Every year we do this. We stare at seventeen weeks of unknowns, squint until a shape appears, and then argue about the shape like it’s a fact. Week 1 of the 2025 season kicked off on the third of September and by the time the full slate got picked apart on air, one thing was obvious: nobody was really picking games. They were picking feelings. And that’s not an insult — that’s the whole sport.
The Coordinator Tell Is the Only Honest Handicapping Left
Here’s the thing that separates a real pick from a coin flip: a reason that existed before the season started. When Larry Frank Jr. leaned Dallas over the defending champion Eagles, the load-bearing beam wasn’t vibes about Dak or a hunch about CeeDee. It was Kellen Moore walking out the door to New Orleans. That’s the kind of tell that actually moves a Week 1 number, because Week 1 is the one week of the year where nobody has tape on the new guy. A championship offense doesn’t lose its identity overnight, but it does lose its shorthand — the third-and-6 call everybody already knew, the sequencing, the thing the coordinator likes on the opening script. In September, that stuff is worth points. By October it’s noise.
That’s the lens I’d apply to every Week 1 slate from here forward. Forget power rankings. Ask who lost a play-caller, who lost a quarterback room, who’s got a rookie head coach still learning what his own timeout button does. Indianapolis rolling into a Miami opener with the quarterback situation unsettled isn’t a talent problem — it’s an information problem. You can’t script a game plan around a guy you’re still auditioning. Both hosts landed on the Dolphins there and it wasn’t homerism; it was the same logic wearing a different jersey.
Splits Are Where the Show Actually Lives
Agreement is boring. When both guys take Arizona to run the Saints out of the building, or Washington by two scores, or Tampa over Atlanta, you’re not learning anything about the pickers — you’re just watching consensus form. The interesting stuff is the fork in the road.
Chargers over Chiefs in Brazil versus Kansas City straight up. Browns over Bengals on the strength of Flacco throwing to Jerry Jeudy versus the guy who won’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. Seattle’s crowd against Brock Purdy versus Arizona’s ceiling. Detroit over Green Bay. Those splits are the actual product, because each one is a stated theory of football that will get graded in public by Sunday night.
And the Flacco-Jeudy call is my favorite kind of pick — the one that admits football is not always about the better roster. Sometimes it’s about a veteran arm who has zero fear and a receiver who’s never had a quarterback willing to just let it go. That’s a real, falsifiable idea. It might be wrong. But it’s an idea, which puts it about forty rungs above “the Bengals are better on paper.”
The Spite Pick Deserves Legal Protection
Devin took the Jets over the Steelers out of pure, unfiltered spite. No analysis. No injury report. Just petty. And I want to defend that publicly, because the spite pick is one of the last honest artifacts in a hobby that’s been colonized by models and consensus screenshots.
Nobody actually picks games in a vacuum. You’ve got a team you’d bet your rent on and a team you’d bet against with a gun to your head, and pretending otherwise is a costume. The healthy version isn’t pretending you’re neutral — it’s labeling it. Say “this is a spite pick” out loud, put it in the column, and let the receipts land where they land. That’s more intellectually honest than dressing up a grudge in DVOA.
The flip side showed up in the same conversation: Frank taking New England over Devin’s Raiders specifically as payback for a season’s worth of laughing-emoji texts. Same energy, opposite direction. Both men know exactly what they’re doing. Neither is pretending it’s science. That’s the ecosystem functioning correctly.
The Cane Tax Is Real and It Costs You Money
Now the part that actually hurt. Both hosts picked Denver over Tennessee, which means both hosts picked against Cam Ward. And they hated every second of it.
This is the specific tax you pay as a Miami guy: you watch a kid win you games in Coral Gables, you watch him go to the league, and then you have to sit there and admit out loud that the situation around him is not ready. That’s not a knock on Cam. Nobody on that broadcast questioned the arm, the poise, or the guy. The pick was about everything that isn’t Cam — the protection, the weapons, the timeline. Loving the player and fading the team is an adult distinction, and it’s a miserable one to make in public.
Travis Hunter got the same treatment from a different angle. Devin rode Jacksonville with genuine compassion in his voice for a young man whose personal life has been chewed over by every podcast in America. Frank’s counter — that people warned him — is the colder read, and it’s not wrong on the facts. But there’s a difference between being right about a warning and being useful to a 22-year-old. The show landed on the human side, and that’s the correct instinct even when it costs you a unit.
Best Bets Are a Character Test, Not a Money Printer
The debut of a dedicated best-bets segment is the moment a picks show grows teeth. Anybody can say “I like Dallas.” Saying Dallas plus seven, Dak over 240, CeeDee over 70, Kelce over 45 receiving with Rice suspended, and stapling on an anytime-touchdown stable of Saquon, Ashton Jeanty, McCaffrey, James Conner and Derrick Henry — that’s a position. That’s a paper trail. You can’t quietly retcon a prop.
Look at the internal logic there, though, because it’s better than it looks. The Kelce over is downstream of the Rice suspension — targets have to go somewhere and they historically go to the tight end who’s been the security blanket for a decade. That’s a structural bet, not a name bet. Meanwhile the Dak and CeeDee numbers are the same Dallas thesis expressed three different ways, which is either conviction or correlation risk depending on how your Sunday goes. And putting Derrick Henry in an anytime-TD stable in September isn’t a hot take, it’s closer to a utility bill.
The point isn’t whether these cash. The point is that they’re on the record, in public, with a date on them. In an era where everybody’s timeline is a graveyard of deleted picks, showing your work is the actual flex.
What Week 1 Actually Tells You: Almost Nothing
Here’s the thing to hold onto when the results come in and somebody in the chat starts declaring dynasties. Week 1 of the 2025 season is going to produce roughly four blowouts that get treated as prophecy and get completely reversed by Halloween. A rookie quarterback is going to throw for 300 and get anointed the next face of the league by a guy in the chat named after a former quarterback. A defending champion is going to look mortal for three quarters and everyone will forget by the bye.
None of it means what it’ll be said to mean. What Week 1 actually gives you is a snapshot of who prepared, who lost their coordinator, and who’s still installing. Everything else is a Rorschach test — and what you see in the ink says more about your fandom than about the football.
So make your picks. Say the spite part out loud. Write down the props so you can’t wriggle out later. And when the Cane in the bad situation gets one at the goal line, be honest enough to admit you’re happy you were wrong.
One More Thing
This take grew out of this week’s U Talk Live NFL Edition, where the crew went game by game through the entire Week 1 slate and left the receipts on the table for everybody to see. Go listen, then come argue with us.
This take grew out of the September 4, 2025 episode — watch it here: “Week 1 NFL Predictions” U TALK LIVE NFL Edition-3