Running (walking? crawling?) NFL Week 10 thread.

It's Sunday on the East Coast, so I thought I'd get this started.

Here are my picks. As always, best bets are in bold:
Carolina, Green Bay, Kansas City, Buffalo, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Washington, Baltimore, Detroit, Dallas, Chicago, Indianapolis and Seattle. Teams with the bye: New England, NY Jets, Tampa Bay, Houston.

Maybe I'm insane, and please tell me if I am, but can't you make an argument for Peterson for MVP over Brady?

 

No. Vikings just suck a little more without him.

 

Adrian Peterson is hands down the best rookie I've ever seen, but he's not MVP over Brady.

 

I'd be wary of Buffalo. They're the type to score 33 one week and 6 the next.

 

The question, though, is value to a team. If Brady goes down, the Pats are still loaded for bear. If Peterson goes down, who do the Vikings have that can single-handedly win games?

 

If Brady goes down, Moss all of sudden starts pouting, Wes Welker becomes nothing more than a possession receiver, and an aging defense will be on the field way too long. It's a huge domino effect if Brady gets hurt.

 

One could argue he's not even the best Minnesota Vikings rookie ever - and have a pretty good point

 

True... but the Miami defense might be even worse than the one they faced last week, especially without ZT in the middle.

And I'm not buying that, beat. Cassel?

 

I'm not taking anything away from Brady. He's having one of the great individual seasons in the history of the NFL. But he's surrounded by one of the great teams in NFL history. Brady was expected to have a great year.

Peterson is the Vikings' lone offensive weapon; teams game plan around him, but can't stop him. Take him off the Vikings and what do they have?

 

Not much, and I see your argument. But the Patriots go nowhere without Brady.

 

No way the Vikings go 15-1 without Moss in his rookie year.

Peterson is probably the best rookie ever because of his position, but let's not forget how mind-blowing Moss was his rookie season. He led the league in TD catches.

 

There is no way Adrian Peterson is the MVP. That'd be a bigger sham than Andre Dawson winning it for the last-place Cubs in 1987. If you took away Peterson, the Vikes would be 1-7 instead of 3-5.

As noted earlier, Brady makes that entire team run. Take away his talent and his leadership (such sentiments often make me wretch, but it's easy to see how he gets the entire team to follow the lead of Belichick) and the Pats are fighting for a playoff berth...if not amongst themselves.