Welcome to Week 4, where we don’t even know if one of these games will happen! That’s fun, isn’t it?! A Covid outbreak inside the Tennessee Titans could postpone their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, which is absolutely horrible, but laughing makes things a little, tiny bit easier.
NFL expert picks, Week 4: Who moves to 4-0?
Things are starting to be a bit more clear in the NFL.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The week we’re starting to see the picks align a little. We’re starting to get a better sense of which teams are for real this year, and well ... which teams are very bad. One the top end of the spectrum the season still feels wide open, while the bottom of the league are already talking about tanking for Trevor Lawrence, which is a curious thing three week in, but these fans know who their teams are.
Our panel is split this week on Chicago Bears vs. Indianapolis Colts, which is going to be one of the more interesting games on Sunday. Let’s be honest: Nobody expected the Bears to be 3-0 at this point, and Nick Foles is getting the nod now, which could pull the plug on the Mitchell Trubisky era. Meanwhile the Colts have looked good with Philip Rivers at the helm, but they’ve also had one of the easiest schedules in the league so far, facing the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. If Chicago walks away with another win, and especially if Foles looks good, then we can probably talk a little more about whether this is a team that can really compete in the playoffs.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the Seattle Seahawks, Arizona Cardinals and Kansas City Chiefs who nobody believes will lose this week. Seattle have looked unstoppable this season, while the Miami Dolphins are, Miami. Make no mistake, the Dolphins are improving, but this is still very much a work in progress still. Perhaps a little more surprising is the unanimous belief that the Cardinals will beat the Carolina Panthers. Carolina are coming off a win against the Chargers despite not having Christian McCaffery, while Arizona are coming off a shock loss to the Lions. Finally the matchup between the Chiefs and New England Patriots should be fascinating. It’s hard to see the Patriots being able to deal with Patrick Mahomes, but New England did push Seattle to the limit and Cam Newton is making everyone buy in to this team’s chances again.
Final tip before we leave you this week: Pay attention to your fantasy football lineups, especially if the Titans can’t play because of the Covid outbreak. It could cause bye weeks to shift to make sure the season works. Don’t get caught out with half the Titans in if they need to skip the week.
And a special shoutout to Brandon Gowton, Editor-in-Chief of our Philadelphia Eagles blog, who completely called the tie last week.
My prediction for this game is a tie because it’d be the least satisfying and most confusing result. A win keeps the Eagles’ hopes alive. A loss confirms this team needs a wake-up call. A tie does ... what, exactly?
Here are the picks for Week 4:
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