Week 14 picks that can keep our hot streak alive
Our picks have been good again lately. Will that continue for another week? Hopefully so!
This season, Week 14 is like no other Week 14 we’ve seen before: four teams are on a bye. Because of the expansion to a 17-game schedule, that’s the latest bye week in NFL history.
So we’ll have to wait another week until we’re back to a 16-game slate. But this week does bring one development we’ve been anticipating: teams can start clinching postseason berths! Well, specifically, a few NFC teams can; the AFC has no such scenarios this week, the first time since 2002 that it hasn’t had any playoff spots up for grabs before Week 15.
The Cardinals will punch their playoff ticket with a win over the Rams on Monday night. The Packers and Buccaneers can also make it official, if a couple outcomes work out in their favor.
Unfortunately for others, they can join the Texans on the elimination list. This week, the Lions, Jaguars, and Jets can kiss their longshot playoff hopes goodbye with, at the very least, a loss. In the Jets’ case, there are 66 other ways it can happen — or could’ve happened, since the Steelers’ loss on Thursday night makes several of them moot:
It was expected that the Lions and Jaguars would be eliminated last week, but they beat the odds … temporarily. It doesn’t look good for them this week, at least according to Vegas. Let’s take a look at the odds, per DraftKings as of Thursday night, for this weekend’s slate (the favorite is in bold):
Cowboys at Washington (+4.5)
Jaguars at Titans (-8)
Seahawks at Texans (+8.5)
Raiders at Chiefs (-9.5)
Saints at Jets (+5.5)
Falcons at Panthers (-2.5)
Ravens at Browns (-3)
Giants at Chargers (-9.5)
Lions at Broncos (-10)
49ers at Bengals (+2)
Bills at Bucs (-3.5)
Bears at Packers (-12.5)
Rams at Cardinals (-2.5)
As usual, we’ll break down a few of Week 14’s most interesting matchups, but we will not be making picks for every single one. If you’d like us to weigh in on any games that we don’t include, please leave us a comment at The Post Route and we’ll try to offer our best advice.
Sarah’s picks
OK, that’s two weeks in a row that my picks have been mostly spot on. I’m not ready to call it a trend just yet, but I no longer feel like I’m in the slump I was in at midseason. Now let’s see if I can make it three straight weeks of not sucking.
You should feel most confident in these picks
The Texans aren’t that much worse than the Seahawks, record-wise. But if you’ve watched both teams, then you know just how worse of shape the Texans are in. It’s possible this is one of those weeks when Houston’s defense forces five turnovers, but it’s hard to be optimistic about this squad after its 31-0 shutout loss at home last week. And while the Seahawks only have four wins this season, they always have some fight in them … and unlike the Texans, a good coach and no question of who’s playing quarterback.
But hey, at least someone’s playing well for Houston: Cam Johnston is the leading vote-getter among punters in the AFC.
It wasn’t that long ago when I predicted the Raiders would upset the Chiefs. I was very wrong about that. The Raiders played the Chiefs tough last year in the regular season when no one else really did, but they couldn’t match that effort in Week 10 this year — Vegas got walloped 41-14. That was the only time in the last couple months that Kansas City’s offense looked like the juggernaut we once knew, and I don’t have much hope that Raiders DC Gus Bradley will abandon those single-high safety looks that proved to be ineffective in their previous Sunday Night Football matchup.
This week, a different rivalry is in the SNF spotlight: Bears vs. Packers. Last time they met, the Packers came away with a 24-14 win and Aaron Rodgers improved his record against Chicago to 21-5 — a fact Rodgers decided to rub in Bears fans’ faces:
Maybe if this were a different Bears team rather than one mere weeks (or days) away from firing their coach, then Rodgers’ actions might come back to bite him in the butt for the rematch. But nah, the Packers should roll.
You should feel least confident in these picks
The Cowboys might lead the NFC East right now, but they’re not the hottest team in the division. That distinction belongs to Washington, which has won four straight games against good and/or not-terrible competition. Although the Cowboys can’t secure a playoff bid this week, they can make it darn near impossible for anyone in the division to catch them if they beat WFT.
Dak Prescott hasn’t been as sharp since his calf injury, and in turn, Dallas is 2-3 in its last five games. Here’s a quick look at Prescott’s stats in that stretch:
Prescott, in his first 6 games: 73.2 completion %, 1,813 passing yards, 16 TDs, 4 INTs, 115.0 passer rating, 8.39 Y/A, 9.04 AY/A
Prescott, in his last 5 games: 64.5 completion %, 1,357 passing yards, 7 TDs, 4 INTs, 87.4 passer rating, 6.79 Y/A, 6.59 AY/A
Despite Prescott’s recent struggles, I think he can rebound against a team he has owned in his career (he’s 7-1 vs. Wash), especially with his full arsenal of receivers again. But Tony Pollard, who has been their most reliable source for rushing yards while Ezekiel Elliott has been dealing with a knee injury, might not play due to his own injury. That could hurt the Cowboys’ cause, as could Mike McCarthy’s quote in which he guaranteed a win. I’m not sure bulletin board material matters that much in the NFL, but I can totally see McCarthy being a straight-up jinx, even if Prescott is on board:
That said, I’m going with the Cowboys, even if I feel less confident than McCarthy does.
At the same time as that NFC East matchup is happening, the NFC South is hosting its own rivalry game between the Falcons and Panthers. Will the competitive version of the Falcons show up this week? Will Matt Rhule’s change at OC be just what the Panthers, and Cam Newton, need to get back on track? I have no idea! I’m not ready to declare Newton’s return to Carolina a bust, though, so I’ll side with the Panthers.
The last game I’ll highlight here involves two teams I included in this section a week ago: 49ers vs. Bengals. I leaned toward both of them in Week 13, but I was also not surprised they ended up falling short. Now, these playoff hopeful are trying to avoid a losing streak.
Both have a double-digit sack artist leading their pass rush (Nick Bosa for SF, Trey Hendrickson for CIN), a suspect secondary, and a quarterback who throws too many interceptions. The 49ers are the better overall team per DVOA, which might explain why they’re slight favorites on the road despite the Bengals having the better overall record.
On top of that, Joe Burrow is dealing with a pinky injury on his throwing hand and Bosa is champing at the bit to knock his buddy to the ground — something that happened six times a week ago:
And yet, I’m going to give the Bengals the tiniest of edges because I’m concerned about the 49ers’ ground attack. They’re running out of healthy backs, and it doesn’t look likely that their leading rusher, Elijah Mitchell, will play. They might not even have Deebo Samuel, who can be a weapon out of the backfield too, back this week. San Francisco’s offense needs its run game to work to have any success. Jimmy Garoppolo isn’t the kind of quarterback who can go out and put the team on his back. Unless Mitchell and/or Samuel surprisingly play, or Kyle Shanahan adds a wrinkle (like letting rookie QB Trey Lance sniff the field), then I think the Bengals can pull it off.
Then again, putting faith in the Bengals has backfired on me before.
Why these are potential upset picks
I just laid out why the Bengals could win on Sunday, even if they’re only small underdogs. I’m going to take more of a swing with my next upset pick: Bills over the Bucs.
Last week, I correctly took the Patriots against the Bills, though if you had told me beforehand that New England would only attempt three passes all game, I don’t know if I would’ve stuck with that prediction. Luckily for the Bills, Tampa Bay’s weather will be much nicer than the weather in Buffalo was on Monday night.
That might be the only good sign for them heading into this matchup. In his career, Tom Brady has more wins against the Bills than any quarterback has against any opponent (he’s 32-3 vs. Buffalo). Tre'Davious White is done for the season, which means Brady’s about to pick on his replacement. Sean McDermott was publicly annoyed with his OC earlier in the week and the Bills’ lack of offensive cohesion.
But I’m going against logic in this one. Mostly, anyway. There are actual reasons to believe in the Bills, even if the Bucs have been, by far, the more trustworthy team this season.
I keep waiting for the Bills to show off that firepower that we all expected them to have this year, and it seems like they have a chance to do that against the Bucs’ constantly injured secondary. Plus, the Buffalo defense still ranks No. 1 in DVOA and forces a lot of turnovers.
The Bills need this win more and are probably itching to get the taste of the Patriots loss out of their mouth. If they can jump out to an early lead, then I think they can do what the Colts couldn’t do two weeks ago: not let their foot off the gas and take down the defending Super Bowl champs.
Christian’s picks
Pick I like the most
Los Angeles Chargers (-450) over the New York Giants
How many players would the Chargers have to lose before I’d take the Giants in this one? It’s probably somewhere around six starters, including Justin Herbert. The second-year QB may be without his top two wideouts Sunday, but I’m not sure that’ll matter given:
How smoothly he’s incorporated his lesser targets into the Chargers’ gameplan and
How bad New York’s 27th-ranked passing defense has been.
The Giants come into Week 14 with zero visible improvement from firing offensive play caller Jason Garrett and will now turn to Jake Fromm — he of zero regular season snaps and who was replaced by Mitchell Trubisky as backup quarterback in Buffalo — at quarterback. The Giants could overcome this by striking at the Chargers’ Achilles’ heel, a defense that allows 4.6 yards per carry, if their own run game wasn’t so ineffective (28th-best in the NFL, per DVOA).
New York hasn’t topped 265 total yards of offense in any of its last four games, and the bulk of those came with Daniel Jones at quarterback instead of the team’s QB3. If ever there was a stretch for the Chargers to be ravaged by COVID, it’s the three weeks in which they get the Giants and Texans sandwiched around a showdown with the Chiefs. Herbert should be able to get enough going throwing to Donald Parham and Jalen Guyton to carry LA to 8-5.
Pick I overthought, so you should probably fade it
Cincinnati Bengals (+102) over the San Francisco 49ers
I genuinely don’t know what to do with this one. Every time I’m ready to write Jimmy Garoppolo off as garbage, he meets my most basic expectations. When I think he might be good, he reverts to fourth-quarter-Super-Bowl Jimmy G. Nothing makes sense!
That includes Sunday’s ticket prices. Despite this being one of Week 14’s closest matchups (between two teams in the playoff hunt, no less), it’s also stunningly inexpensive to get into: there are multiple seats available for under $20 on the resale market.
That’s a remnant of mid-2000s Bengals teams that has somehow cropped up in the middle of a 7-5 season where Cincinnati lies only one game behind Baltimore for the AFC North’s top spot. Have fans already exceeded their disappointment quota for this team? Did last week’s aborted comeback vs. the Chargers sour them on the rest of 2021? Does Ohio have no interest in watching a Bosa brother return to the Buckeye State?
The Bengals aren’t nearly as hopeless as their resale ticket price suggests. Last week’s loss to the Chargers could have been a stirring victory if not for some poorly timed turnover luck. Their two games before that were blowout wins over fringe playoff contenders. In Week 14 they get to face another, at home, against a shaky quarterback who matches up poorly with a defense that’s forced eight turnovers in its last three games.
Garoppolo has looked like his typical self over the last two games, sweeping away the memory of a four-game stretch in which he was one of the league’s most efficient passers (eight total touchdowns to one interception and a 113.6 passer rating). While he’ll be able to rely on George Kittle to charge up his offense — Darren Waller had seven catches on eight targets for 116 yards in his 2021 showdown against the Bengal defense — a glitchy, injury-marred running game and a defense that’s given up 28+ points in half its games will provide several opportunities for the home team to pull away.
The 49ers’ biggest weakness is in a secondary where multiple starters have given up a passer rating of 100+ in coverage this season. Now that group has to try and contain the deep ball passing of a team whose early success was defined by its ability to dial up big plays. If Ja’Marr Chase can reclaim some of his early season magic, he’ll help Cincinnati run away from San Francisco.
Upset pick I like the most
The Lions made good on a pick I made back in September to stem a six-week losing streak in this section. Let’s see if we can’t make that a streak.
Baltimore Ravens (+110) over the Cleveland Browns
I wanted to make this a Raiders pick, but I couldn’t in good conscience back them after getting drubbed 41-14 at home in what turned out to be Kansas City’s get-right game. Vegas upset the Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium last year, but that was with Jon Gruden lighting a fire under its ass and taking victory laps in the team buses once the game was finished. I don’t know if they’ll be able to find that spark again.
Instead, let’s look at one of Week 14’s stranger lines. I kinda understand why Cleveland is favored here. The Browns are playing at home and need a win to keep their playoff hopes alive. The Ravens have a little more wiggle room at 8-4 and have disappointed against AFC North rivals this season — they’re 1-2 against divisional foes so far.
But Cleveland remains a rudderless ship behind an injured Baker Mayfield — the same guy who had three fourth-quarter drives to topple Baltimore when these teams met in Week 11 and came away with 24 net yards over 10 dropbacks. His inability to mount a comeback helped the Ravens escape some questionable calls and fend off the Browns in Maryland. Cleveland is 4-2 at home, but its best win came against the Broncos.
Lamar Jackson has something to prove in the midst of a four-game interception streak. The Ravens have officially messed around long enough to cede control of the AFC to the Patriots. They can tighten their grasp on the AFC North by handling their business in Ohio Sunday.