Week 13

Nothing goes better with football then snow does. It’s like adding whipped cream to hot chocolate or Nate Dogg to a song. Sure you can play ball in nice conditions, but snow makes it so much more fun. Players are slipping around, the ball is pretty much frozen, and seeing the backup quarterback wiping away a patch of snow so that the kicker has a place to plant from is always fun. Just look at last Monday nights Packers - Seahawks game. It was a horrible game with two struggling teams that combined for eight turnovers. Watching it meant listening to Joe Theismen and Tony Kornheiser argue about Brett Favre’s impending retirement. Yet the game was being played in the snow, so I forced myself to watch. Because you never know what’s going to happen when the white stuff starts coming down. Just look at some of the classic NFL games that have been played in the powder. There’s the famous Ice Bowl game between Green Bay and Dallas in 1967, which was played at 40 degrees below zero with the wind chill. The Thanksgiving 1993 Miami at Dallas game where a rare Texas snowfall turned into Leon Lett’s blunder, round II. And of course the Tuck Rule game in New England four years ago.

Now that we are officially in December, we should be seeing a lot of snow games the rest of the season. Based on the weather reports for this weekend, we could be seeing some type of precipitation at five NFL games this week. This gives an advantage to the worse team, because stuff like rain and snow are equalizers, because faster players don’t have as big of an advantage as they do on a dry surface. An example of this may be taking place in Buffalo on Sunday, where the 9-2 Chargers face the 5-6 Bills. If this game were to be taking place in San Diego, I’m pretty sure the Bolts would win easily. Phillip Rivers would throw for 250 and two scores and Ladanian Tomlinson would run for 125 and three TDs, as the Chargers would win 38-14. But instead, the game will take place in upstate New York, where weather.com reports the temperature will be in the low 30’s and the wind should be blowing upwards of 20 miles and hour. So will it be upset city? Here are my week 13 picks…

My pick in bold

Arizona at St. Louis

Detroit at New England

San Diego at Buffalo

San Francisco at New Orleans

Minnesota at Chicago

Kansas City at Cleveland

Atlanta at Washington

New York Jets at Green Bay

Indianapolis at Tennessee

Houston at Oakland

Jacksonville at Miami

Dallas at New York Giants

Tampa Bay at Pittsburgh

Seattle at Denver

Carolina at Philadelphia