Week 2 of The Malpractice Report is in, and the chart looks worse than last week’s. Two separate games drew as close to a unanimous expert verdict as you’ll ever see — and both patients coded on the table.

Exhibit A: Baltimore Was Everyone’s Lock. New Orleans Didn’t Get the Memo.

Every accredited voice we tracked — all 11 ESPN analysts, all 5 at NFL.com, CBS’s Pete Prisco (Ravens 33-20), even Baltimore’s own hometown beat writers — cleared the Ravens for a routine win over a rebuilding Saints team. Baltimore was giving 8.5 points at home. New Orleans left with a 24-17 win anyway, blowing a fourth-quarter lead into a full-blown upset. When literally nobody in the building disagrees, that’s not confidence — that’s a chart that needs a second opinion.

Exhibit B: Tampa Bay’s “Sure Thing” Flatlined Too

If Ravens-Saints was malpractice, Browns-Bucs was a full board review. ESPN went 11-for-11 on Tampa Bay. NFL.com went 5-for-5, with analysts calling for a double-digit win. CBS, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, USA Today — every panel we found, unanimously, picked the Buccaneers over a Browns team that entered as the league’s punching bag. Cleveland won outright as a double-digit underdog, 23-19, prompting Tampa’s own beat writers to call it a “debacle.” Two unanimous charts, two flatlines, same Sunday.

Exhibit C: The Week 1 Hype Machine Rolled Over Everybody

It wasn’t just the top two cases. The Bears rode their Week 1 buzz to a majority pick over Minnesota and instead lost a defensive slugfest, 9-3, after most experts projected a 60-point track meet. The Chargers, fresh off a Week 1 win, were the popular pick over Las Vegas and lost by 12. Houston was tabbed to handle Cincinnati and got run off the field, 20-6. Same disease every time: one good week got mistaken for a diagnosis.

Clean Bill of Health

Credit where it’s due. The near-unanimous Chiefs-over-Colts pick held up, though Kansas City needed every second of a 33-30 squeaker to prove it right. Seattle’s unanimous walk over Arizona (31-7) delivered exactly as advertised — except for CBS’s John Breech, the lone doctor who diagnosed an Arizona upset and got it backwards by 24 points. San Francisco’s demolition of Miami (35-13) and Philadelphia’s survival act over Tennessee (24-20) were both correct, no notes.

This Week’s Trend: One Good Week Isn’t a Diagnosis

Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Chicago, the Chargers, and Houston were all favored last week — several of them unanimously — largely because they looked good in Week 1. All five lost outright. Even Pete Prisco, who publishes a full 16-game slate every week, went a coin-flip-worse 8-7 against the board. The lesson, again: small samples lie, and “everybody agrees” is a warning label, not a guarantee. One chart’s still open — Giants-Rams hadn’t kicked off as of this report. We’ll check vitals next week.

One response to “The Malpractice Report: Week 2 — The Ravens Were Everyone’s Lock, and the Saints Didn’t Get the Memo”

  1. […] three touchdowns against Detroit in Week 1, then went 27 of 34 for 252 yards and a touchdown in the upset in Baltimore, adding a rushing score. Kellen Moore runs the fastest offense in the league by seconds per play, […]

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