NFL picks 2019, Week 2: Can the Saints get revenge on the Rams? Experts say ... maybe?

Welp, it turns out the Cleveland Browns aren’t going 16-0.

The much-anticipated debut of the -improved version of the team was surprisingly lackluster. The Titans cruised to a 43-13 win, and all but one member on our panel didn’t see it coming. Only Geoff Schwartz correctly predicted the Browns would stumble out to their (just about) annual 0-1 start.

Outside of that game, our group had a pretty strong start to the NFL season. Nine of the 10 experts correctly picked the Ravens, Chargers, Seahawks, and Cowboys to get Week 1 wins. Only Rosie, our Good Dog of the Week, whiffed on those four. But that’s OK, we still love her.

At least Rosie joined the others in taking the Eagles to beat Washington, the only unanimous pick of the week.

Four experts — James Brady, Levi Damien, Sarah Hardy, and Charles McDonald — currently lead the pack with 12-4 records. Only one finished Week 1 with a losing record (I’m so sorry, Rosie), so nobody is too far behind.

Perhaps you’ve heard that New Orleans fans don’t like officials.

Back in January, the Saints almost certainly would’ve gone to the Super Bowl if a blatantly obvious pass interference penalty on the Rams wasn’t missed in the NFC Championship Game. The NFL eventually changed its replay rules in the offseason to avoid a similar disaster happening again, while Saints fans sued the league. But not before the Rams got the chance to produce a painfully unexciting loss against the Patriots in Super Bowl 53.

Saints fans most definitely aren’t over it. A ton of fans showed up for the team’s Week 1 home opener against the Texans wearing referee uniforms, which ... uh ... that’ll show ‘em, I guess?

The better revenge for the Saints would be a win over the Rams in Week 2, although they’ll have to travel to Los Angeles to get the job done. Our experts are divided, 5-5, on whether or not they can pull it off.

That wasn’t the only game that was tough for our crew to pick. The avian Sunday Night Football showdown between the Falcons and Eagles is also a 50-50 split.

There are a few other matchups that left us in disagreement, including division rivalries like Colts-Titans and Vikings-Packers. However, we came to an easy consensus on four contests this week. We all took the Panthers over the Bucs, the Cowboys over Washington, the Ravens over the Cardinals, and the Chiefs over the Raiders.

If it seems like there’s an obvious mismatch that we’re leaving off that list, it’s not a mistake. The Patriots, who look annoyingly unstoppable, will visit the Dolphins, who look like they’re tanking even more than we could’ve imagined, for the first time since the Miracle in Miami.

Yet somehow, our panel did not unanimously back Tom Brady and Co. That’s all because of our guest four-legged picker.

Blueseph Abraham Jeppson Keanu — or “Blue,” for short — lives with his humans Louis and Izzy. He is a chihuahua mixed with something — potentially a rodent of some kind, but a cute one. His favorite activities include invading personal space (both his owners’ and strangers’ alike), playing ball with his buds, and pounding back puppacinos.

Blue makes friends wherever he goes, but he’s also wary of people who give off the wrong vibe. With that in mind, he picked Week 2 based on the mascots he would most likely befriend and want to snuggle with. In general, the softer the mascot, the better.

Humans with facial hair and birds tend to be non-starters for Blue. Unfortunately for him, there are several human-vs-human and bird-vs-bird matchups this week. In those instances, he made judgment calls based on who was more likely to feed him cheese (Packers over Vikings), who was more likely to keep him on dry land (Chiefs over Raiders … he hates water), and the bird of prey that was least likely to snatch up his wee body in its talons (Falcons over Eagles).

Cardinals-Ravens was perhaps the toughest call of the week, but Blue was once a stray, and so he’s siding with the Ravens’ scavenger instincts (he maybe caught a peek at both teams’ Week 1 results, too).

Here are all the predictions for the second week of the season, with the caveat that they’re not locked in just yet. Each expert has a chance to change a pick by Friday, just in case an injury or something else swings their opinion. The guest picker from the NFL blogs this week is Brandon Lee Gowton, the manager at our Eagles site, Bleeding Green Nation.