I was the big winner last week, picking ten correctly and having the tiebreaker to beat Sean. Scott and Adam were right behind us with nine. Mom stays in the lead with 36 points. Offord is one behind her still. Sean is now two back, then we have Scott (-4). I am sitting six behind first place, but at least I moved ahead of Jon (-8). Finally, we have Adam and James.
Underdog Special: New York Giants (+8.0)
I do not understand why the Panthers were the favorite against the Cardinals last week, but whatever, I will take it. This week I am taking the Giants. The Packers had trouble last week with Bailey Zappe and the Patriots. The Giants keep games close. I think the Packers win it, but not by more than a touchdown.
Underdog Record: 3-1 (+$22.60)
Steelers Prediction: I think the Bills blow them out. Like it ends up being an ugly game. The Bills defense will shut the offense down, and the Steelers defense cannot stop the run, so I could see Josh Allen rushing for like 150 yards himself. He will seriously just take off every play and no one will tackle him. The only chance the defense has is if he does throw it and Minkah picks him off a few times. It will have to be a pick six though because the offense will not be able to score.
Steelers Prediction Record: 1-3
This week I want to talk about expectations, and fandom. There are two factions of Steelers fans when it comes to Kenny Pickett: the Pitt football fans who think he is the greatest quarterback of all-time and the non-Pitt Steeler fans who are tempering their expectations. I should mention that there are probably two types of non-Pitt fans here: the ones who hate Pickett and want to see him fail (those fans are weird) and the ones like myself, who want Kenny Pickett to succeed, but also realize that there will be mistakes and some bad games.
During the Jets game, I noticed on Twitter that any Pitt fans would blame every pass on Trubisky. If a receiver dropped a pass, it was Mitch’s fault. But then when Kenny went in, nothing was the QB’s fault. The pass in the endzone that Claypool could not hang onto had them screaming that Chase sucks. Even though the announcing crew pointed that it was not a great throw from Kenny Pickett.
Do not get me wrong. I am happy the Steelers decided to make a change. It was clear that Mitch Trubisky was not getting it done. I do think Kenny Pickett will bring something to the offense (MOXY!). Does that mean they will all of a sudden start winning games? Probably not. Does that mean he will not make mistakes? Definitely not. He will fumble the ball, he will throw a bad interception, he will miss open guys. But, if he learns and grows from those mistakes, then he will be a better quarterback. And those mistakes will happen less and less, which will lead to success.
So Pitt fans, be patient. No need to freak out if a receiver drops a ball. To those non-Pitt fans, who want Pickett to fail, well fuck off. What the hell kind of Steelers fan are you? You want them to do poorly just to justify your dislike of Kenny Pickett. Come on, I hate Pitt and yet I love Pickett and want to see him become the Steelers greatest quarterback ever. I hope he wins four Super Bowls. I just do not expect it to happen this week.
