Reid Kerr

As a professional prognosticator of pigskin, I get a lot of questions from sports fans. Things like “How do you make your picks?” and “What’s the most important factor?” and “What was it like being in Van Halen, Sammy?”

Trust me, lots of things go into my predictions. I consider weather, offensive line play, injuries, secondary matchups, how long it’s been since Bill Belichick has eaten, and many other factors. And each one can be vitally important, but I consider one thing the most telling in terms of making predictions.

Who stinks?

Seriously, that’s it. Every week we make NFL rankings, and debate over whether Kansas City is better than Buffalo or Green Bay, and which teams are hot. I don’t need any of that, those questions will be solved on the field.

Good teams are almost always good. They stumble a little, but a truly good team rarely turns in a clunker. And the inverse of that is also true, bad teams are bad for a reason. Flimsy offensive lines don’t suddenly get better overnight. Mediocre quarterbacks get occasionally lucky, but always regress to the mean.

For example, Quincy Carter once threw two touchdown passes in the last four minutes of a game to beat the Panthers. That’s obviously the exception that proves the rule, because watching the rest of Quincy Carter’s time in Dallas was about as much fun as watching … well, all of the Cowboys quarterbacks between Aikman and Romo.

Good comes and goes, but the truly awful stay right where they are all season. And sometimes for decades. For future reference, I’m counting on the Texans this year to come in with somewhere between one and negative-two wins, so I’m picking against them every week.

Now on to the picks. After Thursday night, I’m 1-0 on the season and 0-1 against the Vegas spread. There are no moral victories in the NFL, but that one came pretty close for Dallas. I’m now 243-146-3, and 327-295-19 against Vegas over the last seven years. As always, these are for the purposes of comedic discussion only. No wagering.

Jacksonville (minus 3.5) at Houston: I love what the NFL did here, putting two teams that should be awful to start the year up against each other immediately. Somebody has to get a win here, unfortunately.

Pick: Jacksonville to win but not cover, which means I think they’ll win by three or less.

Green Bay (minus 3.5) vs. New Orleans: Aaron Rodgers now requires all plays sent into his helmet to be phrased in the form of a question.

Pick: Packers to win and cover, winning by four or more.

NY Jets (plus 4.5) at Carolina: Buckle up fans, the race to 3-14 begins here.

Pick: Panthers to win and cover, winning by five or more.

Minnesota (minus 3) at Cincinnati: The Vikings defense might be the best in the league. The Bengals offensive line is somewhere between a velvet rope and a shower curtain. This will be the first of many long days for poor Joe Burrow this season.

Pick: Vikings to cover, winning by more than three.

Cleveland (plus 5.5) at Kansas City: Based on his commercials, Baker Mayfield is putting in a lot of offseason quarterback work. You know, as opposed to taking acting lessons.

Pick: Chiefs to cover, winning by six or more.

I’ll also take the Rams to be overrated, the Chargers to be underrated, and “Ted Lasso” to be nominated for a Nobel Prize. Good luck, everybody.

Reid Kerr just hopes both teams have fun. You can always tweet questions, comments, and angry messages to him at @reidaboutit.