You guys are really depressed. It looks as if SD is a touchdown
favorite this week.
http://www.footballlocks.com/nfl_lines.shtml
There was some article claiming that losing to CLE by 1 meant SD was the
worst team in the league. What an overreaction. Home field advantage
is generally worth more than one point, so that loss was evidence that
SD is better than CLE. Weak evidence given the variance involved, but
still evidence.
While SD is bad, OAK is worse, and KC is truly terrible.
CAR is close enough that you have a chance to win that game.
CIN might be worse than SD. It would not be shocking to win
any of those games ahead on the schedule.
Here are a couple of fully quantitative ratings, with no subjectivity.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/nfl12.htm
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2012/week-8-dvoa-ratings
They disagree, so obviously they are not perfect, but they aren't
meaningless either.
Those measure the average of the teams over the season, so if you think
SD's injury situation is worse than most teams [compared to year
average] you might adjust, but I wouldn't. I think those schemes
overrate OAK and underrate CIN, but that may be because I've watched too
many painful OAK games and not enough CIN games.
Eddie