King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NFL Week 3: It's an AFC vs. NFC showdown. Emphasis on the "down" for the NFC. Plus: Panel o' Experts standings.

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Sept. 21, 2007 | Caricatures who write sports columns face more criticism and have to live up to a higher standard than three-dimensional writers.

There are not that many caricatures writing sports columns, so we have to do a little bit extra. Just typing the column is a little extra. You can't see my hands, but they're huge, and I only have three fingers on each one.

Do Dan Wetzel or Michael Wilbon face the same kind of scrutiny as two-dimensional typists? Let me start by saying I love those guys, but they don't get criticized as much as we do. They don't.

I pick the Super Bowl winner and loser, it's "Ah, he could've picked this division winner, could have given the Dallas Cowboys more credit."

It's just reality.

Speaking of reality, the fifth edition of the King Kaufman's Sports Daily NFL Weekly Panel o' Experts is off to a flying start, with Vinnie Iyer of SportingNews.com racing out to an early lead over ESPN's Ron Jaworski and Joe Theismann and new entry Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports.

Iyer has bounced back from a poor showing in 2006, when he was mud wrestling for last place with this column for most of the season. This column is also off to a not-awful start, in a five-way scrum for sixth place, suggesting that moving away from St. Louis, as both Iyer and I have done since the Super Bowl, is beneficial when it comes to picking NFL winners.

Then again it didn't work so well for the Bidwill family.

Silver, who moved from Sports Illustrated to Yahoo Sports and now picks winners for every game, is one of three new entries this season. The other two are the Accuscore game-simulation program, the picks of which appear on the Web page with ESPN's experts' picks, and my daughter, Daisy, the coin-flippinest 2-year-old in the Western Hemisphere. Buster has retired his coin and begun picking games himself, expert style.

The Panel is now 19 strong. I'm thinking about realigning into divisions. Here are the standings through Week 2:

Next page: Week 3 picks: Packers, Cardinals, 49ers, Seahawks, Saints see where they stand vs. AFC foes