The final week of the NFL season is always the hardest to pick. Sure, you may know much more about each team than you did at the beginning of the season, but there are extenuating circumstances that make this final slate of games so impossibly difficult to predict.
First of all, you have a handful of teams resting their starters in preparation for the playoffs. Patrick Mahomes won’t play for the Chiefs this week. Neither will Ben Roethlisberger for the Steelers. Then you’ve got the Rams starting John Wolford in place of an injured Jared Goff in a game in which both the Rams and the Cardinals absolutely need to make the postseason. And no one knows what the Bills will be doing with their starters.
Then there’s the fact that every single game is in-division for Week 17. Divisional games always seem to be a coin toss, even when one team looks clearly outmatched.
Despite that uncertainty, there are a lot of games in which our staff are all picking the same winners. The following predictions are unanimous amongst our staff for Week 17:
- Vikings over Lions
- Ravens over Bengals
- Seahawks over 49ers
- Colts over Jaguars
- Titans over Texans
- Packers over Bears
- Saints over Panthers
That’s nearly half the games on the slate this week. However, there are some true toss-ups amongst our staff. We’re split evenly on both NFC East games, because the NFC East is always dumb and unpredictable. That pivotal Rams/Cardinals game is also somewhat split within our staff.
Here’s a look at all of our Week 17 picks: