Pick Em Week 8

(For Pick Em standings -- week-by-week and YTD -- click here.)

Hey, hey - we got back on the right side of the suck/don't suck line this past weekend, with all of us getting 11 correct plus the lock.  Now, all of our Crazy Ivans de-Ivanafied each other, so the tally still stands with Forty one point ahead.

This week, Keller's the only one with some Ivan picks, and strangely, those were the safe picks, so anything can happen.  He might storm ahead, or drop behind.  There are a few games that I am concerned about.  Green Bay is favored by so much that they could be the upset of the week.  I doubt it, but it could happen.  Also, even though we all picked them, I'm not super convinced that the Steelers are going to win.  They have momentum, they're home, and they do well against rookie QBs...however, people treat him like the Second Coming with dreads, and the Steelers have been choking something fierce this season.  Take that pick with caution.

So, let's do this thing and start to enter the half-way point of the season already!
Lock of the Week (Keller): Green Bay Packers over Jacksonville Jaguars (take the Packers, even though they're 13 point favorites): 38-10. 

When I heard that Blaine Gabbert and Maurice Jones-Drew were both hurt and had to play the Packers at Green Bay, I knew I had my Lock of the Week.  New England playing in Old England is tempting, but not as sure a thing as a crappy offense facing a rejuvenated defense on the road.  Also, Aaron Rodgers has been looking fairly decent the last couple weeks.  I think the Packers might be onto something with that guy.  Actually, I thought the line was going to be 17 on this one before the lines for Week 8 were released.  I was prepared to take the Packers at 17 and you should be prepared to take them at 13.  Go Pack, Go!  (Rodgers is also on two of my fantasy teams...)

Lock of the Week (Weidman): Green Bay Packers over Jacksonville Jaguars (Despite what Keller says above, at the time of this writing, they're 15 point favs): 42-10. 

Wow, sometimes the locks lock themselves. Jacksonville is more beat up than a (insert probably offensive simile here), GB is looking strong and they're at home.  They're favored by more points than several teams scored last week and one of them won their game.  Basically, Rodgers should start warming up.

Lock of the Week: Green Bay over Jacksonville (Forty): (As much as I want to say the score will be 1 trillion to zero, I'll go conservative and peg it 42-9. Take Packers with the points and they can probably get the over by themselves, but Jacksonville won't be giving them any help there so lets say under.)

This might be the scariest thing you can watch the Sunday before Halloween. Aaron Rodgers is the Freddy Kreuger in the nightmares of all Jacksonville players. If they didn't go into this game as huge underdogs to start, the fact that they will be without Maurice Jones-Drew and possibly Blaine Gabbert drops their chances of winning from 5 percent to nothing. That's right, I said there is absolutely no chance the Jaguars win this game. Even if the Packers all go down in a plane crash, they could activate Don Majkowski and the rest of the Tecmo Super Bowl roster and still crush them. A lot of experts are saying the Packers are finally finding their swagger, but I don't think they ever lost it. They had to cope with injuries and deal with some very good defenses that knew how to play them. The Jags defense is ranked 28th overall in the NFL. The offense is ranked dead last and they're going to be missing their two best players. I'd watch this game, but I'm not a sadist.

Meet the "Experts":

Brad "QBERT" Keller is the inventor and sole proprietor of the QBERT (Quantitative BERT jones is awesome) system for rating quarterbacks. Using this innovative approach and working tirelessly part time breaking down film and finding angles inside the angles, he has mastered the art of picking and handicapping NFL games. With an expanded playing field this season, he's anxious to defend his title against a formidable group of experts that... hey, you know what? He can beat these two jokers, right? No problem. Because he has a foolproof system.



"Arena" Weidman's prime qualification for this contest is that he's spent more than a decade watching Steelers games with Keller while drinking. Because of this, most of his picks might seem like they were done while drunk, but that's just a facet of how he gets into "recall mode." A devoted follower of the Arena Football League, Weidman's NFL world view is colored through this lens. Because of this, he possesses strong opinions on why more people should go to Power games and how the the Cardinals should really be using the Rattlers as a farm team. Mainly, he just has trouble with the field being way too big.



Leonard "Forty" Hayhurst earned his nickname for his ability to grow the facial hair of a 40-year-old man at the age of 16, not his ability to pound 40s of King Cobra, but there's that too. He owns the largest collection of Drew Bledsoe memorabilia in the world (five items would be the largest, right?). He feels for Cleveland Browns fans because when he started rooting for a 2-14 club in the New England Patriots, they eventually won three Super Bowls. Then Steelers fans brag about how they have six Super Bowl wins, to which Leonard says they would have had eight if the Patriots hadn't beaten them twice in the AFC Championship game. They then mumble something about Franco Harris and walk away.