By Kevin Gibson
Two weeks into the NFL season, eight teams remain undefeated, eight are still searching for their first win and approximately half the league’s quarterbacks have already visited the medical tent.
Welcome to professional football, where every team begins September dreaming about the Super Bowl and several are already quietly studying next year’s draft.
Falcons at Packers
Week 3 begins Thursday night with Atlanta visiting Green Bay. The Falcons arrive at Lambeau Field after being demolished 34-3 by Carolina, which is not the kind of performance that inspires confidence unless your confidence happens to be invested in the Packers.
Green Bay needed overtime to beat the New York Jets 20-17 last weekend, but an ugly victory remains considerably more attractive than being beaten by 31 points.
The Packers should win, although Thursday football has a habit of making competent teams look like they met in the parking lot shortly before kickoff.
Pick: Packers
Chargers at Bills
Buffalo opened its new stadium by defeating Detroit 41-31 and begins Week 3 with a 2-0 record.
The Bills’ offence appears fully operational, which is unfortunate news for a Chargers team that has started 0-2. Los Angeles now travels across the continent to face Josh Allen in front of a Buffalo crowd that has spent the week celebrating a win and preparing its folding tables for another important community sacrifice.
The Chargers may keep it interesting for a while. Eventually, Allen will escape a collapsing pocket, throw across his body and complete a pass that every quarterback coach in America tells children never to attempt.
Pick: Bills
Jets at Lions
The Lions gave up 41 points in Buffalo and now return home looking for someone to blame. Fortunately, the Jets are coming to town.
New York pushed Green Bay into overtime, so this is not necessarily the weekly automatic Jets loss we have grown to know and appreciate. Both teams enter the game at 1-1.
Detroit’s defence needs improvement, but its offence should find enough room inside Ford Field to prevent an early-season panic meeting.
If the Lions lose again, Detroit sports radio will remain calm, thoughtful and entirely reasonable for approximately four seconds.
Pick: Lions
Chiefs at Dolphins
Kansas City required overtime to beat Indianapolis 33-30, but the Chiefs are 2-0 and Patrick Mahomes remains Patrick Mahomes.
Miami is 0-2 after losing 35-13 to San Francisco. The Dolphins have speed, attractive uniforms and an increasingly urgent need to stop losing football games.
Unfortunately, urgency is not generally recognized as an effective defensive scheme against Mahomes.
Kansas City has not looked unbeatable, but it does not have to be unbeatable Sunday. It merely has to be better than Miami, and the Dolphins have not set that bar particularly high.
Pick: Chiefs
Bengals at Steelers
Cincinnati is 2-0 after holding Houston to six points. Pittsburgh is 1-1 after scoring only three points in a 20-3 loss to New England.
Three.
Not three touchdowns. Three points.
Steelers-Bengals games are traditionally physical, hostile and occasionally mistaken for organized combat. Pittsburgh badly needs a rebound, but Cincinnati currently looks like the more complete football team.
Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase have already connected for 50 career touchdowns, while the Steelers’ offence is currently attempting to establish whether forward movement is permitted under league rules.
Pick: Bengals
Seahawks at Commanders
Seattle has scored 31 points in consecutive games and improved to 2-0 by flattening Arizona 31-7.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught nine passes for 155 yards and three touchdowns against the Cardinals, which technically qualifies as a productive afternoon.
Washington, meanwhile, allowed Dallas to score 37 points and begins Week 3 at 0-2. That is less than ideal when preparing for an undefeated Seahawks team travelling with confidence.
Seattle sometimes turns easy-looking games into three-hour emotional emergencies, but it should have enough to win this one.
Pick: Seahawks
Cardinals at 49ers
San Francisco is 2-0, Brock Purdy just completed 20 of 22 passes and Christian McCaffrey has now reached 100 career touchdowns from scrimmage.
Arizona is coming off a 31-7 loss to Seattle.
The Cardinals will undoubtedly arrive with a carefully prepared game plan. San Francisco will counter by handing the football to McCaffrey until Arizona remembers it has somewhere else to be.
The 49ers already look like a contender. The only traditional obstacle is whether enough of their players can remain medically available until January.
Pick: 49ers
Ravens and Cowboys Take Rio
The most entertaining game of the weekend may be Baltimore against Dallas in Rio de Janeiro.
The Cowboys scored 37 points against Washington, while Dak Prescott threw four touchdown passes and passed Tony Romo to become Dallas’s career leader in touchdown passes.
Baltimore fell to 1-1 after losing 24-17 to New Orleans. The Ravens are too talented to dismiss after one loss, but football has never awarded victories based on how good everyone thought a roster looked in August.
This game has star quarterbacks, international spectacle and two fan bases fully capable of treating a September result like a national emergency.
Baltimore wants a response. Dallas looks dangerous. The Ravens win—barely.
Pick: Ravens
Rams at Broncos
The Rams recovered from their opening loss by beating the Giants 28-6. Denver also enters the game at 1-1 after defeating Jacksonville 20-13.
This should be one of the weekend’s best tactical games, which is another way of saying there may be punts.
Denver’s defence is legitimate, the altitude is real and the Rams are travelling after a Monday night game. That combination makes the Broncos tempting.
Los Angeles has the more convincing offence, but Denver is at home and showed Sunday that its defence can control a game. In what should be a close one, I am taking the Broncos to use the altitude and their pass rush to hand the Rams their second loss.
Pick: Broncos
Eagles at Bears
Philadelphia takes its 2-0 record to Chicago for Monday Night Football.
The Eagles have not been overwhelmingly dominant, but they keep winning. That is generally considered useful.
Chicago is 1-1 after scoring only three points in a loss to Minnesota. Soldier Field will be loud, impatient and prepared to boo anything that moves horizontally.
Philadelphia does not need to produce a masterpiece. It needs to protect the football, control the line of scrimmage and wait for Chicago to do something Chicago-like.
That usually does not require a lengthy wait.
Pick: Eagles
The Verdict
By Sunday night, some early surprises will look legitimate and several struggling teams will be explaining that the season is still young.
It is young—but 0-3 has a way of making September feel much older.
Buffalo, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle have opportunities to strengthen already impressive starts. Atlanta, Miami and Washington are approaching the point where “early-season adversity” becomes “perhaps we are simply not very good.”
That is the beauty of Week 3.
The contenders begin separating themselves, the pretenders begin running out of explanations and everyone’s fantasy lineup loses another hamstring.