NFL Picks: 2016 Week 17 Picks Against the Spread

32 teams. Sixteen games. Seventeen weeks of football all comes to an end on the start of a new calendar year.

The 2016 NFL season has been anything but smooth, and it is poetic for the final week of the regular season to be rocky from start-to-finish. As always, the last set of games carries inherent risk of teams resting their players – either to avoid potential injury or simply to give a makeshift bye week to the squad – while postseason-clinching scenarios are scattered throughout. Unfortunately for dramatic purposes, there is only one true ‘win-and-in’ game – Sunday Night Football between the Lions and Packers – with only the Redskins and Buccaneers on the outside trying to break in.

There are, of course, a large number of games that can impact playoff seeding – mainly with teams that have already secured postseason berths – but even these are subject to coaching decisions regarding playing time. With that, there have already been an abnormally large amount of changes in the spread, to date. We will have to monitor these closely, as violent swings tend to indicate that key information has been revealed that can be to our benefit. We make it a point to almost never change our picks after our column is posted, but we may need to make an exception or two in Week 17.

In the event that we change a pick, it will be indicated via an editor’s note under said pick.

Below are predictions for each game against the spread. Spreads have been taken from various websites and are subject to change. The spread in parenthesis denotes the selected team. An asterisk denotes a confidence pick.

*Confidence Picks – 2016 Season: 48-59-3 (Last Week: 2-6)

(2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2)

All Picks Against Spread – 2016 Season: 110-122-8 (Last Week: 7-9)

(2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4)

Houston Texans at Tennessee Titans

Those Houston Texans. Those 9-6 Houston Texans. Those AFC South champion Houston Texans. Those opportunistic, play-the-hand-their-dealt Houston Texans.

Those lucky Houston Texans.

In last week’s picks column, we noted how the Texans have gone about their business throughout the season, beating the teams they should and getting thoroughly dismembered by more talented squads. Still, their 8-6 record put them in position to clinch the AFC South if a few games went in their favor. On Christmas Eve, Houston received a gift as both the Titans and Colts lost, carving the path for an uncontested route to the playoffs. All the Texans needed to do was beat the lowly the Bengals.

For as often as we have downgraded Houston throughout the 2016 season, it showed remarkable resilience throughout the year en route to a division title before Week 17.