Times are Eastern. Picks do not reflect the betting line.
New England Patriots at Buffalo Bills
1 p.m., CBS
After his team’s 27-14 upset of Andrew Luck and the Colts on Sunday, Bills coach Rex Ryan presented a game ball to the team’s owner, Terry Pegula.
“He had the guts to hire me, and I am proud to be the coach of the Bills,” Ryan said after the game.
We should probably all thank Pegula for keeping the Rex Ryan vs. Bill Belichick rivalry alive. The thought of losing that twice-yearly coaching matchup was one of more disappointing aspects of Ryan’s firing by the New York Jets in December.
The week leading up to the game has lived up to expectations. Things have picked up right where they left off when Ryan was coaching the Jets. It started with Ryan boasting that he could “go home early” this week, as his game plan to beat the Patriots has “been ready for a long time.” And it ramped up with Belichick — in what may be the closest thing to smack talk you’ll ever hear out of his mouth — saying: “Well, I think our record against him has been OK. I’ll take it.”
The Bills looked like a playoff team with a bruising defense throttling the Colts’ offense in their Week 1 victory. The Patriots, who were 9-4 against the Jets during Ryan’s tenure, looked much like the team that won the Super Bowl last season. It should make for one of the more exciting Sundays upstate New York has seen in a while.
Line: Patriots by 2. Pick: Bills
Seattle Seahawks at Green Bay Packers
8:30 p.m., NBC
Brandon Bostick is no longer with the Packers, but his ghost will loom large over Sunday night’s game. It was Bostick whose botched attempt at an onside kick recovery in last season’s NFC championship game helped Seattle overcome a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit to pull off an improbable comeback and a berth in the Super Bowl with an overtime win. But you won’t hear Packers coach Mike McCarthy talk about his team seeking redemption this weekend.
“We’re playing at Lambeau Field,” McCarthy said, adding: “It’s our first home game. I don’t really think we need to get past that.”
Seattle, coming off a 34-31 overtime loss to the Rams, has lost five straight to the Packers in Green Bay, where the home team went 9-0 last season (including playoff games). There, the Seahawks will be facing one of the league’s most explosive offenses, which isn’t good news for a defensive unit that gave up a league-worst eight plays of 20 yards or more in Week 1. It seems that the absence of the holdout safety Kam Chancellor is being felt.
Line: Packers by 3 1/2. Pick: Packers
Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles
4:25 p.m., FOX
How long the Cowboys will be without the services of star receiver Dez Bryant appears has turned into a great mystery. Initial rumors had him missing four to six weeks with a broken bone in his right foot. Then there was speculation that he would miss as many as eight weeks. This was followed by reports that he may be out for the season. All of which means he’ll probably come out wearing a boot and score a touchdown Sunday against the Eagles.
Meanwhile, one can assume that Eagles running back DeMarco Murray, a former Cowboy, has been looking forward to this game for some time. How many touches Murray, the reigning NFL offensive player of the year, will get and how effective he will be is another question. He carried the ball just eight times for 9 yards in the Eagles’ loss to the Falcons last week.
Line: Eagles by 5 1/2. Pick: Eagles
Detroit Lions at Minnesota Vikings
1 p.m., FOX
Adrian Peterson struggled in his first week back from a tumultuous 2014 in a 20-3 loss to the 49ers, leading some to question whether a 30-year-old running back with a ton of mileage on him could return to form after missing a season. Peterson’s patented burst was missing, and at times he seemed hesitant carrying the ball. Whether or not that’s just the product of a little rust that can be easily shaken off will very likely factor heavily in the kind of season Minnesota will have. Peterson has had some big games against Detroit, which lost its star defensive linemen Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley in the offseason and gave up 483 yards to the Chargers last week, blowing a 21-3 lead in the course of losing, 33-28. So this matchup could be a good barometer of what type of season Peterson will have.
Line: Vikings by 3. Pick: Vikings
Atlanta Falcons at New York Giants
1 p.m., FOX
In the wake of Eli Manning’s telling running back Rashad Jennings not to score in a crucial moment of the Giants week one loss to the Cowboys, here’s a TV sitcom idea: Manning telling people throughout history not to do things. Similar to Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” which features intoxicated comedians recounting key moments throughout history, this show would feature historical reenactments where we’d see the ramifications of people listening to Manning’s advice not to do something. We’d see the surely comic effects of his advising Ben Franklin not to travel to France in 1776, or maybe advising Marlon Brando not to do “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
The possibilities for Nielsen ratings gold are virtually limitless.
Line: Giants by 2 1/2. Pick: Giants
Houston Texans at Carolina Panthers
1 p.m., CBS
If you watched the recent season of HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” you know that Texans coach Bill O’Brien is a master at the art of the well-timed profanity. And you can bet the profanities were spewing in Houston in the wake of his team’s being throttled at home by Kansas City in Week 1.
You also know, if you watched “Hard Knocks,” that after naming Brian Hoyer the starting quarterback, O’Brien told Ryan Mallett to be stay prepared in the event his number is called.
“You’ve got to earn it every day,” O’Brien told his quarterbacks on the show. “What I would expect from you, Ryan, is to be a professional about it, to prepare like a starter, be ready to play.”
O’Brien was most certainly not kidding; Hoyer has been benched after one week as the starter and Mallett will start this week against the Panthers.
Line: Panthers by 4 1/2. Pick: Texans
Tampa Bay Buccaneers at New Orleans Saints
1 p.m., FOX
For the first time on the Sean Payton-Mickey Loomis era in New Orleans, confidence is waning among the Who Dat faithful. There’s a feeling that the current regime’s best days are in the rearview mirror, that the good times have ceased to roll, that the wheels might start to come off.
Feeding into that, Payton’s contentious relationship with his defensive coordinator, Rob Ryan, picked up right where it left off in a Week 1 loss to Arizona, with television cameras capturing palpable sideline tension between the two. Some observers think that Ryan could be fired before season’s end if his young, injury-riddled defense doesn’t at least improve to the level of a mediocre NFL defense.
Still, if ever there were a remedy to cure what ails what’s wrong with the Saints, at least temporarily, it might be the Buccaneers. Jameis Winston was dreadful in his debut; his first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown, and it didn’t get much better from there, as Tampa Bay fell to the Titans, 42-14.
Then again, if ever there were ever a cure to what ails a rookie quarterback coming off a bad first game, it might be a Rob Ryan defense.
Line: Saints by 10 1/2. Pick: Saints
San Francisco 49ers at Pittsburgh Steelers
1 p.m., FOX
One of the biggest surprises to come out of the first week was that the 49ers looked like, well, the 49ers in the course of beating the Vikings, 20-3, on Monday night. Many thought this would be the year the now Jim Harbaugh-less team would fall off the cliff, back to irrelevancy.
But Colin Kaepernick looked as dangerous as ever while also appearing in complete command of the offense. The defense looked as frenzied and suffocating as ever under its new defensive coordinator, Eric Mangini. With a victory against the Steelers, maybe, just maybe, the average football fan will learn the name of the team’s new head coach (it’s Jim Tomsula).
Line: Steelers by 6 1/2. Pick: Steelers
Arizona Cardinals at Chicago Bears
1 p.m., FOX
Though the Bears fell at home, 31-23, to their hated rival Packers — which of course featured the oh-so-predictable backbreaking fourth-quarter interception of Jay Cutler — running back Matt Forte saw signs of encouragement in the team’s loss.
“The mentality, which I was proud of, is nobody had that stupid look on their face like before when something would happen and everyone would kind of say the game was lost already, when there’s time left,” Forte said after the game. “So, I was glad we didn’t have that.”
The 2015 Chicago Bears: No More Stupid Looks on Their Faces. Get excited, Bears fans.
Line: Cardinals by 1 1/2. Pick: Cardinals
Tennessee Titans at Cleveland Browns
1 p.m., CBS
The Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota looked every bit the franchise quarterback Titans brass hoped he would be when they drafted him in the spring, becoming the first player since 1933 to post a perfect passer rating in his first NFL game. On the other hand, his fellow former Heisman winner Johnny Manziel — who it looks like will be starting opposite Mariota for the Browns this week — has yet to show that he’s worthy of the hype.
Interestingly enough, Mariota and Manziel were once both committed to play football at Oregon. Manziel eventually changed his mind and attended Texas A&M, but it’s hard not wondering who would have been the starter for the Ducks had Manziel remained.
Line: Even. Pick: Titans
San Diego Chargers at Cincinnati Bengals
1 p.m., CBS
The Chargers are hoping to start the season 2-0 for the first time since 2012, but to do that they will have to win on the road against the Bengals, who looked dominant in their 33-13 thrashing of the Raiders. The Chargers will also be without the services of one of the best young offensive linemen in the game, D.J. Fluker, who suffered a high ankle sprain in the team’s opening week win against the Lions.
Line: Bengals by 3. Pick: Bengals
St. Louis Rams at Washington Redskins
1 p.m., FOX
Can Kirk Cousins be a quality starting quarterback? That has to be the question on the mind of every long-suffering Redskins fan. Cousins wasn’t terrible in the team’s loss to Miami, but he wasn’t exactly great, either, going 21 for 31 passing for 196 yards and a touchdown with two interceptions. It remains to be seen whether he can make plays to win games on a consistent basis.
One thing, however, is certain: it’s hard not to pull for a man who reportedly commutes to practice in his grandmother’s 15-year-old conversion van.
Line: Rams by 3 1/2. Pick: Redskins
Baltimore Ravens at Oakland Raiders
4:05 p.m., CBS
It’s apparent that Ravens coach John Harbaugh is not a big fan of cross-country flights. During the offseason, he requested, unsuccessfully, to have the NFL schedule its 2015 road games against Oakland and San Francisco on consecutive weeks, so that his team could just stay in the Bay Area during the week between the two games.
But after playing in Denver last week, Harbaugh opted not to have his team fly back to Baltimore. Instead, the Ravens flew to Oakland, where they spent the week preparing for Sunday’s game against the Raiders. When asked what went into his decision, Harbaugh said, “We just looked at the options and the problems when you travel west like that two weeks in a row, then travel all the way back and then all the way back out again. We felt like cutting down on travel would be a real plus for us.”
Lines: Ravens by 6. Pick: Ravens
Miami Dolphins at Jacksonville Jaguars
4:05 p.m., CBS
The Dolphins dodged a bullet when the NFL declined to discipline Ndamukong Suh for appearing to kick off the helmet of Redskins running back Alfred Morris after a tackle. So Suh, who is becoming football’s version of a cartoon villain who just can’t help himself, will suit up against the Jaguars. It will be interesting to see how Jacksonville’s revamped offensive line holds up in this one.
Line: Dolphins by 6. Pick: Dolphins
New York Jets at Indianapolis Colts
8:30 p.m. Monday, ESPN
It is probably safe to say that few would have wagered that the Jets would be entering this game 1-0. They lost their starting quarterback Geno Smith to a broken jaw, courtesy of a teammate’s fist. That, among other things, had some expecting the same old butt-fumbling Jets in 2015. Conversely, with Andrew Luck coming off a career year, the Colts, some predicted, would win the AFC. But the script has been turned on its head, with the Jets dominating the Browns and Bills beating up on Luck and the Colts.
“They beat us pretty bad,” Luck said of last Sunday’s loss to the Bills. “You don’t let one game necessarily define you, but that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.”
Making matters worse for the Colts, questions continue to surround their running game, and star wide receiver T.Y. Hilton may miss the game with a knee injury.
On the Jets’ side, the perpetual castoff quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick looked relatively solid against Cleveland. He seems to have developed good chemistry with wide receiver Brandon Marshall. Also, running back Chris Ivory, who rushed for 91 yards and two touchdowns, looks poised for a breakout year. Expect the Colts to get a steady diet of him on Monday night.
Line: Colts by 6. Pick: Jets
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