Hello everyone it is bright and early here in the East Coast and about an hour ago I woke up to take my girlfriend to work.  I took a run over to the corner store like I often do, to get her some coffee and breakfast.  When iplaced my stuff down on the counter, I turned to my right only to see a steak and a six pack of Corona placed on the counter.  Figuring it mayve been a little early for steak and beer, I looked up to my right only to see a man chuckling a bit as he said “Sorry my brotha, we got football in 2 hours!”  My man is right, this week in New York, we get to see how the West Coast lives as in just under an hour, at 9:30AM, the Jets and Dolphins will face off live from London.  While I know it’s probably very hard for players to travel overseas and play football, I love when the NFL goes to London and we get bonus football.  I remember a few years back when the Raiders played after midnight on the East Coast and one year when there was Tuesday Night Football, I enjoyed them both.  If so inclined today, the football fan can sit down and watch a complete day of 4 games of football.  It’s no wonder when my girlfriend jumped out of the car for work, he kissed me goodbye and told me to have fun!  This is going to be a lot of fun so let’s get right into it.

If you’re not following along with me on twitter, I would urge all of you to do so as the last two weeks I’ve been unable to post my picks on their but have done so on their.  Same as usual, I’ve been posting my weekly picks as well as my primetime picks for every Thursday, Sunday and Monday night game.  This season we couldn’t have asked for a better start (and a little bit of luck along the way with games like Baltimore on Thursday night) as we currently have a record of 19-6 on the year all against the spread.  While we’ve been hot remember that as hot as the Summer gets, the Autumn is always soon to follow.  This is a tough week of games and while I believe I can get you through it but proceed with caution.

The Picks

1) The Oakland Raiders (-3) over The Chicago Bears

I’ll admit that I will feel a lot better about this one if Jay Cutler doesn’t play because if that happens, the Bears offense is all on the hsoulders of Matt Forte and while the Raiders defense isn’t the Seahawks, he saw how that went for the Bears offense last week.  That said, even if Cutler plays he isn’t going to be 100% and neither should Alshon Jeffrey.  The Raiders on the other hand, may have finally found some real players with Derek Carr, Latavis Murray and Amari Cooper.  Other than that, they also finally won on the east coast in Cleveland last week and I don’t see them slowing down this week.  The Bears defense is banged up and now they’ve gotten rid of Allen and Bostic to boot.  Hold your breath kids, we’re going to believe in the Oakland Raiders.

2) Carolina Panthers (-3) over The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Has anyone realized that the Panthers are 3-0.  While their offense isn’t world beating, Cam Newton has found a way to get it done and now he leads the Panthers to inconsistent Tampa Bay to face Jameis Winston and the fighting Bucs.  The Panthers went out of their way to add Jared Allen to an already stout defense.  I don’t like rookie quarterbacks against good defenses, even moreso than I hate picking road favorites.  This one should be easy for the Panthers.

3) Cincinnati Bengals (-4) over The Kansas City Chiefs

It’s the regular season and so you know I’m on the Bengals and so far they haven’t let me down.  Really like them at home this week against a Chiefs team that honestly I’ve found to be pretty overrated to start the season. Sure the Chiefs have played Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers the past two weeks but Andy Dalton hasn’t been far behind this season.  Chiefs are also banged up and the Bengals offense may in fact be the most complete in all of the NFL.

4) Philadelphia Eagles (-3) over The Washington Redskins 

I’ve gone back and forth a million times here on this pick because I was tempted to go with one of these underdogs like the Texans +7 or the Browns +7 but I don’t like to go with teams that you’re betting to hang in the game.  If I don’t see a way that a team is going to win the game, i don’t like picking them because they’re going to keep it close.  The numbers here would actually have you pick the Skins especially with a good amount of rest but I think the Eagles had something click last week and if they can get their high octane offense going, the Skins will be looking to keep up and they’ll have to do it with Kirk Cousins.  I feel like if the Skins are dependent on Cousins to win or keep them in a game, he’s likely to turn the ball over, they’re likely to lose and I think they will again here.

LOCK OF THE WEEK: New York Jets (-2) over the Miami Dolphins 

On the one hand, I hate picking the Jets because they’re my favorite team and because I’ll never bet against them.  Yet on the other hand,  Miami has looked like the worst team in the league this season.  They lucked their way into a victory week one and lost to the Jaguars two weeks ago and got manhandled by the Bills last week.  So much for that Dolphins week schedule to start the season, eh?  I think the Jets are just the better team and they’ll have both Chris Ivory and Eric Decker back this week.  Miami is the home team but that’s only by technicality as the game is in England.  i hope my Jets bounce back and I’m confident they will.

That’s going to do it for me now but I’ll be back later today with my sunday night football pick against the spread.