Quicker than a hiccup Week 3 in the NFL kicks off later on tonight when the 1-1 Washington Redskins head to MetLife Stadium to take on the New York Giants. We are 12-3 here on our spotlight picks against the spread through the first two weeks of the season including every prime time game of the year, but I’m not confident about this game whatsoever.

 If NFL games were only 59 minutes long instead of 60, the Giants would be 2-0 and looking pretty good with wins over the Cowboys in Dallas and over the exciting Falcons at home. Instead, the Giants have had back to back heart breaking losses and they were also bad because the Giants didn’t only lose at the last second but they blew 10 point fourth quarter leads in each of their first two games. At some point these type of losses have to effect a team’s psyche! Honestly for me the Giants woes stem from the play calling and the fact that the Giants have lacked that killer instinct. It’s almost as if Eli Manning’s interception woes the past few seasons have made the play callers for the Giants forget that Eli is an Elite quarterback in this league. The Giants O Line is stacked with talent and have only allowed Eli to get sacked 3 times thus far. Furthermore Eli now finally has the weapons around him to air it out, SO LET HIM DO IT!!! Instead the Giants continue to run the ball with lackluster backs and play not to lose instead of to win and you can’t do that with defense that’s as bad as theirs is right now. 

On the other side of th field you have the Washington Redskins who had about as low expectations as any team coming into the season but have actually look pretty good during the first two weeks, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. Don’t be fooled by the loss to Miami, that was due to one bad special teams play, the Redskins dominated that entire game. Over the first two weeks the Redskins defense has only allowed 1 offensive touchdown per game and last week they stifled a Rams team, (who just beat the Seahawks) holding them to only 2 3rd down conversions the entire game. This has allowed Kirk Cousins and the offense to win the time of possession game in that the Redskins offense is averaging close to 38 minutes time of possession, which is really impressive and good for second in the league. Of course, last week the Redskins may have also found a force in rookie running back,Matt Jones who rushed for 123 yards and 2 touchdowns. With he & Alfred Morris, the Redskins offense should be able to take some of the pressure off of Kirk Cousins. 

At the end of the day, with Tony Romo’s injury, this division game means that much more to both of these teams because the NFC East is wide open.  The Giants are definetely the more desperate team and need this win at home or the talk about this team is going to get even worse. Thus, I think the Giants will find a way to win this game but I’m not confident enough to say that they’ll win by much, so my pick for Thursday Night Football is The Washington Redskins (+4). Like I said with the Broncos & Jets last week, don’t be too surprised to see the Redskins win the game outright. 

That’s going to do it for right now but I will be back with my picks of the week tomorrow morning. I’ll be also back with my best knockout pool picks of the week so be sure to check those out as well.