Bellwether's NFL musings Week 2 - 3

After two weeks of football, I can't claim to have any answers. There's just too little data to go on. Still, there's some thing's we have learned.

• Things I know for sure:
  The Rams are the worst team in the NFL
  The Packers will be good if Rogers stays healthy
  The Bears never have to apologize for reaching for Forte
  Jonathan Stewart is good at sports
  Jeff Fisher is one of the best coaches in the NFL
  The Steelers are always better than you think. Even if you already think they'll be good
  The Lions are always worse than you think. Even if you already think they'll be bad
  
  
• Things I'm pretty sure about:
  The Giants are a good football team
  
  The Pats are still the best team in the NFL
  The Denver/San Diego rematch Week 17 will decide the AFC West
  
  
• Despite several warts, Football Night in America is worth my time to see Olberman and Patrick reunited. That said, the actual Sunday night game is horribly overproduced.
  
  
• I'm not going to say that Fox just conjured the "passing levels" thing out of whole cloth, but they put more emphasis on it during yesterday's Bears game than the sum of times it's been mentioned in every other NFL broadcast in 30 years.
  
  
• I love the new coin toss rules. It's about time. A lot of teams are going to be deferring.
  
  
• Early returns have the AFC North winning it's annual battle against the NFC East in the contest to see which division has the most mind numblingly booring games.
  
  
• After all these years of transitioning from a legitimate media outlet into a marketing firm, there's been ONE segment on ESPN "programming" that I still liked, and now they've fucked that up too. SportsCenter's "Pump Up The Volume" is football highlights with local radio calls underneath. Now, about a third of the highlights have press conference or post game interview audio under them. On the horribly rare chance any of these meatheads say anything relevant, I guarentee it's important enough to play at another point in the show.
  
  *SIGH* I hate ESPN.
  
  
• Philly/Dallas did not disappoint. Any time the NFL wants to have an 75 point game, I'm there. We got one with San Diego/Denver too, and even though the Chargers got completely HOSED I picked the Broncos, so it all worked out.
  
  
• I believe New Orleans will beat Denver, Arizona will beat Washington, Cleveland will beat Baltimore, and Chicago will beat Tampa Bay.