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The Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins will face off in an inter-conference matchup on Monday Night Football in Week 1 of the 2016 NFL season, and as far as Vegas is concerned, the Steelers are the favorites in this matchup.
However, despite what Las Vegas may think, there is a strong contingent who feel this is a bad matchup for the visiting team. There is the simple fact of playing on the road against the 2015 NFC East Champions on prime time, but the Washington offense certainly presents their share of issues for a very unproven Pittsburgh defense.
DeSean Jackson, Jordan Reed, Matt Jones, Pierre Garcon and Kirk Cousins will look to keep pace with the high-flying Pittsburgh offense made up of Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, DeAngelo Williams, Sammie Coates and Markus Wheaton.
With the matchups clear on paper, who are the experts taking in this prime time game?
The fine folks here at SB Nation aren't sold on the Steelers in this game. In fact, out of their 10-person panel of experts, they are split down the middle in terms of who they think will win the game, but the opposite is true of the experts at ESPN. Out of their own 10-person panel, 7 of the 10 think it will be Pittsburgh coming back to the Steel City with a 1-0 record as they prepare for a Week 2 tilt with the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Pittsburgh favoritism continued with the experts at CBSSports. Their 8-person panel of experts sees this as a clean sweep for the Steelers, without even one person thinking the Redskins will hold serve at home. At FOXSports it was more of the same, but there was one expert out of 6 who thinks Washington will win the game on prime time.
According to our friends at NFL Pick Watch, a website which compiles all expert picks across the world wide web, a whopping 76-percent of experts who make weekly picks are picking the Steelers to win in Week 1. The question now remains whether the experts will be right, of if they will have to eat crow if Pittsburgh is defeated on Monday night.