Don’t bet the house (or the Jets)

Buccaneers over Cardinals

* Let’s dispense with the pretense right away. Put Arizona’s Neil Rackers on one 40-yard line facing left. Put Tampa Bay’s Matt Bryant on the other facing right. First team to 10 field goals wins.

Titans over Panthers

* LenDale White runs right, DeShaun Foster runs left, and USC and UCLA think back wistfully to happier times.

Bills over Bengals

* Incredible stat of the week: The Bills are 8-0 against the Bengals since the teams met in the 1988 AFC championship game. That’s right, boys and girls. Once upon a time, the Bills and Bengals actually played for the AFC title.

Browns over Seahawks

* Incredible stat of the week, runner-up: Browns quarterback Derek Anderson is on pace to throw 39 touchdown passes this season. Otto Graham, the greatest quarterback in the history of Cleveland Browns Version 1.0, never had more than 20 in an NFL season. The Seahawks, no doubt, will be distracted as they mull that one.

Lions over Broncos

* Swapping Dre Bly for Tatum Bell -- just the latest example in the ever-long list of trades that did next to nothing to help both teams.

Chiefs over Packers

* Remember when rushing for 1,000 yards in a season meant something? In 2007, Kansas City’s Larry Johnson is averaging 3.6 yards a carry in what most would consider a highly disappointing season for him. And he is still on pace to rush for 1,157 yards.

Saints over Jaguars

* New Jacksonville starting quarterback Quinn Gray gets no respect. Even from the caption writers at USA Today Sports Weekly. Beneath a photo of Gray in the current edition: “Jaguars quarterback Quinn Gray’s primary role will be handing off, but he could find wide receivers wide open.”

Chargers over Vikings

* Trying to fire up his team before this Sunday’s game, Minnesota Coach Brad Childress hollers, “Is this the best we can do at the quarterback position?!?” The Vikings sit slumped and stumped at their locker stalls for the next four hours. The Chargers win on a forfeit.

49ers over Falcons

* You keep reading these reports out of Atlanta that Falcons Coach Bobby Petrino has lost the team. In this day and age of printed rosters and uniform numbers, how is that possible?

Redskins over Jets

* Last week’s 52-7 loss to New England was Washington’s worst defeat since the Redskins were routed by the New York Giants in 1961, 53-0. Fortunately for the Redskins and their fans, this is not 1961 and their opponents are not the Giants.

Raiders over Texans

* What happened to the Texans? They won their first two games, entered mid-September with such high hopes, and then their season U-turned faster than you can say and spell-check “Adimchinobe Echemandu.”

Colts over Patriots

* I have wrestled with this one all week. The good versus evil theme here is obvious (maybe too much so), but should the Patriots prevail, you know the rest of the season is going to be Bill Belichick putting the pedal to the metal for one ruthless assault on 16-0. And then the pick came to me, as if in a vision: What would the ’72 Dolphins do?

Cowboys over Eagles

* The usual sense of urgency is missing. Terrell Owens is returning to Lincoln Financial Field and, frankly, no one outside Philadelphia city limits actually cares.

Steelers over Ravens

* Back despite no evidence of anything resembling popular demand are the Steelers’ old-school yellow helmets, which the team is dredging up again on Monday night to commemorate the 75-year-old franchise’s all-time team. Didn’t all the Steelers’ best times happen after they scrapped those helmets the first time?