NFL Picks, Week 3 - Thursday Night Edition

ATLANTA (-6.5) over Tampa Bay

Why? Three reasons:

1. Tampa Bay has played Carolina (starting Derek Anderson, his first start in 4 years and first passes thrown in a regular season game in over a year), and St. Louis (starting Austin Davis, his first NFL start ever since college in 2011), both at home. They lost both games. Absent an act of God between now and game-time, Atlanta will be starting Matt Ryan.

2. Josh McCown's career statistics when not playing under Marc Trestman:

G	GS	QBrec	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Yds	TD	Int	Y/A	Rating
55	35	16-24-0	683	1169	52.53%	7360	39	47	5.4	60.2

Yes Atlanta's defense is awful, but Josh McCown isn't taking full advantage of that. 

3. It's a midweek game, and the visiting team isn't significantly better than the home team (in fact, they're worse overall, especially with Tampa's multitude of injuries). Therefore, take the home team and don't look back.