Aiming for sixty

Sixty percent.

That’s my goal for this season. It doesn’t sound like much, and honestly, I’m setting the bar low. I really should be able to correctly predict sixty percent or more of the NFL games this year (counting playoffs). Hell, I bet my mom, who would pick games based on where family members lived and the quality of the coffee in the city, could correctly guess sixty percent of the winners in the ’07-’08 season. But that’s not the point. After going 165-102 during last season, which comes out to about fifty-eight percent correct, I have to plan on improving. So the new goal is sixty percent. Here goes the picks for week one:

My pick in bold

New Orleans at Indianapolis

Denver at Buffalo

Miami at Washington

Pittsburgh at Cleveland

Tennessee at Jacksonville

Kansas City at Houston

Philadelphia at Green Bay

Carolina at St. Louis

Atlanta at Minnesota

New England at New York Jets

Tampa Bay at Seattle

Detroit at Oakland

Chicago at San Diego

New York Giants at Dallas

Baltimore at Cincinnati

Arizona at San Francisco


You may have noticed I did pick against the Bears to lose to the Chargers. Last season, I think the only game that I picked them to lose was at New England. But I’m honesty going sleepless this week thinking about how were going to contain Ladanian Tomlinson. I will be watching with great interest on seeing how Rex Grossman handles Ron Rivera’s D (Remember, he’s the d-coordinator of the Chargers now) and how Cedric Benson handles the full load of the running game. If those two players have big games, then I am confident that my prediction will be wrong and the Bears will start off 1-0.