He would never say it, of course, because he so studiously avoids saying anything. But it seems likely that Bill Belichick is enjoying—if that’s ever the word for something Bill Belichick feels—the Patriots’ recent postseason-during-the-regular-season stretch. Of course, it’s a lot easier to enjoy—or whatever the Belichickian answer to enjoyment is—when the Patriots wallop a would-be rival, as they did the Texans on Monday night in Week 14. They’ll get the 49ers, who are still the consensus class of the NFC, on Sunday night. The Patriots are favorites, although they will doubtless not act that way, before or after. We know that much about them at this point.  But while it’s fun to think about, read about, and then pick incorrectly about a game like New England-San Francisco—and a handful of other unusually enticing Week 15 match-ups—there is another side to that coin. (Considering how resoundingly the flipped coin is trouncing Jeremy and me at this point in our predictive seasons, that is actually a somewhat painful if inescapably appropriate choice of words.) Every good match-up necessarily dictates a lame one, and this week’s lamer games—Jacksonville and Miami, Kansas City and Oakland, Tennessee and the exhausting, exhausting Jets—are the sort that fairly cry out to be ignored. We have to pick those, too, of course. That doesn’t make it fun to think about. But, as Belichick could tell you—and does, with his every grumbling non-answer and sullen slouch—fun doesn’t really have much to do with any of this.  David Roth: 4-11-1 (94-115-6); Jeremy Gordon: 6-9-1 (97-112-6); Kemal the Turkish Lira 8-7-1 (104-105-6) SUNDAYS GAMES  New York Giants at Atlanta (-1.5) DR: Giants; JG: Atlanta; KtTL: Atlanta  The teams play different styles of football before very different fan bases, but the Giants and Falcons have one thing in common that’s unique among good NFL teams: It’s the ability to win games without ever quite winning their fans’ confidence, and to run up excellent records without ever quite looking excellent. The Giants have, in recent years, shown an uncanny ability to snap into form at the last and best possible moment; the Falcons, broadly, have shown the opposite tendency. But for a game pairing two division-leading teams, there will doubtless be a lot of anxious sighing, overanxious snap-analysis and supremely anxious postgame parsing attached to this one. The Falcons, after weeks of mostly uninspiring wins (and mostly un-covered point spreads), enter this one off a loss to the supremely ordinary Panthers. The Giants are doing what the Giants do, sandwiching a gape-mouthed, supremely Manning-faced loss to the Redskins between dominant performances against the Packers and Saints. The Giants feel like the stronger team at the moment, and were brilliant against New Orleans. But with these teams, the connection between feeling and winning are unusually fraught. – DR  Green Bay (-3) at Chicago DR: Green Bay; JG: Green Bay; KtTL: Chicago  In the NFC North, as in comedy and jaywalking, timing matters a lot. The Bears began the season as one of the NFL’s most dominant teams, albeit during a portion of the schedule that set them against the league’s least dominant. The Packers had the opposite experience, but the two teams have converged in the months since, and their trajectories appear to have crossed in recent weeks, with the Packers playing efficiently and effectively while the fading Bears have picked up a noticeable limp. Some of the Bears’ diminution is due to the NFL’s usual wear-and-tear—oft-hit quarterback Jay Cutler left the team’s Week 14 loss with a neck injury, and will bring a knee sprain into Week 15—and some of it due to a combination of strategic and personnel shortcomings. Chicago is still pretty good, and Green Bay still has its issues. But it’s hard to avoid the sense that these two teams are heading in different directions, and that more than a three-point margin separates them at present – DR  Washington at Cleveland (NO LINE) DR: Washington; JG: Washington; KtTL: Cleveland  Because there will be no word on whether or not Robert Griffin III will start for the Redskins in this game until Sunday, there will likely be no line on this game until Sunday. This is common practice, but seems uniquely apt, here. For all the brilliant work that rookie backup Kirk Cousins did in leading the Redskins to victory in Week 14, a Redskins team quarterbacked by that rookie is—especially against a Browns team enjoying a fitful and weird-feeling surge of undeniable competence—much more difficult to pick than one quarterbacked by Griffin, the capital-t, capital-r That Rookie. The knee injury Griffin suffered last week appears less severe than feared, and he has been increasingly comfortable in practice and publicly bullish on his ability to play. In the absence of anything else, line or otherwise, I’ll take him at his word, and his Redskins to win. – DR  Minnesota at St. Louis (-2.5) DR: St. Louis; JG: St. Louis; KtTL: St. Louis  Neither Minnesota nor St. Louis appears likely to make the playoffs, but when superfans get their NFL Films year-end highlight videos—dramatic tuba-heavy music, some dramatic but vague title like “Striding Backwards Into The Future”—they will get their money’s worth. While neither the Vikings nor Rams are all that good or all that bad, their season’s high points have offered both good imagery—Adrian Peterson shrugging off tacklers like Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl; the Rams pushing around a brash and very good 49ers team, twice—and some legitimate high points. Which, even if it’s not a playoff berth, is something. It is not, however, any guarantee that this game will offer similar viewing satisfaction. Both teams have gotten by—St. Louis much more successfully than Minnesota of late—with scrupulously conservative offenses and stoutish-to-stout defense. There will be moments, because these teams can both deliver those. But for inspiring football, it might be better to wait for the DVD. – DR  Jacksonville at Miami (-7) DR: Jacksonville; JG: Miami; KtTL: Miami  As a state, Florida is crazy about football. Tim Tebow, for all his issues with the throwing-the-football portion of his job, could be elected governor of the state tomorrow if he ran. The state’s college football programs have a fan base as pathologically loyal as any in any sport. Even the state’s foremost dirty-minded party-rap icon is a football obsessive. But when it comes to professional football, Florida is more or less out of luck. The Jaguars have been the NFL’s resident recurring headache this season, and minus a brief blip of near-mediocrity after Chad Henne took over at quarterback, have been dreadful. The Dolphins have been better than expected, which is a nice way of saying they haven’t been completely awful. But they’ve lost five of their last six. They’re better than the Jaguars, and should win, but it’s hard to project Miami as decisive winners over any team at the moment. In short, this game is a grand opportunity for Floridians to take advantage of that nice weather they’ve got down there, and a fine chance not to think about football for a while.– DR  Tampa Bay at New Orleans (-3.5) DR: New Orleans; JG: New Orleans; KtTL: Tampa Bay  It’s maybe not fair to say that the Buccaneers, Florida’s other way less than perfect pro team, are sliding as much as to say that they’ve lately stopped playing the Carolinas and Oaklands and San Diegos on their schedule and started playing the Atlantas and Denvers. But it is also not fair to describe the team’s Week 14 loss, at home, against the sad zombie squad that is the Philadelphia Eagles, as anything but a really bad sign. What the Bucs did well in November—which is, to reiterate, scoring points and playing woeful teams—is no longer something they’re doing terribly well, and their slide out of the postseason picture has borne that out. The Saints, for their part, are excellent at giving up points, and may help the Bucs out with that somewhat. But for all the Saints other issues—and “other issues” is maybe the only working classification, at the moment, for the team’s tragicomically circular bounty-related season of litigation—they did, at least, not lose to the Eagles last week. Both teams are riding losing streaks, and not terribly gracefully. But only one has a loss to the NFL’s resident Team of the Damned on its recent record. – DR  Denver (-3) at Baltimore DR: Denver; JG: Denver; KtTL: Baltimore  Playoff-bound teams do not ordinarily fire their offensive coordinators during the season’s home stretch, which means that the Ravens who expressed surprise at the canning of Cam Cameron earlier this week were surely not alone in that emotion. But, as 9-4 teams go, the Ravens have a weird whiff of desperation about them, and seem to have built their division lead on some ineffable Ravens-ian ferocity and purpose more than on any appreciable excellence on offense (where they have the 18th-best yards-per-game average in the league) or defense (where they’re a stunning 25th in yards-per-game). The Broncos have run away with their division thanks to the rest of that division running in the opposite direction, and have plowed hungrily through an all-you-can-eat recent stretch in the schedule. They may not be all that good, but the numbers support the case that they’re more or less where they belong. In a contest of the ineffable and effable, Denver winning by more than a field goal doesn’t seem too much to ask. – DR  Indianapolis at Houston (-8.5) DR: Houston; JG: Indianapolis; KtTL: Indianapolis  Where do the Texans go from here? Riding high with the AFC’s best record, they entered a Monday Night matchup against the Patriots and got righteously stomped, immediately removing them from everyone’s list as a contender to be taken seriously. Those types of teams don’t get beaten that badly by squads they could very possibly face en route to the Super Bowl. Counting them out would be silly, because they’re still the team that went 11-1 prior to last week. But it does bear mentioning that the Texans are just 2-2 against the elite teams they’ve faced, with both of those losses coming by quite a wide margin–enough to hint that they could be the latest number-one seed to flame out quickly come postseason. It’s hard to believe too much in the supremely likeable Colts because their defense is such a mess, but they’ve provided enough surprises to venture a guess they can keep it close, or maybe even come away with the upset–which would place them just one game behind the AFC South lead, a truly unexpected development given how poor they were last year. It’s a reason for Colts fans to be happy about the future, even as Texans fans are unsure about theirs. – JG  Detroit (-6.5) at Arizona DR: Detroit; JG: Detroit; KtTL: Arizona  Even before the Lions embarked on their current five-game losing streak, they didn’t seem all that close to being a serious team to reckon with. On the other hand, they aren’t a week removed from losing by 58 points, a margin wide enough to mean, perhaps, that the Cardinals should just forfeit the rest of the season under some pre-approved mercy rule and just get started on their winter vacationing. (Reached for comment regarding my plan, John Skelton just shrugged before returning to the fetal position.) The Lions don’t have a ton to fight for, but getting Calvin Johnson another record sort of counts–and while, jokes aside, the Cardinals may still be a prideful bunch of grown men who will never say never, that pride still wasn’t enough to stop them from losing by 58 points. 58 points! That is just so many points, and even if pride is enough to guard against a repeat performance, what does that mean? Losing by 20 or 30? – JG  Carolina at San Diego (-3) DR: San Diego; JG: Carolina; KtTL: Carolina  How about these teams? A week ago, everyone (or, okay, maybe just me) was chiding the Panthers for having the gall to call out the seemingly much-better Falcons while everyone (not just me!) was continuing to make fun of the Chargers for being the Chargers. But both teams rebounded from the public shaming to pull off a pair of surprisingly thorough wins, as can only happen in the NFL when, inexplicably, a gutter team will just look like the world’s best against one that should be much, much better. Which is funny for San Diegans, because Norv Turner and A.J. Smith were supposedly on their way out before the win, and because a late-season push might change the deciding mind–meaning that the Chargers could be dealing with the same problems in a year should they decide to grant a stay of execution. Weird as it is to say, maybe their fans actually want them to lose, so there won’t be any such doubts. With so much negative karma on their side on top of the fact that no one will be watching, the Panthers have to be poised to take care of things, now that Cam Newton is back to reminding us all that he’s Cam Newton. The Panthers still have more than a dozen players on injured reserve, but if they could beat the Falcons in convincing fashion, maybe that’s a good thing. – JG  Seattle (-5.5) at Buffalo DR: Seattle; JG: Seattle; KtTL: Seattle  Should they maintain their wild-card position and get into the playoffs, the Seahawks will be no one’s favorite to reach the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, they can’t play against John Skelton every week. But they can still be an entertaining spoiler, thanks to Marshawn Lynch’s random outbursts and the promise of Russell Wilson’s potential forming into more than the sum of his parts, which didn’t seem entirely special when the year began. Seattle isn’t going to beat every team by 58 points, like they did last week against the unbelievably depressing Arizona Cardinals (who, to be fair, your Fixer picked in the misguided assumption that they could keep it sort of close). But the Bills will inspire no such confidence that they’re due for an immediate regression, especially playing in their quasi-second home and a tepid Toronto crowd. – JG  Pittsburgh (-2) at Dallas DR: Dallas; JG: Pittsburgh; KtTL: Dallas  Roethlisberger or not, the Steelers can’t seem to catch a late-season break. They’ve lost three out of their last four, including games against Cleveland and San Diego. Now, they’ve got to quickly rebound if they want to catch up to the Bengals for one of the AFC’s wild-card spots, and avoid the question of why there wasn’t a better backup on hand than Byron Leftwich or Charlie Batch. The Cowboys aren’t quite an easy pick to build on Pittsburgh’s losing ways, given that they’ve had to eke out two close victories in the last two weeks, and because Dez Bryant should probably not play on Sunday no matter what his mind is telling him. (Not to doubt an athlete’s self-appraisal, but it’s hard to go from “season-ending hand injury” to “just kidding, I’ll be there” in a few days.) All of which means this might be an odd downer of a game to watch, as it features two teams who are good enough to remain in the hunt but not good enough to rate as more than a first-round exit should they make the playoffs, at least not by any sensible gambler. But anything could happen, which is why we keep watching. – JG  Kansas City at Oakland (-3) DR: Oakland; JG: Oakland; KtTL: Oakland  At some point, the Chiefs are going to have to tackle the uncomfortable situation of what to do with coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Scott Pioli. What matters most to the Kansas City loyal is winning the games – or at least not losing most of them, like the Chiefs have done this season. Which is an unfortunate situation for everyone involved, since there’s no delicate or easy way forward given what’s happened there recently, and it seems almost banal to worry about Brady Quinn’s arm or Steve Breaston’s know-how, but that’s how it goes with tragedy in the NFL: Eventually, everyone moves forward. And the fact is that the Chiefs are hardly good enough to inspire any kind of hope of them being good in the immediate future, even against a team as chopped up as the Raiders. – JG  San Francisco at New England (-5.5) DR: New England; JG: New England; KtTL: San Francisco  As a maladjusted young man, I used to get so much mileage out of disliking the New England Patriots. When that 18-0 team lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, I remember barking about how terrible Tom Brady was at a girl in my dorm I’d never talked to before who just happened to be wearing a Laurence Maroney jersey. Reader, this isn’t a proud memory, but it spoke to the kneejerk frustration they used to inspire every year as they ran wild on the NFL with little regard for parity. But more than a decade into the Brady-Belichick partnership, I’ve begun to carry more than a begrudging respect for the way the Patriots have managed to retool and reload a consistently competitive team despite the difficulty of maintaining a good team for even one year at a time. With just a few games before the playoffs begin, the Patriots once again look like the best team in the league after having their way with the Houston Texans last week, ensuring no doubt about which team should be regarded as the AFC favorite regardless of seed or record. The 49ers look plenty strong on their own, even if Colin Kaepernick isn’t quite yet the game-changing presence some fans hoped he’d be. (That said, San Francisco has a 3-1-1 record behind him.) But until further notice, the Patriots are going to be favorites in almost every situation–just as things have been, and just as things will probably always be until Brady or Belichick hang up their hats. – JG  New York Jets at Tennessee (-1.5) DR: Tennessee; JG: Jets; KtTL: Tennessee  Don’t look now, but the J-E-T-S Jets are riding a two-game winning streak–albeit, against the Cardinals and the Jaguars, and nowhere near enough to salvage their unsalvageable season, but enough to reclaim some of the swagger we all wish they’d forgotten somewhere during that midseason stretch of misery. Mark Sanchez is still at quarterback, Tim Tebow is back as backup, and Greg McElroy is nowhere to be found, all of which is fine now that Rex Ryan agreed to just run the ball most of the time rather than give his quarterbacks any chance to screw things up. The Titans, as it turns out, aren’t very good at stopping the run, which means that might not be such a bad strategy. I’ll try not to talk about the bummer factor of this being one of our last Monday Night Football games. But hey, at least it rates an easy decision when deciding whether to stay in or go out. But hey, if you stick around, try putting it on mute and reading a book instead–it’ll probably be a lot more fun. – JG  As a bonus, we present a few extra picks from our friends at Massey-Peabody:  Cade Massey, from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and Rufus Peabody, a Las Vegas sports analyst, predict NFL games based off a model that takes only on-field performance into account. They look at only four statistics to evaluate offenses and defenses: rushing, passing, scoring and how effectively the ball is advanced relative to down and distance. The data is adjusted for home field and game situation, and weighted by predictive ability. Here are the games this week where they find a significantly different outcome (about two or more points) than the betting line. For more information on their methodology, visit www.massey-peabody.com.  New York Jets at Tennessee Titans (Vegas: TEN -2; M/P: TEN -4.3) Seattle Seahawks vs. Buffalo Bills (Vegas: SEA -5.5; M/P: SEA -1.1) Pittsburgh Steelers at Dallas Cowboys (Vegas: PIT -1.5; M/P: DAL -2.6) Jacksonville Jaguars at Miami Dolphins (Vegas: MIA -7; M/P: MIA -10.8) Indianapolis Colts at Houston Texans (Vegas: HOU -9; M/P: HOU -12)
The Journal's NFL prognosticators wonder if a win over Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers will be enough to put a smile on Patriots coach Bill Belichick's face, and much more.