The NFL’s Week 14 slate of Sunday games will lead off with the New Orleans Saints’ kickoff against the San Francisco 49ers, and how it turns out might be anyone’s guess. NFL experts are filing their picks from all around the league’s orbit, and there’s so firm consensus this week.
According to the dozens of expert picks surveyed by NFL Pickwatch, 65% of the football cognoscenti expects the Saints to prevail. A healthy 35% of votes are coming in for San Francisco.
That isn’t very encouraging given the result of Thursday Night Football, in which the Dallas Cowboys — picked by 73% of experts — were upset on the road against the Chicago Bears. It’s not often that one team leads its own division (as the Cowboys do, at 6-7) while having their lunch money stolen an opponent ranked third in their respective division (the 7-6 Bears trail both the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings).
Few games are currently being picked with any sense of certainty, with just the Packers (100%), Vikings (99%), Houston Texans (98%), Philadelphia Eagles (95%), and Cleveland Browns (91%) breaking the 90% threshold in each of their matchups. Considering their opponents are a combined 13-46-1, it makes sense that NFL experts might be feeling a little more confident in those games.
