The National Football League has 30 teams in action today and a dozen outside venues where weather will not play a major role. There will be some rain in Foxboro, where the New England Patriots host the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Seattle, where the Seahawks entertain the Detroit Lions. But, the league has once again avoided severe weather that could significantly affect play on the field.
In most seasons, the work we do on Monday and Tuesday will set us up with a few games we are looking at for money rated plays. Not this year. During a typical NFL regular season there are seldom injuries during the week that dramatically affect a teams available personnel on game day. This goes particularly for quarterbacks, who wear red shirts during practice and are not tackled in drills.
In the 2021 campaign, a team’s roster can be severely weakened late in a week due to a virus outbreak that sends groups of players to the reserve COVID-19 list and inactive for game action. That is what happened this week with the Minnesota Vikings, who play the Green Bay Packer today in an important contest for both teams.
The Vikings need to win their final two games and get help to earn a Wild Card berth. They are currently ranked eighth in the National Football Conference, and only seven teams from the NFC advance to the playoffs. Today’s game at Lambeau Field was going to be a difficult task for Mike Zimmer’s squad, they had downed the Packers earlier this year and Green Bay is looking to close out their season with a couple wins to secure the top seed and single postseason bye in the conference.
Early this week, the Vikings prospects took a severe hit when quarterback Kirk Cousins was placed on the reserve COVID-19 list and is out of action today. His replacement, Sean Mannion, was a 2015 third round draft choice of the St. Louis Rams and has been a career backup with only two previous NFL starts.
The switch at quarterback sent the point spread in this game soaring, with the Packers initially a seven point favorite while this morning they are listed as a 13 point pick. The Packers giving the touchdown would have been a pick for us this week, but the 13 point spread takes the game off the board for us.
It is not that I’m opposed to laying double digits in the right spot.
For example, the San Francisco 49ers can earn a postseason date with wins this week and next Sunday in games against the Houston Texans and Los Angeles Rams. If the Cardinals were to lose today in Dallas, and the Rams took care of business in Baltimore against the Ravens, Los Angeles could clinch the NFC West before they meet the 49ers next Sunday. The Rams are already assured a postseason slot and if the Packers beat Minnesota tonight, Los Angeles would not be able to catch them for the opening week bye based on the head-to-head loss suffered in Green Bay five weeks ago.
A 49ers win would be a lot easier next week if they were still in the hunt for a Wild Card berth and the Rams had nothing to play for in the regular season finale. Which brings us to today, the 49ers lost both a critical game and their starting quarterback last week in Tennessee. Kyle Shanahan’s team surrendered a 10-0 halftime lead en route to a 20-17 loss. Jimmy Garoppolo was also injured in Tennessee and will be replaced today by rookie Trey Lance when San Francisco hosts the Houston Texans.
What this serves up is a motivated 49ers squad from three angles beginning with the push off of last week’s loss, the need to compensate for having a rookie at quarterback and their intense battle to earn a playoff date. When Garoppolo was declared out, the point spread on this game dropped from San Francisco a 15 point favorite to 12½.
What we get here is an advantage for the motivation of the Niners and a reduced point spread.
The public has checked in with their three favorite plays this week, they are the Philadelphia Eagles (-4½) over the Washington Redskins, Los Angeles Rams (-6½) over Baltimore Ravens and Indianapolis Colts (-8) over the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Qoxhi selections for Week 17 are now posted on this site, and if a Bullet Play develops in the final hour leading up to the day’s first kickoff, that game will be added to the play list by 9:45 a.m. Pacific Time.