Daily Norseman Staff NFL Picks, Week 1

The 2021 NFL season is officially upon us, ladies and gentlemen, and your friends from your favorite Minnesota Vikings website are once again back with their NFL picks for the season.

Working with our friends from Tallysight once again, we will be bringing you our picks for every NFL game each week. Much like last season, we’ll be bringing you straight-up picks, picks against the spread, and trying to hit the over/unders. Our primary focus will be the straight-up selections, but you’ll be able to flip to the others as well. One thing to keep in mind when you look at the picks against the spread and the over/unders is that those numbers can vary slightly based on when each individual selector inputs their picks.

We have the same four people that we had last season making their picks: Warren Ludford, Eric Thompson, Ed Brodmarkle (from the Skoldiers podcast here at DN), and myself. We’re also being joined by GA Skol, so now you’ve got five takes on each game each week.

So, without any further ado, here are all of our picks for this week.

As you can see, we all managed to get the Thursday Night opener right, though it came right down to the last second. Warren was the only one that foresaw Dallas keeping it close enough to cover the spread, and we all hit the over/under as well.

We are unanimous on nine of the remaining 15 games for this week. Here are the games where we see things differently:

• Jets at Panthers: Chris and Eric are taking New York, everyone else has Carolina
• Cardinals at Titans: Ed has Arizona, everyone else has Tennessee
• Chargers at Football Team: Ed has Los Angeles, everyone else has Washington
• Dolphins at Patriots: Chris and GA Skol have Miami, everyone else has New England
• Packers at Saints (in Jacksonville): GA Skol has New Orleans, everyone else has Green Bay
• Broncos at Giants: Chris has New York, everyone else has Denver

The first few weeks of the season are always the hardest to pick, in my opinion, because there are a lot of teams that nobody really knows what to expect from. So, you can either get out to a big start or put yourself behind the proverbial 8-ball for the rest of the season with a bad start.

As far as our favorite team, we all have the Vikings getting off to a 1-0 start by beating the Bengals in Cincinnati for just the second time in franchise history. Everyone that made spread picks also has them covering the -3.5. We are split on the over/under, however, with Ed and Chris taking the “over” 47.5 while Eric and Warren are playing the “under.”

Those are our selections for this week, folks. Who are you picking in Week 1 of the 2021 NFL season?