Before we get into the picks, as is the custom, I would like to weigh in on a few things.  First of all – how come no one (as far as I can tell, it’s basically just Bill Simmons and myself) blames NFL coaches anymore?

Everyone is blaming Tony Romo for throwing 47 interceptions and functioning as the turd in Jerry Jones’ punchbowl in Week 2…yet, no one is talking about how Jason Garrett blew the game.  If you have 3 running backs that could start for about 25 of the 32 teams in the league, and one of the biggest offensive lines in history, and you are averaging about 6 yards per running play, and your quarterback is clearly having an off night – just answer one question for me – how stupid do you have to be to keep calling passing plays?  I just don’t understand it.

Jason Garrett singlehandedly lost the game for the Dallas Cowboys.  Eli Manning did not win it.  Tony Romo did not lose it.  Jason Garrett, one of the most overrated coaches in the history of the NFL, lost the game for his team.  As is the case way too often, the losing QB is getting too much blame for the loss.  The truth is – Jason Garrett hung Romo out to dry.  As is also the case way too often, the winning QB is getting too much credit for the win.  The only NFL QB I have ever met in person was Boomer Esiason, and I talked to him for about 30 seconds…so there are no real QBs covered by this statement – I am good buddies with at least 7 dudes that could have led the Giants’ game winning drive.  It was that easy…the defensive line of the Cowboys was completely worthless on that drive, and Manning didn’t have to make a single tough throw.

Enough about that disgustingly awful performance by Jason Garrett – there is one more thing I would like to cover – Michael Crabtree.  Lots and lots of people are chiming in on this one, just about every single one of them telling Crabtree to sign the deal San Francisco gave him, get into camp and start playing football.  That would normally be a valid point, except for the fact that there is a lot more to this story.

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Here is what we know after Week 1.  Then again, people that know anything about football and have been paying attention should have known these things all along, but sometimes it takes the facts of recent events to refresh everyone’s memory.

Jay Cutler is still the same QB that was 17-20 in his career before this year.  His see-saw performances coupled with no Urlacher should put the Bears closer to the Lions than the Packers when all is said and done…he will have some pretty impressive weeks this year, you can bank on that…one of those will not happen against Pittsburgh.

Donovan McNabb is an injury prone bum.  After the addition of Jeff Garcia, he is now the 4th best QB on the Eagles.  A series of McNabb injuries is about the only thing that can help the Eagles be relevant this year.

The Bills, like every Dick Jauron-coached team, have no heart. 

The defensive coaches of the Titans and Raiders have no testicular fortitude.  Very surprising coming from Tennessee – Oakland, not so much.

Jake Delhomme is done.  Carolina needs to cut bait and move on.  This is what happens when a gunslinger career-backup chucking the ball around like crazy because he has nothing to lose gets old…the valleys start to grossly outnumber the peaks and he needs to be put out to pasture.  Matt Moore’s 33.5 QB rating in Week 1 was over twice Delhomme’s 14.7 rating.  Matt Moore is the kind of change Panthers fans can believe in.  He has the potential to be the next Jay Cutler (erratic QB with a career losing record that makes $6.5 million).  Moore currently makes under $400K – Delhomme is stealing $6.2 million from the Panthers this year.

Speaking of ridiculous contracts, Peyton Manning is now tied with Johnny Unitas for most wins all-time by a Colts QB.  He still has a losing record in the playoffs and has never won a big game at any level that did not involved the 2nd string Patriots defense or the combination of Lovie Smith and Rex Grossman…but he is the Colts all-time win leader, so he’s got that going for him.

Enough drivel – here are the Week 2 picks (home team in CAPS)

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Here are the Week 1 picks.  I am already off to a cracking start – thank you Jeff Fisher.  It makes me kind of ticked off when I call a game right because of the teams involved and the relative talent of the players on those teams…and then something like “Jeff Fisher having success on 85% of his blitzes throughout the game yet mysteriously abandoning the blitz on the last 2 possessions” happens.  Never expected that from Jeff Fisher and the Titans coaching staff – they totally cost their team the game. I’ll gladly take the ‘W’, since they covered, but how sad for the Titans’ players and fans to miss out on a quality win like that because their coaching staff has no ‘nads.

Rothlisberger is getting credit for the win, but I could go to a high school football game in my home town and find 2 quarterbacks on each team that would have been capable of winning that game for Pittsburgh after Fisher decided that he would rather watch a slow, painful loss than a quick, decisive win.  Jeff Fisher!?!?  I know – totally took me by surprise.  After Game 1, I am agreeing with Bill Simmons that this just might be the weirdest NFL season in memory.

Anyway, here are the picks (Home team in CAPS)

Tennessee (+5) over PITTSBURGH

ATLANTA (-4) over Miami

CINCINNATI (pk) over Denver

Minnesota (-3) over CLEVELAND

Jacksonville (+7)  over INDIANAPOLIS

NEW ORLEANS (-11.5) over Detroit

Dallas (-3) over TAMPA BAY

CAROLINA (-1) over Philadelphia

BALTIMORE (-8.5) over Kansas City

HOUSTON (-4) over NY Jets

NY GIANTS (-6) over Washington

ARIZONA (-6.5) over San Francisco

SEATTLE (-7) over St. Louis

GREEN BAY (-3) over Chicago

NEW ENGLAND (-10) over Buffalo

San Diego (-6.5) over OAKLAND

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Everyone has an NFL Predictions column, so I figured I would chime in as well.  It’s especially tough this year, because there really are a lot of teams that could go either way.  First, I will get right to the predictions, and then I am going to briefly weigh in on the major stories that everyone else is weighing in on this year.

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Here is a direct quote from the LEAD STORY on ESPN.com after the Miami Hurricanes beat Florida State on the road this evening.

“Miami is back.  Maybe not on the national scene, but certainly on the state level, where the Hurricanes beat their archrivals to the north Monday night.”

Let me help you out here and read between the lines.  No one at ESPN will give anyone at Miami a single ounce of credit until they are ranked in the Top 10…which is OK all by itself, until you realize that everyone who votes in the polls also has an axe to grind for the ‘Canes.  The Miami Hurricanes will be ranked in the Top 10 by the end of the 2009-2010 college football season.

I am not going to make excuses for the way people love to hate my beloved ‘Canes – they have well and truly earned their reputation as a bunch of thugs who happen to be great football players that are playing in a no-shit football factory.  It makes certain fans of other teams jealous and others just annoyed.  The fact that Miami has never won with grace or lost with class makes it even worse.  Well, none of those things has ever changed…even when they stunk…they were just not getting the same class of athlete they have gotten traditionally.

Well, now they have Randy Shannon on board, and they are starting to get the same class of recruits they used to get when Jimmie Johnson was running things.  Please, no hate mail or whiney comments about my comparing Shannon to Johnson.  Randy Shannon is the worst in-game coach in all of Division I football right now.  He is Henry Winkler in The Waterboy before he got his manhood back.  He blows through time outs like a newly divorced trophy wife burns through cash…and from a whole bunch of bone-headed stuff.  Poor substitutions, late play calling, poor situational recognition, you name it.  In short – all things that teams with good in-game coaches do NOT do.

But let’s make no mistake.  Randy Shannon is a player’s coach, and he is going to recruit the HELL out of Southern Florida.  It might be 10 years before another blue chip recruit from Southern Florida goes anywhere other than Miami.  Which means only one thing – get used to Miami back in the mix for a national championship year after year, and all of the strutting, swagger and trash talking that comes along with it.

Make no mistake about this, either.  Miami went into Florida State’s house and OWNED them.  As the 38-34 score indicates, there was not a lot of defense in this game, which should concern all Hurricane fans as it does me.  But, any defensive stops that happened seemed to happen when The U was on defense.  If not for a weird hit arm / deflected pass returned for a touchdown, Miami might have won this game going away.  But one thing is for certain after that game…Jacory Harris is, hands-down, the coolest customer I have ever seen at the collegiate level.  If you have not seen the game yet, it will be on ESPN Classic tomorrow as an instant classic.  Do yourself a favor and watch it.  Watching Jacory Harris in this game will make you think of Vince Young in the 2006 Rose Bowl…except for he is even more under control at every point in the game.  Sure, it’s a Week 1 game and not the BCS Title Game, but the fact that I making the comparison at all should tell you all you need to know about how composed Jacory Harris looked during this game.

One final point to tick off all the Miami haters – they have a very favorable schedule for a pretty prestigious bowl game this year.  Here are the next 3 opponents for Miami — #15 Georgia Tech, at #7 Virginia Tech, #3 Oklahoma.  After that, they will have 8 games left, 7 of which should be easy wins and one game at #21 North Carolina.  I would say that after the win on Monday night, a 2-2 start is a definite possibility.  Then, let’s assume that North Carolina will hold on at home and beat the Canes…and let’s also assume that Randy Shannon will flat-out blow a game against an inferior opponent.

Ladies and gentlemen – that will amount to an 8-4 record from a team in a BCS conference…and probably gets them into the Top 3 in the ACC at least…maybe even with a chance to win the ACC outright, as they might only have 1 loss in conference.  The ACC Champ plays in the Orange Bowl – could you imagine the Hurricanes playing in the Orange Bowl on January 5?  The #2 team in the ACC plays in the Chick-fil-A Bowl on December 31 in Atlanta.  The #3 team in the ACC plays in the Gator Bowl on January 1 in Jacksonville.

Don’t be surprised when you see Miami playing in a major bowl game this season, and don’t be surprised if they ride Jacory Harris into the BCS.

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Dear Coach Kelly:

Hopefully you have recovered from your beat-down at the hands of a school from a crummy conference enough to have your wits about you…because you are in a bona fide legacy-defining moment after only your first game as the coach at Oregon.  Yes, LeGarrette Blount has given you a golden opportunity.  You have basically two approaches you can use – let’s call them the Bud Selig approach, where you let Blount do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, as long as he is making money for the university; and the Roger Goodell approach, where you come down on Blount like a ton of bricks.

First things first, you will notice that I have not mentioned anything to do with the Athletic Department, currently being run by your former boss, or the university president.  That is because they have no dog in this fight.  You were hired to run the football program, not them.  Besides, I am sure you want to kick your A.D. in the nads after embarrassing you on national T.V. by showing up on the sideline.

OK – let’s look at the Bud Selig approach.  For the purposes of this case, the Bud Selig approach can be defined as anything less than a 5-game suspension.  If you take this approach, these points will define your legacy:

• You will instantly and forever be known as the guy that allowed Blount to get off with a wrist slap for not being able to handle getting owned and punching everything in sight while wearing an Oregon Ducks uniform
• Every time you talk to a recruit and his family about discipline and high standards, they will justifiably be smirking in your face
• You will be stuck with that wrist slap as precedence
• If you ever discipline another player in the future, and the punishment is not the same, you open up another set of arguments about anything that might be different between Blount and the other player, such as skill level, NFL potential, revenue generating potential, geography, socio-economic status, race, you name it

If you take the Roger Goodell approach, the opposite statements will be true, except for the last one.  You need to be consistent, no matter what.

As for the whole “letting the A.D. and/or university president handle it” approach, you will never ever have control over your players again.  I cannot make a strong enough statement here – you might as well take a player vote on everything from that point on, because you will be nothing more than a figurehead.

So, Coach – I will not make this long-winded because I know that you have a lot of stuff on your plate this morning.  But, I do want to make one thing particularly clear before I let you go – your entire coaching legacy at Oregon is going to be defined by what you do publicly regarding this situation in the next 12 hours or so.  You are forever, for better or worse, going to be known as Chip Kelly, they guy who let LeGarrette Blount skate while at Oregon, deciding that wins were more important than words like honor, discipline and integrity…or Chip Kelly, the guy who decided that running a program to be proud of was more important than victories and money.

It’s a tough call, and I do not envy you one bit for having to make it.  Hopefully, you will take the Goodell approach.  I know that’s the route I would take if I were you.  Besides, after the way your team looked last night, suspending Blount for the year just might be the best thing possible.  That way, when you lose 7 or 8 games this year, which I would probably say is a certainty at this point, with or without Blount, wouldn’t it be nice to have the excuse that your best player had to be excused from the team for the entire season to be taught a lesson about representing the university and what a privilege it is to play college football?  Hell, suspending Blount for the season might be the only thing that guarantees that you are not one-and-done as the head coach.

If you don’t suspend Blount for a minimum of half the season (5 games) and still lose 7 or 8 games, then you will be the guy that made a conscious decision to choose winning over discipline and honor and integrity…and STILL lost.  Any head coach would be lucky to keep his job after that.

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