Hognostications: Week 8

This week, the Redskins join a group of losers (Bills, Lions, and Dolphins) with a bye. This group has won 6 of the 28 games played between them for a pathetic combined winning percentage of .286. For some reason, that worthless statistic doesn’t make this Hognosticator feel any better about his Hognostication percentage. Last week was an upset special bonanza. The Bucs beating the Eagles was a pleasant surprise. The Texans putting it to the Jags was just plain unimaginable, and wasn’t it nice to see the Pukes get their butt kicked on Monday night…. even if it was to a division rival? Two plays defined poetic justice in that game. The first was Romo’s first pass attempt picked after all the hype of his replacement of Bledsoe. Wasn’t that great? The second was T.O.’s (would have been an easy first down) drop and on the critical 4th down for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, the league rolls on and returns to a ‘normal’ fourteen game schedule.

San Francisco at Chicago
The Bears won’t let another bottom feeder threaten their fantastic start to the season.
Pick – Bears

Atlanta at Cincinnati
Tough pick, but the Bengals haven’t proven that they can stop the run, and they’ll see plenty of it on Sunday.
Pick – Falcons

Arizona at Green Bay
Imagine Favre with the Cardinal receivers. The Cardinals could have used their old offensive coordinator against the Faiders last week.
Pick – Packers

Seattle at Kansas City
Another tough pick, but KC is always tough at home and the Seahawk defense is struggling. Damon Huard is about to become a hot commodity this off-season assuming Trent Green plans to return or is in the team’s plans.
Pick – Chiefs

Baltimore at New Orleans
Both teams are coming off a bye week. The Saints haven’t lost yet at home, while the Raisins have lost two straight. McNair got his bell rung in the last loss to the Panthers and hasn’t practiced much during the break.
Pick – Saints

Tampa Bay at New York Giants
The Gnats are playing too well to lose at home to the Bucs and a rookie QB, Gradkowski, is in for a long day.
Pick – Giants

Jacksonville at Philadelphia
What the heck has happened to the Jags? The Jags have many problems other than Leftwich’s ankle.
Pick – Eagles

Houston at Tennessee
Look for Wali Lundy to have another big game against a poor Titan rush defense while opening things up for Carr and Andre Johnson.
Pick – Texans

St. Louis at San Diego
Merriman and the rest of the Charger defense are going to take out their frustrations on Steven Jackson and the rest of the Ram offense.
Pick – Chargers

New York Jets at Cleveland
The Jets will be a very respectable 5-3 going into their bye week. The Brownies are dead last in the league on offense and should have known better than to hire a Puke offensive coordinator – weren’t they paying attention to Norv Turner’s experiment throughout the league?
Pick – Jets

Indianapolis at Denver
The Broncos’ pass protection and running game suffered a major blow with the loss of one of their best players, left tackle Matt Lepsis, to a torn ACL. Their offense is already 31st in the league in scoring a measly 13.2 points/game and haven’t scored more than 17 points all season. Guess you can do that when your defense is ranked #1 in points allowed at 7.3/game. This will be the Colts biggest test so far this season, and they’ll fail at Mile High in the cold. They say Champ is earning his $13MM this year; we’ll see on Sunday.
Pick – Broncos

Pittsburgh at Oakland
The Steelers should beat the Faiders, with or without Roethlisberger.
Pick – Steelers

Dallas at Carolina
Go Panthers! Rattle Romo. The media is calling the Pukes desperate. Will they do the same if Gibbs decides to see what Campbell can do? No, because Gibbs is not going to do it unless the season is lost or Brunell gets hurt.
Pick – Panthers

New England at Minnesota
This is another tough pick. The Pats just continue to win.
Pick – Patriots

Bye Week: Bills, Lions, Dolphins, Redskins

Last Week’s Results: 5-8
Season to Date: 57-43

– Frank Hastings

Hognostications Counterpoint NFL Week 8

How brutal was Week 7 on everybody’s scores? Well, let’s have a glance at the standings. From among forty seven (47) Hognosticators, -only- four (4) obtained a score above 50%. Let’s put it differently: Less than 10% of the entire group of Hognosticators got a winning score.

Are we an exception? No way. From among the eight ESPN “experts,” only one (1) obtained a score above 50%. Peter “the Sleazy” King also received a negative score. One out of nine experts gives a percentage of people with winning scores very close to our own.

The impact of this week’s generally bad scores was felt throughout the entire standings table. Understandably, everybody’s winning percentages throughout the entire season came closer to reality, even if that “reality” is worse for some of us than some of you.

This week’s results allowed CLL to stay at the top, this time alone, but he has lots of company breathing down his neck. He has up to eleven Hognosticators at a distance of four games or less. The winners of this week’s pool, 1nik and gus, benefited enormously from the big relative differences between their scores and those of others. Gus actually is one of the better Hognosticators that have missed one week. 1nik caught up with Texas Hog, SkinsJock and Niki among the ones that have played the full season so far.

What is the lesson of this week? Well, we already knew: Any team can beat any other team on any given week. The key is to pick the upsets and not to stick simply with the “favourites” by statistics. I mean, if anybody had told us that Houston was going to defeat Jacksonville, we would have called them nuts, right? Nobody, I mean, nobody picked this upset this past week, for example.

This is a GREAT week for all beleaguered Redskins fans. Our team takes a much needed Bye to try to regroup and make something out of what’s left of the season. I am not looking for playoffs anymore. I only want them to play hard to win every week from now on. I want them to play like Joe Gibbs’ Washington Redskins. That’s all. I hope that is not too much to ask.

My picks:

Sunday, October 29 (ET)

Patriots at Vikings 8:30 PM
Pick – New England

– RedskinInCanada

Edit: This blog was archived in May of 2016 from our original articles database.It was originally posted by Frank Hastings