Vikings vs. Steelers (+1½)
The NFL North co-leaders begin their two-week European adventure in Dublin against Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers. Irish football fans are very similar to their American counterparts in that they share a common nausea when the Pittsburgh quarterback opens his mouth.
Pick: Vikings by 3

Aaron Rodgers #8 of the Pittsburgh Steelers is sacked by Milton Williams #97 of the New England Patriots during the first half at Gillette Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Photo by Jaiden Tripi/Getty Images)

Bengals at Broncos (-7½)
The Bengals suffered their worst loss ever last Sunday, falling by 38 points to the Vikings. Sports historians believe the debacle may have been the most disgraceful thing ever endured by Cincinnati fans that didn’t involve Pete Rose.
Pick: Broncos by 3

Ivan Pace Jr. #0 of the Minnesota Vikings tackles Jake Browning #6 of the Cincinnati Bengals during the first half at U.S. Bank Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)

Packers at Cowboys (+6½)
It will be Micah Parsons Day in JerryWorld as the all-pro edge rusher returns just weeks after Jerry Jones traded him for scraps. Green Bay mavens are so excited that they immediately forgot all about last Sunday’s abomination in Cleveland.
Pick: Packers by 11

Micah Parsons #1 of the Green Bay Packers in action against the Washington Commanders at Lambeau Field on Sept. 11, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Eagles at Buccaneers (+3½)
Tampa Bay improved to 3-0 last Sunday wearing its 50th anniversary throwbacks with the creamsicle-faced Buccaneer on their helmet. The logo is quite dated, as it was used in those days where having an orange face was not necessarily a sign of low IQ.
Pick: Buccaneers by 3

Mike Evans #13 and Baker Mayfield #6 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers celebrate after a touchdown during the second quarter against the New York Jets at Raymond James Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)

Ravens at Chiefs (+2½)
Baltimore’s Derrick Henry threw a helmet-slamming fit after another key fumble of his that led to another Ravens loss. Normally, if you want to see grown adults throwing tantrums like toddlers, you’d have to watch the House of Representatives on C-SPAN.
Pick: Ravens by 3

Baltimore’s Derrick Henry shows a high level of disenchantment on the sidelines after his critical fumble Monday night against Detroit. (Screen grab from YouTube)

Chargers at Giants (+5½)
New York lost to Kansas City on Monday night, dropping the Giants’ record to 2-20 in evening games over the past six seasons. So they’re switching to rookie Jaxson Dart at quarterback this week, because Russell Wilson now sucks both day and night.
Pick: Chargers by 11

Russell Wilson #3 of the New York Giants sacked by Chris Jones #95 of the Kansas City Chiefs during the third quarter at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Commanders at Falcons (+2½)
Atlanta reportedly is still asking for an exorbitant price to trade former Vikings QB Kirk Cousins. But so far the best offer they’ve gotten, from an unnamed team, is an exchange of the veteran quarterback for a 1974 Chevy Vega.
Pick: Commanders by 3

Kirk Cousins #18 of the Atlanta Falcons participates in warmups prior to the NFL Preseason 2025 game against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on Aug. 22, 2025 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Jets at Dolphins (-2½)
Two winless teams battling to avoid the AFC East basement are slated to stink up ESPN’s premium Monday night time slot. This game is such a dog that Disney is considering taking the game broadcast off the air and replacing it with Jimmy Kimmel re-runs.
Pick: Dolphins by 3

Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, right, sits on the bench during the second half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus)

Colts at Rams (-3½)
The Rams, and many bettors, lost big time when their try for a game-winning field goal turned into a pointspread-flipping, blocked-kick touchdown by the Eagles. That result will mean more cash for seedy gambling sites to spend on tedious Kevin Hart-LeBron James commercials.
Pick: Rams by 7

Jordan Davis #90 of the Philadelphia Eagles returns a blocked field goal for a touchdown against the Los Angeles Rams during the fourth quarter at Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 21, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

Saints at Bills (-15½)
Winless New Orleans broke out its alternate white helmets in Week 3 for its loss in Seattle. The blank shade matches perfectly the white flags the Saints waved when crafting their 2025 roster.
Pick: Bills by 21

Tyler Shough #6 of the New Orleans Saints in action against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Sept. 21, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Jaguars at 49ers (-3½)
San Francisco’s Nick Bosa suffered a season-ending knee injury, a severe blow to the 49ers’ defense. He received many online condolences, including one from President Trump, urging Bosa to avoid taking Tylenol and “tough it out.”
Pick: 49ers by 7

San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (97) lies down on the sideline during an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Scot Tucker)

Other games

Browns at Lions (-8½)
Pick: Lions by 7

Titans at Texans (-6½)
Pick: Texans by 3

Panthers at Patriots (-4½)
Pick: Panthers by 3

Bears at Raiders (-1½)
Pick: Raiders by 7

Record

Andre Szmyt #25 of the Cleveland Browns celebrates with teammates after kicking the game winning field goal against the Green Bay Packers during the fourth quarter at Huntington Bank Field on Sept. 21, 2025 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Last week
11-5 straight up
11-5 vs. spread

Season
34-14 straight up (.708)
30-18 vs. spread (.625)

All-time (2003-25)
3853-2115 straight up (.646)
2940-2897-145 vs spread (.504)

You can hear Kevin Cusick on Thursdays on Bob Sansevere’s “BS Show” podcast on iTunes. You can follow Kevin on X — @theloopnow. He can be reached at kcusick@pioneerpress.com.

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There was a quiet confidence about veteran quarterback Carson Wentz at TCO Performance Center as he stood at the podium reserved for the man starting under center.

He acknowledged that he left some meat on the bone last weekend in Minnesota’s 48-10 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. He vowed to be better this weekend against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Dublin, Ireland.

“There are definitely some things to clean up,” Wentz said. “It was far from perfect.”

Wentz was wasn’t spectacular in the blowout win, but he didn’t need to be.

All the Vikings needed Wentz to do while filling in for injured quarterback J.J. McCarthy was keep the train on the tracks, and that’s exactly what he did. He completed 14 of 20 pass attempts for 173 yards and a pair of touchdowns while looking the part of somebody who has started nearly 100 games in the NFL.

The poise that Wentz displayed was enough to ask whether the Vikings are still fully committed to McCarthy as their starter when he recovers from his high ankle sprain.

That head coach Kevin O’Connell was noncommittal in his answer to that question kept the door open for a potential quarterback controversy down the road.

As for his evaluation of Wentz, in particular, O’Connell was effusive in his praise, highlighting some of the fundamentals, like his capacity to go through his progression in the pocket and ability to throw with anticipation when attacking the intermediate part of the field.

“He was very sharp,” O’Connell said. “I just thought he did a really nice job of playing point guard.”

The way that Wentz played the position looked much different than how McCarthy played the position in the Vikings’ first two games.

The most glaring difference was decisiveness. Wentz’s average time from snap to throw was 2.43 seconds, according to Next Gen Stats, while McCarthy’s average time from snap to throw was 3.15 seconds.

That’s a lifetime in the NFL when pass rushers are trying to get home.

“He was getting the ball out of his hands,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said when asked about Wentz. “I think the more he plays, the more comfortable he’ll be.”

Some of the comfort Wentz had when dropping back to pass can be chalked up to the return of star left tackle Christian Darrisaw. To make it all about that, however, wouldn’t be giving Wentz enough credit for how he was consistently able to play in rhythm.

“That can be an incredible weapon for a quarterback,” O’Connell said. “I think there’s value in J.J. seeing that.”

The willingness that McCarthy has shown to continue to learn despite his high ankle sprain is a good sign.

“That’s the something we love about him,” O’Connell said. “He’s going to find positives even in a situation where he can’t be on the field. ”

Though it’s still unclear how much longer Wentz will be the starter, he’s doing everything in his power to learn the ins and outs of the offense. Playing for his sixth team in six years, he has leaned heavily on O’Connell, Phillips and quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, among others, while also relying on some of his past experiences to give him an edge.

“There’s still a lot of carry over in this system to other teams I’ve been on,” said Wentz, the second overall draft pick in 2016. “Even if it might be called something different, and there might be little nuances and intricacies … throwing into a zone versus Cover 3 is still the same window.”

The opportunity in front of him isn’t lost on Wentz, who has earned the reputation of a journeyman, having played for the Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts, Washington Commanders, Los Angeles Rams, and Kansas City Chiefs in his career.

As he prepared to start for the Vikings last week, Wentz noted it had been a few years since he had played in a game of consequence. What’s it been like for him this week preparing for another game of consequence?

“Fun,” Wentz said with a smile. “I did this for quite a long time leading up until the little hiatus.”

There’s a chance he’ll get to continue doing it for the Vikings moving forward.

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Last week, I began teaching a new undergraduate course on “Dissent and Democracy in the World.” I started developing the course over a year ago, convinced that the subject is not only essential to well-functioning communities, but also not well understood or appreciated in American society today.

When the class began, our country looked different than it did when I started down this path.

During my lifetime, I’ve taken for granted that I could speak out freely in this country. I could share views that did not align with my employer’s position or the prevailing view in my community. I could openly object to the positions of the church my family attended. I could publish my opinions in a newspaper or on social media. I might lose friends or ostracize family. I might not be invited back to someone’s house. I might not get hired for a dream job or could even lose a job or a promotion.

But never before had I been afraid that speaking my opinion or voicing my moral objections to the actions of other groups, individuals or my government would risk my government coming after my job, my finances or my freedom.

What we heard from officials of the Donald Trump administration recently were direct threats against free speech and, specifically, dissent. Vice President JD Vance told members of the public to watch their fellow citizens and report their unpalatable opinions to their employer. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, without evidence, called left-wing political organizations terrorist groups and vowed to use law enforcement to go after them “to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, take away your freedom.”

Our legal system has painstakingly determined the narrow range of speech that is not legally protected, such as speech that is intended to — and in fact does — incite imminent lawless action. But the clear subtext here is that you do not have to break the law to come under attack from this government.

The threats are so vague, and government power so extensive, that this will undoubtedly drive widespread self-censorship and suppress free expression across many communities out of fear. One need not eradicate all dissent to be effective. Punishing a few will quiet many.

Fear is already having this impact, as corporations preempt government suppression by doing so on their own. Canceling comedians the president has lambasted is only a start.

We can no longer take our freedom of speech for granted under these circumstances. That will not only cost us our personal freedom, but it will cost society too.

Dissent is nothing more than the expression of an opinion that varies from the prevailing or traditional view or the position held by those in power. That expression can come in a variety of ways, such as speaking up in a group, filing an official complaint, writing or publishing those views, or demonstrating and rallying to draw attention to them. Most dissent is conducted to push back on the status quo or widely accepted beliefs in an effort to bring about change.

Our First Amendment exists explicitly to protect the expression of dissenting opinions. Our Founding Fathers did not put it there to protect our right to agree with our government.

But dissent is hard under the best of circumstances, even when it doesn’t risk the government’s ire. Social pressure and human nature are natural obstacles to expressing dissent in our everyday lives. Groups prefer and reward consensus. Authorities prefer and reward compliance. Speaking out to express different views is always uncomfortable, even within a democracy that protects free speech fervently. But we lose a lot when people do not dissent. Groupthink, affirmation bias and collective blind spots have led to all manners of disasters in the past.

The corporate culture of Enron in 2001 discouraged its employees from questioning the company’s practices, leading to the biggest corporate collapse in U.S. history. The Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 came after warnings from engineers were repeatedly suppressed and ignored. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 inspired the term “groupthink” because it was such a clear example of how the desire for consensus overrode the concerns many had but kept quiet.

Each of these examples happened in our open democracy, at a time when dissent was uncomfortable but not dangerous. To the contrary, the absence of dissent was the danger.

This is why communities, organizations, businesses and governments benefit not only when dissent is allowed, but also when it is actively encouraged and cultivated. Even if a dissenting perspective isn’t correct or better, dissent brings different views to the fore so that they can be debated, and that improves and sharpens arguments, options and outcomes.

Free speech has always been a threat to power, though, which is why protecting it within our Constitution was so essential.

When an authority is actively suppressing or punishing speech itself, the space open to debate gets much smaller very quickly. That harms outcomes and raises risks. And that is where our country is heading today.

Elizabeth Shackelford is a program director with the Institute for Global Affairs and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She also is a distinguished lecturer with the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.” 

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“Better together.” That’s the optimistic theme that Annalena Baerbock, the new president of the United Nations General Assembly, chose for this year’s global gathering, the 80th. President Donald Trump instead confirmed in his speech what I keep hearing from the cognoscenti here at UNGA: The likelier trajectory points toward “worse apart.”

As is his wont, Trump heaped contempt on the U.N. as on other countries and people he disdains. “The two things I got from the United Nations,” he sneered, are “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.” (Apparently, neither device worked to his satisfaction.) And while he, the peacemaker-in-chief, was allegedly out ending seven wars, “sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help.”

This is today the sound of America — the co-founder, host and eight-decade underwriter of the U.N. system — eating its children like Cronus. And the stony faces and occasionally audible gasps are those of the assembled world dreading the fate of what diplomats call the “international community minus one.” The U.S. may or may not exit the U.N. as it once orphaned the League of Nations. But it’s bad enough that America has morphed from the system’s main benefactor into its spoiler.

Part of the tragedy is that this hostile U.S. turn toward its own creation rests on a profound misunderstanding. Many American conservatives, and especially MAGA types, view the U.N. largely as Michael Waltz, Trump’s new ambassador to Turtle Bay, described it in his confirmation hearings: At best, as a feckless and bloated bureaucracy that burns through American tax dollars to churn out woke verbiage instead of keeping world peace. At worst, as an antisemitic and anti-American cesspool.

This UNGA provided fodder for these narratives. The controversy over Israel and Palestine is escalating, with some of America’s closest Western allies — including Britain, Canada, Australia and France — recognizing Palestinian statehood, as more than 140 of the U.N.’s 193 members already do. This pits them against Israel and the Trump administration, which even revoked the visas of Palestinian leaders who had planned to attend. Beyond the Middle East, the U.N. and its Security Council seem to stand idly by as wars and atrocities torment the world from Sudan to Ukraine.

What threatens to tip these crises into an existential threat for the U.N. is the political and financial assault from Washington, historically the U.N.’s biggest funder. The U.S. is responsible for providing 22% of the U.N.’s regular budget, which it has yet to pay. Instead, the Trump administration has already clawed back about $1 billion and vows to keep cutting, in what amounts to the international analog to its domestic Doge-ing earlier this year. Notably, America has in effect defunded the U.N.’s humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.

Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has announced that the U.S. will withdraw from U.N. institutions such as the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, UNESCO (the agency that looks after education, science and culture) and the Human Rights Council. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me that “there’s not one international organization that he says anything good about. Not one. Whatever chance he can, he pulls us out.”

The administration’s selective boycott of the U.N.’s many wheelhouses goes further. Ten years ago, the U.N. adopted 17 so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — from ending hunger and poverty to educating girls in poor countries and giving people cleaner energy. As of this year, the U.S. officially “rejects and denounces” these goals as lefty-woke-DEI bilge.

In contrast to his predecessor, Joe Biden, Trump also shows no interest in reforming the most dysfunctional part of the U.N. system, the Security Council. It still has the same five veto-wielding members as it did in 1945. And although France and Britain haven’t made use of their privilege since the end of the Cold War, the U.S., Russia and China nowadays wage war-by-veto, blocking all attempts to address conflicts and threats from the Middle East to Ukraine and the Korean peninsula. Just last week, the U.S. vetoed a resolution, embraced by the 14 other members, that called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages.

The council is widely considered unreformable because neither America nor Russia and China would ever contemplate giving up the veto privilege that gums up what could be an international peacekeeping organ. Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at the International Crisis Group, told me that Trump in fact likes this status quo because it “matches his worldview of a handful of great powers conducting the real business while little countries get out of the way.” The hypocrisy consists in then blaming the U.N., rather than the great powers, for failing to maintain international order.

It suits the mighty to use the U.N. as their scapegoat, Anjali Dayal at Fordham University told me: “We call that laundering dirty politics. The U.N. is very good at laundering their dirty politics for them.” The U.N.’s apparent failure to pacify the Syrian civil war over the past decade is an example. The simple explanation was that Russia did not want the U.N. to act in Syria, Dayal says, but to much of the world it looked as though the U.N. was failing Syrians.

Americans are not the only ones who “get this the wrong way round,” Gowan told me. “The U.N. does not shape the world. The world shapes the U.N.” When the Cold War was ending and something resembling harmony briefly reigned, the great powers on the Security Council often agreed, as in condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Later during the 1990s, American diplomats such as Strobe Talbott rhapsodized that “the United States defines its greatness not as an ability to dominate others but as an ability to work with others in the interest of the international community.”

Such breathless idealism sounds otherworldly today. But the American leaders who midwifed the UN as World War II was still raging were somber realists, not utopians. In April of 1945, four months before he dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and with the old and failed League of Nations still on the books, Harry Truman exhorted delegates to the San Francisco Conference to create the U.N. to “provide sensible machinery” to settle disputes without “bombs and bayonets.”

This world-weary and worldly-wise pragmatism is reflected in the U.N.’s unofficial motto, a quote by an early secretary general that today graces the hallway through which delegates walk into the general assembly: “The U.N. was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”

This is what Trump, Waltz and MAGA don’t get. Truman would never have harangued the international community that America is First, or obstructed every effort to better the lot of humanity by asking what’s in it for the U.S., not in coming decades but during this news cycle. Truman understood what eludes Trump: that the alternative to cacophony is violence, and violence in the modern world can mean nuclear hell. That’s why every U.S. president saw America’s interests as overlapping with those of the world and the U.N. Until Trump.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

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