A team can get off to a great start in the NFL just by catching a nice scheduling stretch at the beginning. The opposite can be true, if you get a brutal schedule for the first month. Ask the Kansas City Chiefs. It's not as easy to beat the point spread every week. Your record against the spread doesn't count — it's not like Ron Rivera is upset about a 4-0 start with the Carolina Panthers if his team failed to cover a spread or two — but it's a decent snapshot of how dominant teams have been. And there are five undefeated teams left, three of which have perfect records without any ties ( records are from OddsShark.com ): Cincinnati Bengals, 4-0 Green Bay Packers, 4-0 Atlanta Falcons, 4-0 New England Patriots, 2-0-1 Pittsburgh Steelers, 2-0-2 The surprise on the list is the Steelers, because they haven't been one of the NFL's better teams yet. That list shows how good the Bengals and Falcons have been early on. We expected the Packers and Patriots to be two of the elite teams this season, and they've lived up to it. No teams are winless against the spread. The problem is, records against the spread aren't predictive. Oddsmakers move up their rankings for teams like the Falcons, who have been a bit of a surprise. They're not going to let Atlanta go 16-0 against the spread, let's say. And we can probably see in this week's spreads that the spreads for some of the NFL's top teams so far are creeping higher and higher. With that, here are the Week 5 picks (with the spreads, as usual, coming from the Yahoo Sports Pro Football Pick'em): Texans (off) over Colts: That was one truly pathetic performance by the Texans. It's one thing to get beat by Andrew Luck, but they got picked apart by a 40-year-old quarterback who was so sick all week the Colts' quarterbacks coach told him he would understand if he couldn't play Thursday nigh t. Great job by Matt Hasselbeck, not so much for a Texans roster that looks like it might be one of the two or three worst in the NFL. Redskins (+7.5) over Falcons: I'm not sure if Washington is any good on the road. We saw them play one road game and it wasn't pretty. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they can keep this close.
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