NFL picks 2017, Week 8: Experts see scary things for the Broncos and Browns

Rejoice. We are all experts again. Some of us are more expert than the other experts, but the important thing is that we all definitely better at making educated guesses about last week’s NFL winners.

And I’ve got a sneaky feeling this week’s picks will border on something close to prescient. ESP stuff. This is Halloween week as far as the NFL’s concerned, so might as well make some kind of metaphysical connection to this week’s picks, right?

Allow me to contort some Halloween puns and half-baked analogies as I regale you with frighteningly accurate insight into this week’s picks. [Cue the Vincent Price maniacal laugh from Thriller).

This is a scary week for the Broncos. Their fast start to the season has been slowed by two consecutive losses. Our panel sees a third straight ‘L’ this week when they travel to play the Chiefs in Kansas City on Monday Night Football. Denver’s only hope is for offensive coordinator Mike McCoy to refresh the embalming fluid on Holy Terror Trevor Siemian.

(Damn, these are the candy corn of Halloween analogies, but the dark lord of puns compels me to cram as many as possible into this post).

The zombie Falcons have a chance to come back from the dead this week against the Jets. That would prevent a clean sweep by the AFC East in four straight games. However, like Freddy Krueger, we buried the Jets before the season, and they keep coming back to torment us by winning games. We’ll see if Steve Sarkisian can cook up a potion in his lab to fix Atlanta’s offense. Unfortunately for the Falcons, his mad has been thoroughly debunked.

Ewww, what’s that rotten grayscale hand clawing its way out of the centerfield dirt at the Oakland Coliseum (it only looks like a graveyard)? Why, that’s the Raiders, my child. Their season is back from the dead too.

Unfortunately, it’s usually a chainsaw massacre when West Coast team are forced to play a 1 p.m. kickoff in the Eastern time zone. More than a few of our panelists see the Raiders as the Bills’ next unsuspecting victims.

Tom Brady wants us all to think that proper hydration and lots of kale keep him playing like a kid at 40 years old. No way. That’s not water he’s drinking. It’s gotta be some other kind of liquid. He just hides his fangs really well.

(Seriously, how do you think he deflated those balls in the first place? You know they fought so hard to keep the NFL from looking at his phone because they didn’t want the league to find out he’s a vampire, probably. Really makes you think, sheeple).

Look for the Patriots to suck the life out of the Chargers Sunday.

Is there a full moon in Detroit Sunday night? There must be. How else do we explain so many picks for the Lions to beat the Steelers. Sure, Ben Roethlisberger’s better, but our panel isn’t convinced that Pittsburgh’s offense is the silver bullet they’ll need to stop Detroit this week.

Then again, I have a sneaking suspicion werewolf Jim Caldwell can’t be agitated anymore than the stone cold version of the real thing. He’s just hairy.

Still no picks for the Browns, truly the NFL’s most damned football team.

This week’s guest picker is Lester from Windy City Gridiron, SB Nation’s home for all things Chicago Bears, er, Chicago BOOS!

Our panelists are allowed to reanimate up to two of their picks by the end of the week. So be sure to check back in case there are any frightening changes to our completely and totally accurate predictions.

Enough with this B-movie Halloween talk, let’s get on with the picks.

The worst call from Week 7 in the NFL