Burt rolls; only eight winners in Week 2

Bill Burt, The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass.
·2 min read

Sep. 21—Told you.

A 10-5 week by "Yours truly," normally a decent tally in any NFL weekend of football, was borderline elite.

That's because upsets are no longer upsets.

The Jets, Dolphins and Patriots all won road games on Sunday, with the Patriots as the only favorite, over the Steelers.

The Patriots are no longer a sure thing with those that play this contest and this week, those "doubters" suffered with a loss.

This week's game, the first Patriots home tilt, finds the Ravens favored by three points.

With about 40% of entries picking the Steelers, wrongly, last Sunday, it will be interesting to see if Patriots fans have a bounce-back weekend and jump back on Patriots bandwagon.

I will venture to guess: Yes.

But like this past week, expect more craziness with 13 of the 16 games with point spreads of 4 points or less.

There are only six teams undefeated and only five teams winless. With 20 teams at 1-1 (two teams at 0-1-1), we don't really know a lot about this season other than the Bills, Chiefs and Bucs are very good and the Falcons, Panthers and Colts look really bad.

We are flipping a coin on teams like the Titans (0-2) and Eagles (2-0).

The Patriots are right smack in the middle. They are average as average can be.

As for Week 2, only eight entries picked more winners than I did. Seven had 11 winners and one entry had 12 winners.

So the maximum of 10 T-shirts will not be met. and the tiebreakers were meaningless.

Remember, the better I do, the less important the Patriots point total, the first tiebreaker, matters.

Here are the T-shirt winners.

Week 2

Kathy Murphy of Hampstead, N.H.

Carl McDonald of Hampstead, N.H.

Mike Lane of North Andover

John Kiely of Andover

Mark Cockroft of Windham, N.H.

George Dionne of Haverhill

Calvin Perry of Andover

Mary Paquette of Salem, N.H.