This week, the Redskins join a group of losers (Bills, Lions, and Dolphins) with a bye. This group has won 6 of the 28 games played between them for a pathetic combined winning percentage of .286. For some reason, that worthless statistic doesn’t make this Hognosticator feel any better about his Hognostication percentage. Last week was an upset special bonanza. The Bucs beating the Eagles was a pleasant surprise. The Texans putting it to the Jags was just plain unimaginable, and wasn’t it nice to see the Pukes get their butt kicked on Monday night…. even if it was to a division rival? Two plays defined poetic justice in that game. The first was Romo’s first pass attempt picked after all the hype of his replacement of Bledsoe. Wasn’t that great? The second was T.O.’s (would have been an easy first down) drop and on the critical 4th down for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, the league rolls on and returns to a ‘normal’ fourteen game schedule.
San Francisco at Chicago The Bears won’t let another bottom feeder threaten their fantastic start to the season.
Pick – Bears
Atlanta at Cincinnati Tough pick, but the Bengals haven’t proven that they can stop the run, and they’ll see plenty of it on Sunday.
Pick – Falcons
Arizona at Green Bay Imagine Favre with the Cardinal receivers. The Cardinals could have used their old offensive coordinator against the Faiders last week.
Pick – Packers
Seattle at Kansas City Another tough pick, but KC is always tough at home and the Seahawk defense is struggling. Damon Huard is about to become a hot commodity this off-season assuming Trent Green plans to return or is in the team’s plans.
Pick – Chiefs
Baltimore at New Orleans Both teams are coming off a bye week. The Saints haven’t lost yet at home, while the Raisins have lost two straight. McNair got his bell rung in the last loss to the Panthers and hasn’t practiced much during the break.
Pick – Saints
Tampa Bay at New York Giants The Gnats are playing too well to lose at home to the Bucs and a rookie QB, Gradkowski, is in for a long day.
Pick - Giants
Jacksonville at Philadelphia What the heck has happened to the Jags? The Jags have many problems other than Leftwich’s ankle.
Pick - Eagles
Houston at Tennessee Look for Wali Lundy to have another big game against a poor Titan rush defense while opening things up for Carr and Andre Johnson.
Pick – Texans
St. Louis at San Diego Merriman and the rest of the Charger defense are going to take out their frustrations on Steven Jackson and the rest of the Ram offense.
Pick – Chargers
New York Jets at Cleveland The Jets will be a very respectable 5-3 going into their bye week. The Brownies are dead last in the league on offense and should have known better than to hire a Puke offensive coordinator – weren’t they paying attention to Norv Turner’s experiment throughout the league?
Pick – Jets
Indianapolis at Denver The Broncos’ pass protection and running game suffered a major blow with the loss of one of their best players, left tackle Matt Lepsis, to a torn ACL. Their offense is already 31st in the league in scoring a measly 13.2 points/game and haven’t scored more than 17 points all season. Guess you can do that when your defense is ranked #1 in points allowed at 7.3/game. This will be the Colts biggest test so far this season, and they’ll fail at Mile High in the cold. They say Champ is earning his $13MM this year; we’ll see on Sunday.
Pick – Broncos
Pittsburgh at Oakland The Steelers should beat the Faiders, with or without Roethlisberger.
Pick – Steelers
Dallas at Carolina Go Panthers! Rattle Romo. The media is calling the Pukes desperate. Will they do the same if Gibbs decides to see what Campbell can do? No, because Gibbs is not going to do it unless the season is lost or Brunell gets hurt.
Pick – Panthers
New England at Minnesota This is another tough pick. The Pats just continue to win.
Pick - Patriots
Bye Week: Bills, Lions, Dolphins, Redskins
Last Week’s Results: 5-8
Season to Date: 57-43
- Frank Hastings
Hognostications Counterpoint NFL Week 8
How brutal was Week 7 on everybody's scores? Well, let's have a glance at the standings. From among forty seven (47) Hognosticators, -only- four (4) obtained a score above 50%. Let's put it differently: Less than 10% of the entire group of Hognosticators got a winning score.
Are we an exception? No way. From among the eight ESPN "experts," only one (1) obtained a score above 50%. Peter "the Sleazy" King also received a negative score. One out of nine experts gives a percentage of people with winning scores very close to our own.
The impact of this week's generally bad scores was felt throughout the entire standings table. Understandably, everybody's winning percentages throughout the entire season came closer to reality, even if that "reality" is worse for some of us than some of you.
This week's results allowed CLL to stay at the top, this time alone, but he has lots of company breathing down his neck. He has up to eleven Hognosticators at a distance of four games or less. The winners of this week's pool, 1nik and gus, benefited enormously from the big relative differences between their scores and those of others. Gus actually is one of the better Hognosticators that have missed one week. 1nik caught up with Texas Hog, SkinsJock and Niki among the ones that have played the full season so far.
What is the lesson of this week? Well, we already knew: Any team can beat any other team on any given week. The key is to pick the upsets and not to stick simply with the "favourites" by statistics. I mean, if anybody had told us that Houston was going to defeat Jacksonville, we would have called them nuts, right? Nobody, I mean, nobody picked this upset this past week, for example.
This is a GREAT week for all beleaguered Redskins fans. Our team takes a much needed Bye to try to regroup and make something out of what's left of the season. I am not looking for playoffs anymore. I only want them to play hard to win every week from now on. I want them to play like Joe Gibbs' Washington Redskins. That's all. I hope that is not too much to ask.
ARTICLE TOOLS 
