NFL Picks - Week One

On Thursday night the Kansas City Chiefs faced the Houston Texan's to "officially" kick off the 2020 NFL season.

Of course Patrick Mahomes was Patrick Mahomes in leading the Chiefs to a 34-20 win in KC.

But for me the official kickoff to the season is tomorrow. This is the day that set back all afternoon and turn on Redzone and watch all the action on one channel...except when the Bears are playing.

I'm not a fantasy sports kinda guy. I don't get into watching stats for individual players. That's too much work for me. I just enjoy watching the games. I just love watching great performances on the field of competition...I don't care who you are (thanks Larry The Cable Guy).

I thought I might just start documenting my picks each week. Feel free to play along if you like.

So here ya go! Here are the games for Sunday and Monday in week one.

12:00 Noon Games

New York Jets @ Buffalo Bills - Bills 27-17

Green Bay Packers @ Minnesota Vikings - Packer 43-34

Philadelphia Eagles @ Washington - Washington 27-17

Cleveland Browns @ Baltimore Ravens - Ravens 38-6

Indianapolis Colts @ Jacksonville Jaguars - Jags 27-20

Las Vegas Raiders @ Carolina Panthers - Raiders 34-30

Chicago Bears @ Detroit Lions - Bears 27-23

Seattle Seahawks @ Atlanta Falcons - Seahawks 38-25

Miami Dolphins @ New England Patriots - Patriots 21-11

3:00 PM Games

Los Angeles Chargers @ Cincinnati Bengals - Chargers 16-13

Arizona Cardinals @ San Francisco 49ers - Cardinals 24-20

Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New Orleans Saints - Saints 34-23

7:20 PM

Dallas Cowboys @ Los Angeles Rams - Rams 20-17

Monday Night Football

6:10 PM

Pittsburgh Steelers @ New York Giants - Steelers 26-16

9:20 PM

Tennessee Titans @ Denver Broncos - Titans 16-14

There are my picks. I'll come on Tuesday to see how I did.

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Updated 9/15

Wow! What a terrible week. In week one I went 6-9. Looking for major improvement coming up in week two.

On the bright side, my Bears are 1-0.

So Now We Know - IHSA Approves Modified Schedule for 2020/21

It's been a very busy day news wise for the Illinois High School Association as well as IHSA schools, staff, coaches players and parents. Now everyone has the modified schedule for the upcoming year.

The news cycle started at noon today when Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker announced the release of the "All Sports Policy" regarding sports in Illinois. This new policy will be "restricting youth and adult recreational organized sports,". This will not affect professional or college sports.

The All Sports Policy breaks each sport down in the risk categories, high, medium and low Risk. It then outlines four different levels of play ranging from no-contact practices in level 1 to tourneys and out of conference play in level 4.

But the question everyone had was what will the sports schedule look like?

At 2:00 pm today, the IHSA was to release their modified schedule at on the IHSA.org website. Turns out there was so much traffic to the site at the release time, the website crashed. But after a while, the following schedule was release in a press release. The schedule looks like this:

In the video below, I had a chance to talk to Carterville Lions Athletic Director and head football coach Brett Dial about today's developments.

Let's just hope that things can proceed toward fulfilling this new schedule and not have any setbacks at a later time.

Will We Know The Fate of Fall Sports In Illinois On Wednesday?

Carterville Lions at work during summer workouts. July 2020

This past Friday the IHSA met with the IDPH, ISBE and the Govornor's Office to hopefully work out the details on return-to-play of sports in Illinois. There is a meeting of the IHSA board scheduled for this Wednesday to provide an update of the fall sports season.

Will there be fall sports in Illinois this year? Personally, I don't believe there will be.

Illinois is one of eight states that the sports season is still in limbo.

In this article from Maxprep this afternoon, there are currently 37 states that plan to play this fall as of now.

Will there be another delay on a final decision? I guess we will find out on Wednesday...supposedly.

Will there be another delay on a final decision? I guess we will find out on Wednesday...supposedly.

Just let everyone know one way or the other.

Again, we should probably know more from the IHSA coming up tomorrow.