NFL Week 16 picks: Bills shock Patriots, Colts upset Cardinals on Christmas, Bengals beat Ravens

I’d tell you it tastes good, but that’d be lying, but you know what? Taste doesn’t matter at Christmas, you just need something that will get you through the holiday period with your family and this will definitely do it.

Alright, I’m going to stop talking about egg nog and tequila so we can get to the picks.

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I also have another gift for you that’s not actually a gift, but it is a podcast of Will Brinson and I going over the biggest games of Week 16, which is arguably better than a gift.

I’m not sure what’s on Mike Vrabel’s Christmas list, but I’m guessing that he’d really like Santa to deliver him a healed foot for Derrick Henry, because the Titans offense has been a disaster since their star running back went down.

The Titans offense has gotten progressively worse since Henry went down for the season in Week 8 and the past four weeks have been especially ugly.

I’m not saying you can’t win when you’re averaging 6.5 points per game, but that’s like asking Santa to deliver all his presents on a night where three of his reindeer tested positive for COVID.

What this all boils down to is that if Tennessee’s defense doesn’t play perfect football, then the Titans can’t win and even if they play perfectly, they still might not win.

We saw this play out last year when the Cards went 5-2 before their bye, only to completely collapse after their off week by going 3-6 down the stretch.

Kyler Murray, on if this year is starting to feel like last year’s second-half collapse:”Not at all.

I want to believe Murray on this, but I can’t trust someone who just lost to the Lions.

Since their Week 12 bye, the Cardinals are 1-2 and in those three games, they’re surrendering 115 yards per game on the ground, which is not ideal when you consider the fact that they’ll be facing the best running back in football on Saturday.

The last time these two teams met came back in Week 7 although Ravens fans probably don’t remember much of that game because I’m guessing they’ve already repressed the memory of it.

Anyway, back in October, the Bengals beat the Ravens 41-17 and the only big thing that’s really changed since that game is the fact that the Ravens are dealing with even more injuries than they were then, which doesn’t even seem possible, because they were dealing wit a lot of injuries then.

The Ravens defensive situation was so dire in Week 15 that even the wife of the team’s general manager could do nothing but make a joke about it and a pretty good joke at that.

If this turns into a shootout, you have to like the Bengals’ chances going up against a depleted Baltimore defense.

Although the Bengals have a long history of choking in big games, they’ve actually won a multitude of them this season, which is a good thing, because this is easily the biggest game the Bengals have hosted at home since at least the 2015 season.

The upside is that all the players on their COVID list got two extra days to possibly record a negative test, which could potentially allow them to play against the Seahawks.

It’s like “The Hunger Games” meets “Jingle All the Way” meets “Passenger 57.” Now, I know the Rams’ travel is chartered, but let’s be honest, anyone who spends any amount of time at an airport around Christmas is at an automatic psychological disadvantage doing anything for at least the next eight days while they mentally recover from what they just experienced.

Sure, the Rams have a much more talented team than anything Stafford ever had in Detroit, but the edge here for the Vikings is that they know all of Stafford’s tricks.

The Vikings have 44 sacks on the year, which is kind of crazy when you consider that 12 teams in the NFL don’t even have 30 total sacks this season.

The last time we saw these two teams on the field together, they were basically playing in a hurrinado, which is a word I’ve never used in my life, but I’m using it now because it’s the only one that accurately describes what these two teams had to play through back in Week 13.

This time around, there’s not going to he a hurrinado and I know that because I just checked.

The Bills have had one of the best defenses in football this year: They’ve surrendered the fewest yards and the second-fewest points, so I won’t be surprised if they hold the Patriots under 20 points.

When it comes to picking this game, my conundrum is that I think the Bills have a slightly more talented team, but I think the Patriots have slightly better coaching, so I’m not sure what to do here.

The Bills offense played as poorly as possible in the first game and Buffalo STILL almost won.

After Zane Gonzalez went down with a pregame injury, the Panthers needed a kicker, so they organized an impromptu tryout session that included a running back, a wide receiver and a linebacker and the tryout session went exactly how you thought it would go.

I’m not one to make excuses for my bad picks, but let’s be honest, this game was played on a Saturday and Saturday games shouldn’t count against your picks record.

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