Every Saturday morning, I'll take a quick look at all the week's games, offering my own brief take on what I think will happen, as well as touching on significant injury news since our Weekly came out. I'll check in over the course of the day to answer questions, too.
What follows is a brief look at all the games with how I'd react in my own lineups to injury developments or other news. The official rankings are the ones in the Weekly. Those take precedence. But sometimes players are very close, and in those cases I'm glad to offer opinions on how I'd approach those situations. Sometimes I like certain players more or less than Ian, and sometimes I have different risk tolerance with injuries etc.
Texans at Ravens: Kudos to the Texans for having a great season. It ends here. A Ravens team that quite reasonably could or should have won every game it lost is not, coming off a bye, going to stumble at home against Houston, as impressive as C.J. Stroud has been. (This is where my wife would tell me I'm jinxing Baltimore, and where I say I wish I had any such ability to control outcomes of games; I don't.) I'm using some Texans in a use-players-only-once competition, I don't think they'll get shut down. But I'm expecting Baltimore to put up big numbers both running and passing, and win something like 34-20 or 31-17. It will be cold and windy, which might keep scoring down a little.
Big development is that Mark Andrews apparently won't be active, which makes Isaiah Likely an excellent TE play -- not only should he be good, but he probably won't be worth the risk a week from now, if Baltimore wins and Andrews returns. I'm somewhat interested in Odell Beckham and Zay Flowers, too. Nico Collins is about as far into Houston's offense I really want to go, but Stroud and Devin Singletary have some appeal for some garbage passing/receiving numbers if nothing else.
Packers at 49ers: Packers were my team growing up. Lynn Dickey and what was a strong offense (and bad defense) in the early to mid-80s, Don Majkowski for a couple of fun years, then the entire Favre era. Lots of great games with the 49ers in those years, especially in the Favre era for Packers fans. 49ers dominated the Rodgers years and I didn't care because I moved on when Favre did. Anyway, enough memory lane. Point is it's a new era, and maybe Love-Purdy will follow in the footsteps of Favre-Young.
As for this week, I think San Francisco is a lot better. Their defense is better. Their skill guys are better across the board. They've had a week to rest up and prepare, while the Packers have had a week of hearing how awesome they are. And the 49ers now won't be apt to take the visitor lightly, as the Cowboys probably did. Jordan Love is playing great and Green Bay should generate some points, but it's hard to figure out which ones to use (fortunately I used Aaron Jones last week). Jones faces a tough run defense, Green Bay is shuttling different wide receivers in and out of the lineup and throwing to all of them and both tight ends...tricky situation for lineups. There might be some rain, but nothing that should hold scoring down. San Francisco 34-23 seems about right.
Bucs at Lions: I don't think the Bucs are being given a lot of chance in this game, which I understand. They were a 9-8 team during the season that got shut down in a one-sided loss to the Detroit. They're led by Baker Mayfield and Rachaad White, while Detroit has a top 5 offense (both rushing and passing) and there's a lot of excitement. But the reality is that Detroit's defense wasn't very good during the season, and I think we saw last week with Green Bay-Dallas that if a defense isn't that great (and the Cowboys were really a fairly average group when not playing lousy offenses like Giants-Jets-Patriots-Panthers et al) and an offense hits some plays early on, anything can happen. I expect the Bucs to lose, but I think they'll be competitive and put some points on the board. Weather won't be an issue (yes, Detroit plays indoors).
That said, Detroit's offense has too much. They can run, they can pass, they can hit some big plays and methodically move down the field. Tampa Bay's defense was helped by playing in the NFC South, littered with terrible offenses and coaching staffs that have been fired (all of them). I feel pretty good that the Lions will be moving the ball and scoring this week. Had I not already used Mike Evans (ugh) and Rachaad White (double-ugh) in the laugher over the Eagles where guys like Trey Palmer and David Moore were the top producers, I'd be using them. But the Lions will be the ones doing a lot more. Detroit 30, Tampa Bay 24.
Kansas City at Bills: So I've got three favorites winning; chalk picks. Without looking it up I'm pretty sure all four home teams and favorites almost never win. And certainly if you look around at national picks, the one upset anyone is looking at is Kansas City going into Buffalo and winning. And I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping the Bills can get the win. We're all a little tired of Kansas City probably; the shift from when a feel-good bunch of likable guys suddenly wins a couple of Super Bowls and then everyone hates them. I for one have no problem with Patrick Mahomes or the Taylor Swift pop culture drama or any of that (Red is my favorite Taylor Swift album, that thing rocks).
Football-wise, the issue is that the Bills have a lot of defensive injuries. They've been accumulating over the course of the season, which most teams have, but they lost a couple of key starters in the win over Pittsburgh. Their defense maybe wasn't great the second half of the season anyway, and now they're really shorthanded. That caused us to revise our official expectations after initially projecting a Bills win to a Kansas City win.
But I'm sticking with the Bills. They're home, they've got a prolific running quarterback who will be running prolifically in this no-tomorrow game, and dang it, it's their turn. (Not something to bet, but maybe an intangible to weigh in.) Kansas City's offense has generally been off all season, and winning a game over a Miami team that hadn't played good ball for more than a month doesn't mean that much. I know that given injuries, KC has the better defense. But I think Buffalo has the higher-performing offense, with a few more weapons at receiver (even with Gabe Davis out, sorry Gabe, I think they'll be fine with Khalil Shakir and Dalton Kincaid). If we look strictly at numbers and health and stuff, KC wins like 24-20. But I'm going Buffalo 26, Kansas City 23. And expecting the best game of the weekend.
Enjoy the games.