Reid Kerr

By my extremely unscientific calculations, this is the worst Sunday of football in the history of mankind. Six teams are on bye, and there isn’t a single game between teams with a winning record. Honestly, this would be a good weekend to get reacquainted with your family. I’m hoping to learn who some of these people in my house are by the time the Monday game rolls around.

With that in mind, since I’d rather not delve too deeply into games like Patriots-Dolphins, this week I’ll just go scattershooting, as the late great Blackie Sherrod called it.

Jameis Winston falls into that category of “exuberance over talent level” that I will always root for, regardless of what team he’s on. Baker Mayfield and Gardner Minschew III are also in that group. Being entertaining goes a long way.

I love a good snow game, but only occasionally. Maybe twice a year it’s fun to watch, as long as it doesn’t affect my fantasy football team.

Speaking of, my only fantasy football tip is if you don’t get one of the top tight ends, draft a guy with a quarterback who is either young, or bad. Works more often than not.

No one will ever admit it, but this is the point in the season where some teams just give up. Not the players, they’re playing for their next paychecks, but organizations absolutely do. And especially if your organization has “NY” on your helmets, but you actually play in New Jersey.

The Browns deal for Deshaun Watson is going to make the Vikings trade for Herschel Walker look like the Louisiana Purchase. And if you don’t get that joke, there’s a 60% chance you had an assistant football coach as your American History teacher and spent a lot of time watching filmstrips/videotapes/DVDs/YouTube in class while he worked on this week’s gameplan.

Similarly, getting lucky with the Brock Purdy pick has disguised the debacle that was the 49ers trade for Trey Lance. If their window closes this year, I expect to see that deal brought up again as a contributing factor to their frustrations.

This is the year GMs finally look dumb for undervaluing running backs for the last few free agent cycles, because Henry, Mixon, and Barkley are all going strong while their previous teams can’t run the ball through a pregame paper banner.

If you know a Lions fan, like my longsuffering friend Matt “Mattie 5” Bellner, it’s hard not to root for this team. Conversely, I also know some Jets fans, and they also make me enjoy this season.

The AFC is full of good-to-great teams all winning meaningless games because unless someone can beat the Chiefs in the playoffs, none of it is going to matter.

Joe Burrow is the new Archie Manning. If you don’t get that reference, pretend I said he was the new Philip Rivers.

In the Venn Diagram of “Disappointing” and “As Expected,” the Dallas Cowboys lie dead center.

There’s a lot of luck that goes into drafting and maintaining a roster, which makes it even more statistically impressive that the Bears haven’t been good for more than about 18 months in a row since 1985.

Time for my week 12 picks. Last week I went an atrocious 1-5 picking games, and also against the Vegas point spreads. In my defense,I was actually rooting for Dallas to pull off the major upset just so I could be 0-6 because mathematically speaking, that’s only slightly easier than going 6-0. Lesson learned there. On the season, I’m now 43-26 and 31-38 against Vegas. As always, these are for the purposes of comedic discussion only. No wagering.

Dallas (+10.5) at Washington: When you pay to see a Cowboys game, you could either get hit by a piece of falling metal, or have to watch the Cowboys play. Opinions differ as to which is the worse outcome.

Pick: Commanders to win and cover, winning by 11 points or more.

Tennessee (+7.5) at Houston: I hate the Titans because they are not the Houston Oilers. And after years of therapy, I’m OK with that.

Pick: Texans to win but not cover, winning by seven or fewer points.

Kansas City (-10.5) at Carolina: In the last two games, the Panthers have made the Saints fire their coach and the Giants bench their quarterback. If they win here, the Chiefs may just shut it down for the season and turn Arrowhead Stadium into a giant TCBY.

Pick: Chiefs to win but not cover, winning by 10 or fewer points.

Tampa Bay (-6) at NY Giants: I couldn’t pick the Giants to win an intrasquad scrimmage right now.

Pick: Bucs to win but not cover, winning by five points or fewer.

Denver (-6.5) at Las Vegas: The Broncos are a pleasant surprise. The Raiders are neither of those things.

Pick: Broncos to win and cover, winning by seven points or more.

Baltimore (-2.5) at LA Chargers: The Harbaugh brothers are a fascinating contrast. Both are successful, but John is a Super Bowl winning coach who has had a very stable career, while Jim’s history is much closer to what I’d refer to as “Drunk Gary Busey with a can of gasoline and a Zippo.”

Pick: Chargers to win it outright.

I’ll also take the Lions over the Colts, Cardinals over the Seahawks, and for me to be putting up Christmas lights for my wife through most of the afternoon games. Good luck, everybody.