Texans at Vikings (+2½)
The unbeaten Vikings face another tough challenge in Houston. The Texans have built a Super Bowl contender the old fashioned way: By sucking for several years and praying that Carolina drafted Bryce Young.
Pick: Texans by 3

Stefon Diggs #1 of the Houston Texans dives with the ball against Tyrique Stevenson #29 of the Chicago Bears during the second quarter at NRG Stadium on Sept. 15, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images)

Eagles at Saints (-2½)
Saquon Barkley stars in a new ad for Applebees in which he runs a plate of boneless wings out to some hungry customers. Viewers might not immediately recognize the Eagles‘ RB because he doesn’t drop the wings.
Pick: Saints by 3

Saquon Barkley #26 of the Philadelphia Eagles runs the ball against Kaden Elliss #55 of the Atlanta Falcons at Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 16, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

Chiefs at Falcons (+3½)
Former Viking Kirk Cousins led a last-minute comeback win Monday night in Philadelphia. It was a great relief considering that, at the QB’s current pace, the Falcons are paying him more than $5 million per win.
Pick: Chiefs by 7

Kirk Cousins #18 of the Atlanta Falcons reacts to an incomplete pass for a two point conversion against the Philadelphia Eagles during the third quarter in the game at Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 16, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

Panthers at Raiders (-5½)
Carolina QB Bryce Young has been benched in favor of ancient Andy Dalton. While the move raised eyebrows, it could be the franchise’s best move since turning down the ownership bid of Diddy.
Pick: Raiders by 11

Quarterback Bryce Young #9 of the Carolina Panthers walks off the field at halftime of the game against the Los Angeles Chargers at Bank of America Stadium on Sept. 15, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

Dolphins at Seahawks (-5½)
Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa is out indefinitely after suffering his latest concussion. He’s being urged by some Dolphins fans to ignore risk and return, though that’s mostly folks who are already suffering from brain impairment.
Pick: Seahawks by 7

Head coach Mike McDaniel of the Miami Dolphins embraces Tua Tagovailoa #1 after leaving the game with an injury during the third quarter against the Buffalo Bills at Hard Rock Stadium on Sept. 12, 2024 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

Chargers at Steelers (-2½)
Onetime capable QB Russell Wilson got a game ball Sunday despite not setting foot on the field in Denver. Justin Fields and the Steelers won, in large part, because of Wilson never setting foot on the field.
Pick: Steelers by 7

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson (3) before an NFL football game against the Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Denver .(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Ravens at Cowboys (even)
John Harbaugh’s Ravens blew a late 10-point lead Sunday and lost to the unremarkable Raiders. While it was bad for Baltimore, it was ruinous for most of the survivor pool survivors who didn’t take the Bengals over New England in Week 1.
Pick: Ravens by 7

Head coach John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens celebrates with the VInce Lombardi Championship trophy after the Ravens won 34-31 against the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl XLVII at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Feb. 3, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Commanders at Bengals (-7½)
This matchup will preempt programming on ABC on a rare Monday night with two NFL games. This is especially disappointing for those viewers hoping to turn into the latest episode of The Incontinent Bachelor.
Pick: Bengals by 6

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – NOVEMBER 16: Quarterback Joe Burrow #9 of the Cincinnati Bengals looks at his hand after throwing a pass in front of Odafe Oweh #99 of the Baltimore Ravens during the second quarter of the game at M&T Bank Stadium on November 16, 2023 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Giants at Browns (-6½)
An asteroid is passing close to Earth this week. While a direct strike on our planet could conceivably be the death knell for all humanity, it would spare us all from any further contact with the 2024 Giants.
Pick: Browns by 8

Frankie Luvu #4 of the Washington Commanders tackles Daniel Jones #8 of the New York Giants during the fourth quarter at Northwest Stadium on Sept. 15, 2024 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)

Packers at Titans (-2½)
Green Bay quarterback Malik Willis admitted that he decided not to make a particular pass last Sunday because his center had thrown up on the football. That’s newsworthy because most upchucking at Lambeau Field is usually limited to everyplace else in the neighborhood except the field.
Pick: Titans by 3

Malik Willis #2 of the Green Bay Packers looks to pass during a game against the Indianapolis Colts at Lambeau Field on Sept. 15, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers defeated the Colts 16-10. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Other games

Bears at Colts (-1½):
Pick: Bears by 3

Broncos at Buccaneers (-6½):
Pick: Buccaneers by 7

Jaguars at Bills (-5½)
Pick: Bills by 7

49ers at Rams (+6½):
Pick: 49ers by 17

Lions at Cardinals (+2½)
Pick: Cardinals by 3

Wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. #18 of the Arizona Cardinals high fives mascot ‘Big Red’ after scoring a 60-yard touchdown reception against the Los Angeles Rams during the first half of the NFL game at State Farm Stadium on Sept. 15, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. The Cardinals defeated the Rams 41-10. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Record

Week 2
8-8 straight up
7-9 vs. spread

Season
20-12 straight up
17-15 vs. spread

All-time (2003-24)
3651-2032-14 straight up (.643)
2777-2776-144 vs spread (.500)

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

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Iowa has a place in Max Brosmer’s origin story.

The transfer quarterback has firmly staked himself onto the Gophers’ side of the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry, but he was born in Davenport, Iowa — only 55 miles east to the Hawkeyes’ campus in Iowa City.

“I don’t remember actually living there,” the sixth-year senior said this week. “… We moved to Ohio after that.”

Brosmer’s family has Ohio State Buckeyes fans in it, but his parents Colin and Jayna, who settled their family of four in Georgia, are now in maroon and gold after supporting their eldest son across five years at the University of New Hampshire.

Max made the jump to the Big Ten Conference from an FCS-level school this year in order to play in big games like Saturday night’s matchup against Iowa at Huntington Bank Stadium.

“A lot of guys dream to be in this spot,” Brosmer said. “Under the lights in a huge big-time, Big Ten game like this. One of the top rivalries in college football. You grow up and you want to be on these stages.”

Brosmer’s first major college football game against North Carolina on Aug. 29 was “a little bit surreal because it was the first one,” offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh said Wednesday. Brosmer had some inaccurate passes early in the game and a key fumble lost in the second half, but he got in a groove and led the U offense into a position to win late in the game.

“This one now he understands what the environment is going to be like,” Harbaugh said about the Hawkeyes game. “He understands what the scene is going to be like. Now taking it in every single day.”

Harbaugh has been in Brosmer’s ear this week, starting with Tuesday’s practice and reminding him to enjoy the process of preparing to play in this rivalry game. The Hawkeyes appear to have another stout defense this season, but their sound philosophy should come with an understanding of where defenders will be on the field once Brosmer diagnosis the scheme.

“Trust what you see,” Harbaugh said of his message to Brosmer. “Go through your progressions. It’s fun with him because you can tweak different things each week. We’ve talked before about how intelligent he is and how well he can transition from one opponent to the next.”

Across three games, Brosmer has completed 69 percent of his passes (53 for 77) for 627 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. He has had most of his success in short and intermediate throws.

One coincidence is Brosmer and Gophers tight end Frank Bierman were both born at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport, Iowa.

Bierman hails from Tipton, Iowa, which is 30 miles northeast of Iowa City. After starting his career at Iowa Western Community College, Bierman has been a surprise addition to the Gophers’ offense this season, playing 44 offensive plays through three games. The fifth-year player has stepped into a bigger role after an injury to third-stringer Pierce Walsh.

“He’s a tough, hard-nosed football player, great kid, really smart,” head coach P.J. Fleck said. “And Frank gives us that added dimension of toughness and physicality. He’s a glorified full back/tight end.”

Once Brosmer came to Minnesota in January, he and Bierman discovered their link to the same hospital. “Completely different walks in life and we found out were were born in Genesis,” Brosmer said. “That was pretty cool.”

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We’re still asking people with COVID to jump through far too many hoops to get their hands on Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid.

I experienced the barriers first-hand this month after my mother texted to say that this summer’s COVID wave had finally caught up with her. My first thought was to make sure she quickly started taking the antiviral. You’d think she would be an ideal candidate, because she is in her 70s with an underlying health condition. But it took a daylong effort to get her the medicine, one that involved multiple emails, phone calls with three different doctor’s offices, a telehealth visit and a bit of pharmacy-hopping to find one that had the pills in stock.

“That’s not an uncommon story,” says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “There are a lot of misconceptions out there that have undermined the use (of antivirals) from the very beginning.”

The data bear this out. One small study published in early 2024 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4 out of 5 high-risk patients were not offered an antiviral by their doctors. Worse, one large, community-based study found that Black and Latino patients were far less likely to receive the drug than white patients.

It shouldn’t be that way. And the delay matters: Pfizer’s antiviral only helps if taken within the first five days of symptoms. My mom, feverish and exhausted, told me that if I hadn’t stepped in as her advocate, she would have given up.

Doctors must do better, especially as we continue to live through a wave of infections.

Some health care providers may be worried about managing the interactions between Paxlovid and other medicines (my mom, for example, had to pause her Lipitor while on the antiviral). Others have been dissuaded by reports of rebound infections occurring in people who take Paxlovid — despite evidence that the drug’s benefits outweigh those risks in the most vulnerable patients. And some doctors might be operating under perverse incentives that make it more lucrative to have a sick patient make an appointment to confirm their infection instead of simply calling the prescription into a pharmacy after an at-home test.

There’s also lingering confusion about the right candidates for the drug. Paxlovid was authorized in 2021 based on compelling data showing it could keep high-risk unvaccinated people out of the hospital. Yet some doctors don’t seem aware that vaccinated patients can also benefit from it, particularly if they are higher risk. That’s everyone over age 65, or those who are immunocompromised, pregnant or with an underlying condition. Those groups still are at risk of hospitalization and even of dying, especially if their last exposure or booster is in the distant past.

And that’s a lot of people. Only 1 out of every 3 retirement-age adults got last year’s booster. “From my experience as well as others, pretty much everybody I’ve taken care of hasn’t received a vaccine in the last year or so, even though they might have had them originally,” says Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Since mid-August, COVID deaths in the U.S. have been hovering near 1,000 per week, according to CDC data. Shouldn’t we better deploy the tools that might prevent such losses?

Cost shouldn’t be a barrier. When antivirals transitioned to the commercial market last year, the U.S. government partnered with Pfizer to ensure people with public health insurance or without insurance could still get the drugs for free, and minimize the cost for people with private insurance. Yet infectious disease doctors tell me that months into the rollout, too few patients, prescribers and pharmacists seem aware of the program.

True, Paxlovid isn’t perfect. In people who aren’t high-risk, the data are mixed as to whether it helps much (though anecdotes abound for people who say they have felt better faster after taking it). And while there had been much hope that Paxlovid could prevent long COVID, so far the data supporting that hypothesis are inconclusive.

So there’s a clear need for better anti-COVID drugs. Even for young, healthy people who have been jabbed and infected multiple times, an infection can be extremely disruptive, sidelining us from work or school and ruining our best-laid plans. A drug more akin to Tamiflu — a very safe and tolerable treatment for the flu that allows people to bounce back faster, even if only by a day or two — would be a welcome invention.

Yet better antivirals have been slow to arrive. Pfizer is studying a treatment that works similarly to Paxlovid, but doesn’t interact with other medications. And hopes were dashed last spring when Shionogi’s Ensitrelvir, an antiviral approved in Japan, failed to prove it could alleviate symptoms faster than a placebo.

But even if a drug for the masses eventually made it to market, would it be used? When doctors can’t get it right for the most vulnerable, the prospects seem dim.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.

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It’s a dirty job, but someone has to tell you about the federal government’s budget tricks. The latest is exposed in a new Congressional Budget Office report that shows how the 2010 Democratic takeover of student debt has created a new and vast entitlement.

CBO examined a sample of federal student loans that entered repayment between July 2009 and June 2013 to measure the extent borrowers were making progress on repaying their debt before the three-and-a-half years of pandemic forbearance. Short conclusion: They weren’t.

During the first six years after borrowers were supposed to begin making payments, CBO estimates that loans were in repayment status for only 45% of the time—about 32 months. Borrowers weren’t making payments for most of that time because they were either in default, forbearance or deferment.

It gets worse. CBO says “borrowers made payments greater than $10 in only 38 percent of the months” in which a payment was due. That means that even most borrowers who were making payments were doing so inconsistently and often in token amounts.

One reason is that the Democrats’ 2010 income-based repayment plans capped payments at 10% of discretionary income—i.e., income exceeding 150% of the poverty line—and canceled debt after 10 to 20 years. As a result, many borrowers had negligible required payments. But then their loan balances ballooned as they accrued interest.

After six years in repayment, the typical borrower owed 8% more than his beginning balance. A quarter of borrowers owed 30% or more debt. More than 75% of those in income-driven repayment plans had rising balances. Borrowers in such plans made payments of more than $10 a month in only about a third of the months.

Democrats say the student debt “crisis” is caused by for-profit colleges. But CBO shows that many students at nonprofit and public colleges are failing to repay their loans. After six years, the typical borrower who attended a nonprofit or four-year public college had paid down only 1% or 2% of his starting balance.

Unlike private lenders, the government has no incentive to ensure borrowers are making payments. The political imperative is to conceal the taxpayer losses on student loans by reducing defaults while effectively turning the program into a new entitlement.

This is what President Biden’s SAVE debt-forgiveness plan does. It eliminates payments for millions of borrowers while reducing them for most others to negligible amounts. Uncle Sam simply waives away unpaid interest. Wouldn’t it be nice if your credit card company did the same?

This accounting trick prevents the government’s $1.6 trillion in student debt from ballooning as borrowers fail to pay down their loans. Mr. Biden’s SAVE plan is estimated to cost $475 billion over a decade, which is on top of hundreds of billions that were already set to be written off.

To sum up: Democrats conned taxpayers by claiming their student loan takeover would save the government money. Now they’re trying to obfuscate the cost of their entitlement by expanding it. And they wonder why Americans don’t trust government?

— The Wall Street Journal

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