Hurley's Picks: Cowboys Due For A Flop, While Bears' Woes Likely To Worsen
BOSTON (CBS) -- Trust the process.
It's a cliche, and it's probably overused, but I believe in that mantra now more than ever. Trust the process.
I say that after I went 5-9-1 last week. It was no doubt a bad showing, but it was not without reason. My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world, a healthy baby girl named Penelope Mae Hurley, and I obviously experienced the best week of my life. Naturally, though, I didn't have much time to make NFL picks (funny, they precipitously dropped down my list of priorities). So I hastily grabbed a piece of paper on Sunday around noon and scribbled down my picks. I spent about four minutes when making these picks while simultaneously managing a crying baby. I normally take about four hours to make the picks, while only needing to manage my rumbling belly. I made them last week solely to keep up a record for the season, and it did not turn out well.
I turned in my first losing week of the year, and my overall record took a hit. That's the bad news.
But the good news is plentiful. For one, there is that baby girl I already told you about, but secondly, I know that I'll be fine so long as I trust the process that got me out to that 59-33 start, do my homework and come back strong here for Week 8. Let's get right to it.
(Home team in caps; Thursday lines)
Detroit (-3.5) over ATLANTA (in London)
Kind of a no-brainer here. The Atlanta Falcons are the worst road team in NFL history (don't look that up; just trust me). For whatever reason, they just can't function as a football team when they're not in their special little dome in Atlanta. Matt Ryan has won 78 percent of his starts at home, and he has won 46 percent of his starts on the road while seeing his TD-to-INT ratio go from 2.67-to-1 at home to 1.59-to-1 on the road. His completion percentage drops more than 5 full points in his home-road splits, and he averages 0.74 fewer yards per pass attempt on the road.
So now you want to send the Falcons overseas, and force them to play at 9:30 a.m. on their body clocks? Great googily moogily.
I once again apologize in advance to the people of London who want to see good football. It's not coming this weekend.
(Quick side thought: If the NFL really wants people to embrace the idea of a team being permanently based in London, this is exactly how you do it. How awesome is it to have football on from 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 p.m.? That's outstanding. And if fans in the U.S. know they can consistently have a game to watch in the morning leading up to all the 1 p.m. games, they will love it, plain and simple.)
(Side thought to my side thought: All of that is true, unless the London team is just a relocated Jacksonville team, because nobody enjoys watching the Jaguars play football -- not at 10 a.m., not at noon, not at midnight, not ever.)
KANSAS CITY (-7) over St. Louis
Congrats to the Rams, who can win football games when they pull off multiple tricks on punt plays at home. Wahoo. Try that on the road, in an environment where fans are always jacked up but will be especially jacked up considering their beloved Royals will have taken charge of the World Series by Sunday. (Yeah that's right, people. I am now double-dipping with football and baseball picks in the same column. Bow down to me. I am fearless.)
Houston (-1.5) over TENNESSEE
I love Houston's defense (OK, more accurately, I love J.J. Watt) so much that I keep picking them, despite the fact that they're a bad team with a bad quarterback and a first-year NFL head coach (who's also just in his third year as a head coach at any level). It's really starting to hurt me, putting all this faith in the defense (Watt) every week.
But fortunately, the Titans are one team that is most definitely worse than Houston. And the Texans are 3-0 this season when they're favorites, so I actually feel comfortable taking them this week, even after that abomination in Pittsburgh on Monday night.
I mean, if you can't beat this guy ...
He actually looks like his name is J.J. Watt Bait. I almost feel bad for him.
Minnesota (+2.5) over TAMPA BAY
Gross!!
CAROLINA (+5) over Seattle
The Seahawks are still good, right? Right?! I mean, any team can lose focus in St. Louis and get caught looking past an opponent, and any team can get beaten in Big D by a good Cowboys team, right? The Seahawks aren't going to drop below .500, are they? I know that exactly a year ago, the then-defending-champion Ravens sat at 3-4 in late October, but the Seahawks are in better shape to put together a better follow-up to their Super Bowl season than the Ravens were last year. Right?!
As you can tell, I'm not entirely sure. The Seahawks are very good, but they've lost a lot of the luster they built up last year -- especially on the road, where they're 1-2.
And even last year when the Seahawks were at their most dominant, they still only managed to beat Carolina by five points in Week 1.
I of course have my doubts about Carolina, a team that very well may stink, but I don't mind the five points at home.
Baltimore (Pick 'em) over CINCINNATI
It was only a few short weeks ago that the Bengals were sitting pretty at 3-0 and had scores and scores of football analysts crowning them as perhaps the best team in the AFC. Then the Patriots exposed them, lost A.J. Green to some bad turf toe, tied (tied) the Panthers on home turf and then got run out of Indy's building. Grisly stuff, man.
Baltimore averages five more points, allows 8.4 fewer points, rushes for 20 more yards, passes for a few more yards and, most importantly, wins more often than Cincinnati.
The Ravens are pretty good. Who knew?
Miami (-6) over JACKSONVILLE
Congratulations to the Jaguars for beating the Browns last week. Yippee. The Jaguars now have one win and this swimming pool:
So that's nice.
NEW ENGLAND (-6) over Chicago
This is a tricky one, but I just feel that with all of that turmoil going on with the Bears, they're going to lose this week and hope to get things squared away during their bye week. I recognize that they're 3-1 on the road and that a good team would actually be able to win before hitting the bye week. But the Bears aren't a good team. Sometimes, it's that simple.
NEW YORK JETS (-3) over Buffalo
Here are three photographs of me upon coming to this game and trying to figure out a way to make a pick:
Anyone who pretends to know what will happen in this game is a phony and a fraud.
Oakland (+7) over CLEVELAND
Ditto. Though I believe the Cleveland Fun Time Express finally ran out of coal last weekend. Conversely, the Maybe-Win-Once Train has to leave the station at some point for Oakland. They're bad, but they're not 0-16 bad.
Philadelphia (+2.5) over ARIZONA
I don't know about you, but I just can't turn down the Eagles getting points. That's the No. 3 scoring offense in the NFL. Free points. Easy as pie. Move along.
Indianapolis (-3) over PITTSBURGH
We saw Monday night the only way the Steelers can win a game. They essentially need the opponent to turn the ball over about 14 times inside their own 20-yard line. I have a hunch that the Colts will control the ball a little bit better than Houston did. The Colts, on a roll of five straight wins in which their average margin of victory is eight points, are simply functioning at a very high level right now. The Steelers are not equipped to get in the way.
Green Bay (+1) over NEW ORLEANS
What am I missing here? Is this a "Saints are at home on prime time so they'll come out firing" type of thing? I mean, look, we all reach a point in the season where we have to accept certain things, and one of those things this year is that the Saints aren't the Saints. Same quarterback, yes, but not the same team we've come to know over the past five or so years.
The Packers have covered four straight spreads, and now they're heading to New Orleans to face a 2-4 Saints team that has only beaten Tampa Bay and Minnesota this season ... and they're getting a point? Christmas has come early.
DALLAS (-10) over Washington
The worst part about the Cowboys playing so well is that you just know they're overdue for a giant, embarrassing belly flop. And on Monday Night Football, playing against a division rival, you just feel like it's the perfect scenario for the flop to take place. It happens all the time, and it's always kind of funny, but trying to predict when it will strike is a rather inexact science.
But Colt McCoy, on the road, national TV? Nah, can't be this week. Can't be. Right?!
Last week: 5-9-1
Week 6: 12-3
Season: 63-42-1
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
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