NFL picks 2017, Week 11: Experts split over Patriots, Saints games

All season, we’ve been able to talk about how unpredictable every NFL game was — except for the Browns and whoever they lose to that week. No teams made themselves runaway favorites each week, other than maybe the Eagles. That’s starting to change now, entering Week 11.

We can safely say that the Saints have joined the upper echelon of teams this season as they look to extend their winning streak to eight games this week against Washington. New Orleans is a unanimous pick for our panelists, but it was just last week, we couldn’t really establish that consensus.

Five of us picked the Bills to win at home last week against the Saints. Maybe it was the Drew Brees cold-weather narrative. So much for that. The Saints scored 47 points with six rushing scores. Brees didn’t throw a single touchdown.

It’s not that the NFL, with less than two months to play, is hard to predict now — it’s just that there are a lot of teams winning that we’re not used to see rolling over the competition so frequently. Teams like the Saints.

Not many of us were very certain about the Vikings either. Understandable. Minnesota is somehow 7-2 with Case Keenum at quarterback. And it’s not even like Keenum is in game-manager mode. He’s thrown for almost 600 yards in his last two games and an average of more than 10 yards per attempt last week against Washington.

The Vikings are no lock this week either against the Rams, another one of those WTF teams. Of course the Rams would be better this season, if for no other reason than Jeff Fisher wasn’t their coach anymore. But I’ve scoured the internet, and I can’t find anyone who picked them make the playoffs and only a few homers who even had them winning seven games. They’re 7-2 now, in command of the NFC West.

And then there’s Jacksonville, rolling up the AFC South with Blake Bortles not being the liability we’re used to seeing. The Jaguars have a really good team, and they’re so much fun to watch, if for no other reason than seeing what Jalen Ramsey might do that week.

They get the Browns this week, easy W.

I can’t talk about surprise teams without mentioning the teams that are shocking us for all the wrong reasons.

The Broncos are in free fall. Sure, it was easy to see they’d have a ceiling with their quarterback situation, but to be 3-6 and allowing an average of more than 26 points per game makes those predictions about how great the AFC West was going to be a huge swing and miss.

Denver gets the Bengals this week in a slop fest.

The Giants had a better team this on paper to start the season. Now, they have the dubious honor of being one of the league’s worst. It’s not clear they’d beat the Browns at this point in the season. They’ll get steamrolled by the Chiefs on Sunday.

We all thought Oakland would be better than it is too. Maybe last week’s bye was just what the Raiders needed to figure things out. They better hope it was, because they host the Patriots this week.

New England is rolling now after some early-season struggles we probably should’ve known would not last. The rest of the AFC is once again left to wonder whether or not anyone can halt the Patriots’ usual march deep into the playoffs. Even with that, our panel is not 100 percent behind them beating the Raiders this week.

Before we get to the table of picks, one reminder about the rules. We let our panelists change up to two picks by the end of the week to account for injuries, etc. Be sure to check back.

And please welcome this week’s guest picker, Ryan Day. He runs Big Cat Country, the internet’s finest home for all things Jaguars and DUVAL related.