Wow! What an opening NFL weekend! Start the week with Tom Brady ripping out Dak's heart and close it with a wild Monday night where the Raiders almost blew a game in the biggest way I've seen since the famous Herm Edwards play that led to the invention of kneeling. Between all of that, we had two Super Bowl favorites in the Bills and Packers getting handled. The Bills alone knocked 111 from the pool and with all the other losers brought the survivors down to 1210 from the starting 1604 entrants. But Alas, I got both of mine through.

This week my top pick goes to a team that couldn't win last week, but who can blame them when you're up against Mahomes. In this case, being close is enough for me to think the Cleveland Browns can handle the Houston Texans at home. They are the biggest favorites of the week at -12.5 and should make for a safe pick. I can't pretend like I actually watched any of the Jags/Texans game but I did watch the whole Chiefs/Browns game and what I saw was that Cleveland will be a playoff team again. The Texans are in rebuild mode and will be finishing at or near the bottom of the worst division in football. 

For the second pick, I'm going with the other -12.5 favorite Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As good as Tom Brady looked in Week 1, this pick is all about Atlanta. I quickly remembered how bad they were last season after their performance against the Eagles and they won't be better this year. The Packers should be another popular pick this week, but I'm staying away until Rodgers proves he's not a mole trying to cost the team games.

My strategy early on in these pools is to keep it simple as long as you can and worry about making tough picks when the time comes. Saving teams always seems to bite you, just ask all the people that busted on the Jags in week 1 trying to be clever.

Cheers! Drink Five