John’s Well-Educated Guesses: Week 11 – The Recap

Every week I make predictions about how things will play out in the game.  I’m a man of integrity and I always answer for my predictions.  It’s time to pay the piper. 

Prediction:  4 Touchdown Passes for Tom Brady.  Tommy is playing as good as he ever has.  Let’s take a moment to appreciate being able to watch greatness for so long.  I think he throws the ball around all day and puts up a signature victory to put together a convincing MVP case.

Result:  Only 3 Tuddies to go along with 30 of 37 (81%), 339 yards.  It looked like at least 4 all day, but I fell just short here.  If the O-Line can keep Brady upright, the Pats are going to be hard to beat. 

Prediction:  The Raiders will struggle with the elevation.  I think we are going to see a well-conditioned Patriots team, and a Raiders team that runs out of gas.  Staying in the elevation of Colorado all week is a huge advantage IMHO. 

Result:  The Raiders did not look ready to play from the beginning.  Stephon Gilmore and Danny Amendola also had to leave the field due to dehydration (Isn’t that the second time this year that Gilmore had this happen?).  Do I’d say both teams struggled with it….Also, it’s a whole different game when you are that high.  70 yard field goals are gonna be a thing someday.

Prediction:  Lynch goes over 100.  I think the Pats get out to an early lead and dare the Raiders to run the ball against a nickel defense.  I think they will have success for the most part, but they use too much time off the clock and can’t keep up.

Result: 11 carries for 67 yards and it looked like he was moving good all day.  He was effective especially early, then they basically just took him out.  Was he tired? Did he run out of gas?  I dunno.  It was weird that he wasn’t in there for that 4^th and 1 play that got stuffed.

Prediction:  31-27 Pats.  The offense seems to be clicking, and this is always the point of the season that they really start putting it together.  You need to be playing your best football going into December.  I think this is the game that we really put the early season struggles behind us.

Result: 33-8.  Just as I thought, the early season mistakes have not shown up for a few games.  Real talk:  Who is going to challenge the Patriots??  They looked really vulnerable early in the season, but nobody was able to capitalize on that.  Now the entire AFC East is falling apart (Just in time for us to play them all in a row).  The Steelers really look to be the only viable threat at this point, and unless they learned to play man-to-man defense over night?  We are gonna hang 40 on them.