Alternative Picks: Week 9, 2019

Well, whaddy’a know. Tony pulled through in week eight. Andy’s lead for the season is down to a half-dozen games. Here are the standings.

And here are the picks for week nine:

1) Tony: 49ers over Cardinals – Yes, San Francisco is on the road. Yes, the Cardinals just acquired Kenyan Drake. Yes, the 49ers apparently are for real.
2) Andy: Seahawks over Bucs – Stats show that it’s not quite as bad when a team has to travel east to west compared with west to east, but I’m guessing if someone dug deep they’d find that when Tampa travels that far they suck.
3) Andy: Bills over Washington – I don’t feel great about this game, but Buffalo is undefeated in games against teams with crappy records.
4) Tony: Packers over Chargers – I certainly hope that the Packers finally hit a trap game, but I’m not sure the Chargers are it.
5) Andy: Patriots over Ravens – the early numbers on this don’t make it look like New England is a heavy favorite in this game, but until someone beats them I’m taking them high every week.
6) Tony: Texans over Jaguars – Jags have won two in a row, and the Texans are without JJ Watt, but they’ve been there before.
7) Andy: Cowboys over Giants – Wow. I’m not surprised Tony took the Texans, but I’m surprised it was that high. Watt’s a big loss and Houston was a couple plays from losing to Oakland. Meanwhile, Dallas seems to have righted things and they’re coming off a bye. And after a couple early promising weeks of Daniel Jones, the Giants seem to have righted things, as well, by going back to sucking.
8) Tony: Colts over Steelers – I almost went Dallas, but I try to avoid NFC East road teams in prime time games.  I’m also not convinced the Colts are a great 5-2 team, but I am pretty convinced that the Steelers aren’t good enough to hang with them.
9) Andy: Jets over Dolphins – Revenge game for Adam Gase’s Crazy Eyes. New York is bad, but Miami isn’t even trying. This isn’t as big a lock as picking against the Dolphins most weeks, but this seems like a pretty good place to put this game.
10) Tony: Panthers over Titans – Tennessee has won a couple in a row, but against not great teams. Carolina is coming off a shellacking from the 49ers and will want to prove that it was just an off week.
11) Andy: Browns over Broncos – Cleveland has been terrible and I expect that will continue for most of this season. But if not for turnovers they looked to be at least competing with New England last week – though the Patriots may have been toying with them. Denver also has been bad. Joe Flacco is mad. Which is a step up from being bored, which he has looked all season. Anyway … getting back to the point — Cleveland is a bad team with a lot of talent and the arrow hopefully pointed up. Denver is a bad team with … not a lot of hope of getting better in the near future.
12) Tony: Oakland over Detroit – Both of these teams have been putting up points–and in most cases, giving up even more. Oakland gets my pick due to being at home,  and the fact that I’m still not convinced that the Lions aren’t going to quit on Matt Patricia–especially if they make more trade deadline deals.
13) Andy: Eagles over Bears – Normally I don’t mind picking the Vikings game, as Tony has some superstition about it or something, but this week I have no idea what’s going to happen. Will the good Kirk Cousins show up? Or the big-game Kirk Cousins, who tightens the grip around his throat with every pass? Will Pat Mahomes play? I’ll pass and take a far more sure thing. What in the hell has happened to the Bears? Even those projecting a regression from last year couldn’t have expected this, could they? Trubisky is worse. Nagy is wayyyyy worse. Philly wins.
14) Tony:  Chiefs over Vikings – Huh, I once again managed to miscount the games, and thought I had successfully stuck Andy with the Vikings game… I will once again pick against the Vikings, so if they lose, I will at least get a game right here.

Tony also added a few games to his lead in the straight up standings:

And here are the straight up picks for the week: