Coming off his best game of the season last week against the lowly Carolina Panthers, expect Sutton to sustain his success against Baltimore. Now, I don’t expect the Broncos to win this game, but that plays in Sutton’s favor. When Denver has been leading big, thanks to their outstanding defense, their tendency has been to run the ball leading to low targets for Sutton against good secondaries. However, the Ravens are a good team with a bad secondary. The Broncos will most likely be trailing, leading to more pass attempts for Broncos rookie Bo Nix, and against a secondary allowing 252 passing yards a game, Nix will look for his top target a lot. Pick him up off if he is available in your league, and start him if you have him. – Will

Titans running back Tony Pollard: Pollard has been a mediocre back all year, but this week he is going up against one of the worst run defenses in the league – that being the Patriots. In addition, the Titans have jettisoned one of their top receivers in Deandre Hopkins, and are simultaneously going through serious quarterback struggles, which will likely lead to Pollard getting a large snap share.

Over the last few weeks since the Bills traded for Cooper, they have shown what role they want him in. And that is as a reliable option in their run first offense. Unlike years past, this version of the bills is run first, with an extension of that being screen passes to get the receivers involved. The problem for Cooper though is that he is not particularly fast or twitchy enough to operate the screen game effectively, unlike his receiving counterparts Keon Coleman and Khalil Shakir. This leaves Cooper in need of downfield targets, and that’s just not something coming his way. I expect him to get more targets as this offense expands, but as of now, leave him on the bench. 

 Flowers has been a very boom/bust player this year, with him almost always either getting single digit points, or more than 20. This week the Ravens are facing the Broncos’s top tier defense and Patrick Surtain the 2nd (PS2). PS2 has been able to shut down any receiver he has been matched up against all season, and he will likely do the same to Flowers, and with star corner Riley Moss beside PS2, Flowers will not be an open target. The Ravens will likely run the ball heavily with league best running back Derrick Henry, thus taking much of the snap share away from the receiving corps.

The Jets are desperate in the worst way. After starting out 2-1 and feeling destined to break the longest playoff drought in all of sports, the Jets have crashed to 2-6 with a spirit crushing six game losing streak. Not even firing their head coach and acquiring former All-Pro receiver Davante Adams has turned their fortunes, inciting the dreaded phrase that no matter how talented they are “The Jets are gonna Jet.” This is not a good team, but they think they are, and if they want any shot to make the playoffs, they need this win. This might be the situation to do it in. The Texans are a legitimate playoff team dealing with a plethora of injuries on offense, including stars Nico Collins and Stefon Diggs (who recently was revealed to be out for the season), opening the door for an upset. Can the Jets turn their season around? Probably not, but can they beat a bruised Texans team on a short week? They can definitely put up a fight. Look for the Jets to attempt to play competent football and try to get the much needed win against Houston.

This week my upset pick is the Rams over the Seahawks. The Rams come into week 9 with two straight wins. Opposite of them are the sliding Seattle Seahawks, who have lost four of their last five. Los Angeles has many positives coming back this week as they are coming off a bye week and are still in a tight race for the NFC West crown and fortunately at the right time the Rams got back wide receivers Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua in week 7, which boosted LA’s offense in a win over Minnesota. Nacua finished week 7 with 7 receptions for 106 yards and Kupp finished with 5 receptions for 51 yards and a touchdown. The only bad thing for the receiving room is that Jordan Whittington may be out again for LA, but this shouldn’t be too big of a deal as everyone else is back in the Rams core on offense. For Seattle, head coach Mike McDonald is “optimistic” about receiver D.K Metcalf’s return after his injury to his knee in Atlanta (Week 7). This is good news for Seattle for now, but nothing is guaranteed. Looking at Seattle’s big issues outside of injury, they have been shooting themselves in the foot, whether it is miscues in redzone or penalties plaguing the Seahawks, both destroyed Seattle at home last week versus Buffalo. Seattle had 13 penalties for a loss of 85 yards and many miscues in the red zone that put the game out of reach on Sunday. Things may seem okay in the eyes of many Seahawks reporters inside the organization, because they are still in a tight race for the NFC wildcard and their division, but the fact is that right now Seattle is struggling compared to where we saw them after Week 2. The offense is predictable under Offensive Coordinator Ryan Grubb as the playcalling is pass heavy and his running play calls are similar to each other, zone runs whether inside, outside, split, or weak zones they have not worked like they did at college level with University of Washington. I really think this week the Rams will exploit the one dimensional playcalling from Seattle on both sides of the ball because Rams Head Coach Sean McVay does not run many two high safety looks, which killed Atlanta’s defense from shotgun and under center play perfection by quarterback Geno Smith. On defense the same play call style is shown by Seahawks Head Coach and defensive play caller Mike McDonald. McDonald and his 3-4 Nickel Zone scheme hurts his teams pass rush and if an offense exploits the defense tackling in space the game is broken wide open for opposing offenses. This causes disaster for Seattle and will continue unless they fix up schemes to be more balanced. Rams should be in control most of the game despite score prediction on Sunday 21-17.

This week of American football, I have decided to choose the Green Bay Packers upsetting the Detroit Lions. Starting Running Back Josh Jacobs is coming off of his best game so far against the Jacksonville Jaguars. He ran for a total of 127 yards for two touchdowns. Not only that, but the Lions run defense has been one of their major flaws of the season. With Jordan Love being day-to-day, the Packers might be forced to start Malik Willis, a Quarterback who is known for picking up yards on the ground. If this does possibly happen, then the Detroit Lions would have to implement a stronger blitz game for an even higher chance of beating the Packers, which I don’t see happening in the short time span of a couple of days, or anytime soon.