NFL Week 9 Predictions: The Seven-Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch was a 1955 film famous for Marilyn Monroe’s white dress blowing up over a subway grate. The psychology behind the seven-year itch is that seven years into a marriage, the quality of marriage declines and you lose interest with your significant other.

This is my seventh season as a full-time NFL writer, and 2017 is really wearing me down to the point where I’m starting to wonder if I’m feeling the seven-year itch myself with this league.

Maybe it’s just the quality of this particular season that is bugging me, or what’s going on in other areas of life in 2017 has wore me down too, but something hasn’t been right since Week 1. The Week 9 slate in particular isn’t doing me any favors to get my interest back up. I fell asleep for most of Jets-Bills on Thursday, exhausted from the day’s events, and ultimately bored by the product on the field that night. I don’t feel bad about it either, just as I don’t feel bad about waking up late for Browns-Vikings in London last week when it was already 30-16 in the fourth quarter.

The only game I’d even really want to talk about this week is Chiefs-Cowboys, and that’s partly thanks to this frustrating Ezekiel Elliott story. Great, he’s playing again, and he’s been on a tear. But I was really hoping to see him miss this one actually just to see if the running game could stabilize itself without him as it did in 2015 (without a QB that year too), and if Dak Prescott could carry the load, which I think he can. The Cowboys still have some great players minus Zeke, and I think this has shootout written all over it with the two defenses present. It should be a fun game with Tony Romo on the call, and I look forward to that part of my Sunday afternoon, but the rest of the week looks like a bust to me.

Since the 2006 season, I have collected torrents of NFL games. I haven’t kept up with it as much lately (mostly due to NFL Game Pass, when it works, and a lack of hard drive space/laziness to plug in the externals), but I have a pretty big collection. My weekly routine started with, as you may have guessed, getting the full game for the Steelers, Patriots, and Colts. Any other really good game with other teams may have been added as well, and I got a high-quality copy of every playoff game. By 2012, I added Denver to the weekly rotation because of Peyton Manning, and kept the Colts because of Andrew Luck. I was also getting every Green Bay game, usually the condensed version unless it was a great game, to keep a catalog of Aaron Rodgers’ prime. I also started doing Seattle for Russell Wilson.

At the rate things were going this year, I may have started getting Houston games for Deshaun Watson, who has had one of the greatest 7-game starts in NFL history. Even though the Texans were 3-4, I thought I might be arguing later this season that Watson is deserving of the MVP award for the impact he’s had on Houston’s offense.

Then Thursday came.

I saw this tweet a little before 5 p.m. about Watson being limited in practice because of a sore knee.

No big deal, right? He should be fine. Then I get an email from an editor about my FiveThirtyEight article. (Yeah, I’m writing there now too, and here’s the first article). It says that we need to change a paragraph now that Watson is injured. I start replying “Oh it’s just a limited in practice situation, he’ll be fine.” Before I can send that, I get a tweet from my long-time editor:

Then I saw the breaking news reports over and over: Watson tore his ACL on a non-contact injury in practice. His season is over. It’s not like I never considered this could happen, but you don’t actively think about it happening.

I was shocked and really sad in a way that I usually don’t feel over countless other NFL injuries. Most of my favorite players have been great at avoiding the long-term injury, or if it did happen, it wasn’t some practice injury during the season. It was an odd situation from the offseason like Peyton Manning in 2011 or Andrew Luck this year. Hell, we just had the news on Thursday afternoon that Luck wasn’t going to see the field in 2017, and that was bad enough. You add Watson on top of this, and it’s just about the worst season for quarterback injuries that I have ever seen.

With Watson, it just feels different because of how new and exciting he was, and how quickly he’s been taken away from this season. I actually gave a damn about watching Houston Texans games for a change. This is like getting a puppy or kitten, enjoying the hell out of them for 7 weeks, and one day they just get ran over by a car.

Watson’s not dead, and he’s already come back from one ACL injury, but it’s just not fair. He’ll never be able to finish what could have easily been the most historic, record-breaking rookie QB season in NFL history. I can only hope he returns 100% and makes Houston a contender immediately next season. I just hate that we have to wait until September 2018 to give a damn about Houston again.

But getting back to the torrents. With Week 9 in particular, the Steelers and Patriots are on a bye week. The Colts may as well be on a bye every week this year. I stopped collecting Denver games after Manning retired, and wouldn’t want to waste my hard drive with that offense (now featuring Brock Osweiler). Green Bay is on Monday night, but Rodgers won’t be playing. There’s really no special interest for me this week, and that kind of sucks.

I said recently that this has been the most depressing season, and the events of the last few days have only gone on to deepen that for me.

I’m still watching, writing, researching, and tweeting, because it’s my job after all. But to say I’m having a lot of fun this season would be a lie.

2017 Week 9 Predictions

Can I just say I hate Tampa Bay? I was one game short of my first perfect week of picks ever, and the Buccaneers just had to ruin it with a dud at home against Carolina. Granted, the Bucs were the only favorite to not win last week, but can’t we have one week where the team everyone expected to win actually won? That’d be fine, but apparently that never happens. It wouldn’t have been an impressive 13-0 perfect week, but it still would have been a perfect record. Thanks for nothing, Bucs. And I’m almost willing to pick them to win this week even though it would make no sense with the way the Saints have played in a five-game winning streak. But nothing is supposed to make sense with the Jameis Winston-era Bucs, apparently.

The quest for perfection ended immediately this week. I had Buffalo and we know the Jets owned that second half on Thursday, even if I was out cold for most of it.

Winners in bold.

• Buccaneers at Saints
• Ravens at Titans
• Colts at Texans
• Rams at Giants
• Broncos at Eagles
• Falcons at Panthers
• Bengals at Jaguars
• Redskins at Seahawks
• Cardinals at 49ers
• Chiefs at Cowboys
• Raiders at Dolphins
• Lions at Packers

I am amused with the SNF game between Oakland and Miami after I called them two of the worst 12-4/10-6 teams ever last season. Both are struggling this year, with Miami being the worst 4-3 team ever (outscored by 60 points). Incredibly, the Raiders don’t have an interception on defense in eight games. That’s never been done before. I’m going to say they get at least one and win this game. While Derek Carr is overrated, he’s still better than post-retirement Jay Cutler. This would have been a good game to keep Jay Ajayi around for, but the trade deadline is what it is.

• Week 1: 8-7
• Week 2: 11-5
• Week 3: 9-7
• Week 4: 8-8
• Week 5: 6-8
• Week 6: 6-8
• Week 7: 11-4
• Week 8: 12-1
• Season: 71-48