I never shy away from how much I love the second week of every National Football League season. It’s the time when I will write the word “overreaction” a ridiculous amount of times and basically use that one approach to project every outcome.
The irony is that I don’t think I can do that this year.
Of course, there will always be teams that saw their perceptions shift drastically after just one game, but it feels like this year’s Opening Week was subdued in terms of misses.
It was, however, extraordinary in its drama.
It must be the case that those two elements cannot coexist. We can’t have both close games and ones that produce a strong reaction. For example, the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals played to within a single point of each other but, because the Bengals won, we aren’t burying them quite as much as we would have otherwise.
The good news is that we might actually prefer this slow burn to what we normally see. Maybe, this will allow the overreaction to span multiple weeks and give us a better chance to capitalize on it.
Below are predictions for each game against the spread. Spreads have been taken from various websites and are subject to change. The spread in parenthesis denotes the selected team. Spread is listed as advertised number and odds at either DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook, Caesars Sportsbook, or Fanatics Sportsbook (formerly PointsBet). All efforts were made to provide picks at -110 or better, with some stretching to a -125 if no reasonable advertised spread was found.
*Confidence Picks – 2025 Season: 4-2 (Last Week: 4-2)
(2024 Season: 65-57) (2023 Season: 63-61-4) (2022 Season: 54-54-5) (2021 Season: 55-50) (2020 Season: 53-42-3) (2019 Season: 57-43-3) (2018 Season: 63-48-4) (2017 Season: 53-48-4) (2016 Season: 53-67-3) (2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2) (11-Year Total: 646-561-30)
All Picks Against Spread – 2025 Season: 9-7 (Last Week: 9-7)
(2024 Season: 148-136-1) (2023 Season: 142-135-8) (2022 Season: 143-132-9) (2021 Season: 158-126-2) (2020 Season: 132-128-7) (2019 Season: 142-118-7) (2018 Season: 137-118-12) (2017 Season: 137-119-11) (2016 Season: 123-136-8) (2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4) (11-Year Total: 1554-1379-76)
Washington Commanders at Green Bay Packers
If we’re ranking teams based on the level-of-competition they faced on Opening Day, then a win by the Green Bay Packers — against the Lions — was far more impressive than the Washington Commanders’ victory over the Giants. Both teams’ wins were by at least 14 points, but Green Bay doing so against a Lions franchise that was 15-2 last year is quite different than Washington beating up on a Giants team that ended the season at 3-14.
In addition to the ever-present risk of overreaction after one week, we have to contend with this problem of lacking information. We can only draw so many conclusions and, because the opponent each team faced is so isolated, we can’t carry through any trend for more than one game.
The good news is that