5 weeks in on the regular season: who are the standouts in the NFL
It's kind of fun as we tear through the first 6 weeks of the regular season of the NFL to get a look at who the standouts are in the league and make wild guesses as to how the rest of the season is going to pan out.
We see the undefeated teams drop one-by-one and this lack of defeat doesn't necessarily mean a hill of beans though because my disappointment (and expectations towards that disappointment) all began during an amazing year when Carolina went to the Super Bowl having not lost a single game that entire season and then performed in the Super Bowl like they had never seen the sport before. They lost handily to a team that they had already defeated once before in that same season.
Sometimes things just don't make sense.
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Other than the Vikings, these 3 teams are what I would refer to as the "Usual Suspects" as far as first half of the season almost always looking fantastic. Let's not forget that the Chiefs looked unstoppable during the first half of last year as well. They ended up not even making the playoffs after things went terribly south in the 2nd half of the season.
I like to see all of these teams do well and at the moment. Right now Vegas bookies have the most faith in SanFran to carry on this momentum as you can get on them to win the Super Bowl right now at +600 odds. KC is next at +900 and for some reason Minnesota trails far behind at +2000.
I think that Minnesota gets such terrible odds because since they are NFC and so are SanFran, The Vikings can't make it to the Super Bowl without defeating them. The Chiefs aren't exactly facing and easy road (nobody does) but they are the main standout team in the AFC so they get given probably a bit favorable odds because of this.
But for me this isn't a new story really: San Francisco ends up very highly rated every year it seems yet they so often fail to perform in the post season.
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There's more at play than just that though. The Vikings are seen as being one or two plays away from losing a lot of the games that they have won and when you are a top-tier team and barely skating by the Saints, Dolphins and the Buccaneers, that isn't exactly anything to brag about. Those 3 teams COMBINED have fewer wins (4 combined) than any of the undefeated teams.
Kansas City has Seattle next an that has an opportunity to be an interesting one. San Fran has Atlanta and this should be a blowout but Atlanta has been shocking a bunch of people this season. Minnesota will get tested slightly again Indianapolis and a lot of the wind will get taken out of their hype sails if they fail to dominate the Colts. At the moment I think the Vikings are seen as a paper tiger just waiting to get thrashed and brought back down to earth.
In the meantime the Panthers are playing the near-winless Buccaneers after a week off. Will they flub it again? The bookies are prepared for that option is seems because Carolina is favored by a mere -3 points.
As usual I am betting against the Panthers on this spread because if anyone can screw this up, it is them. "Any Given Sunday" is the statement though, and wild things can happen. There's no such thing as a "gimme" game even though a few teams in the NFL seem to be at the point in the season where they are going to slyly start losing games on purpose in order to line up some good draft picks.
It all starts soon!