

I heard a stat the other day, serious NFL radio Pat Kerwin said, you know, he keeps a lot of stats.

He said that this year, with changing that dynamic kickoff, backing it up five yards and making the, the 35 yard for the penalty for the 35 yard line, there have been an average of eight kick returns per game so far in the first two weeks.

So that's basically for a team where two years ago, did you even get one kickoff return in a game?

You know, so it's really changed that.

And they're bringing the kickoff return back.

And I like that.

Yeah, and I, and I like that there's different aspects to it.

I like the landing zone idea and that like the, There's a sweet spot, you know, if you can get the ball to bounce at the two yard line, that's kind of like perfect.

Right?

So I kind of, I kind of like it.

I think it's fun.

I think it makes the kickers a little more involved.

I think it encourages teams to put their better players back there, you know, Debo Samuel for Washington returning kicks.

Antonio Gibson took one to the house for the Patriots, who also plays for them quite a bit.

So it's not just the return specialists anymore.

So, yeah, I think it's worth.

I think that's one thing that's working out pretty well for the league.

Tush push?

No Dynamic kickoff.

Yes.

Total agreement with you on that.

Well, great.

Yeah, that's awesome.

All right, well, I think we have some pretty good predictions.

Going to be very interesting week three and we'll have to see what happens.

Tune in next Wednesday and you'll see the results and our picks for week four.

Ed, we really appreciate you coming on and helping out at this.

It's a great idea you had and having a lot of fun with it.

Thanks Darren.

You have a great week.

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