Welcome to the Friday edition of the Pick Six newsletter!

Bears fans haven't had a lot to cheer for this season, but they got a double-dose of good news on Thursday night. Not only did the Bears beat the Panthers 16-13, they also took one step closer to possibly getting the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 draft since they own Carolina's first-round pick. 

The Panthers and Bears have both been bad this season, but they actually gave us a somewhat entertaining game. We'll be grading both teams in today's newsletter, plus, we'll be taking a midseason look at the Rookie of the Year races and we'll be offering some bold predictions for Week 10. 

As always, here's your daily reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. To get them signed up, all you have to do is click here. Let's get to the rundown. 

If you're a regular listener of the "Pick Six NFL" podcast or a regular reader of this newsletter, then you know what we do on Fridays: We make picks. And then just when you think we're done making picks, we make more picks. 

For today's show, host Katie Mox was joined by Will Brinson along with R.J. White and Alex "PropStarz" Selelnick -- two of our gambling gurus over at SportsLine -- and the three of them offered some of their best bets for Week 10.

The crew spent an entire hour handing out picks, and we're going to go over a few of their best bets here: 

Will Brinson (2-1 in picks we shared here last week, 14-12-1 on the season)
Jaguars (+3) to cover against 49ers
Ravens (-6.5) to cover against Browns
Steelers (-3) to cover against Packers

R.J. White (1-2 in picks we shared here last week, 11-16 on the season)
Vikings (+3) to cover against Saints
Commanders (+6.5) to cover against Seahawks
Titans at Buccaneers OVER 38.5 total points

Katie Mox (1-2 in picks we shared here last week, 9-15 on the season)
49ers OVER 23.5 total team points against Jaguars
Cowboys (-17.5) to cover against Giants
Falcons at Cardinals OVER 43.5 total points

As for PropStarz, he handed out a few of his favorite props for the weekend, because when your nickname is PropStarz, that's what the people expect. 

• Browns at Ravens: Mark Andrews OVER 45.5 rushing yards
• Browns at Ravens: Eli Moore UNDER 33.5 yards
• Lions at Chargers: Austin Ekeler UNDER 48.5 receiving yards

PropStarz went 2-1 last week and is now 15-12 on the season, including 14-7 over the past seven weeks. 

To hear what the rest of the best bets are for Week 10 -- and there are quite a few -- be sure to click here so you can listen to the entire episode of the podcast. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here. 

The Bears took one step closer to clinching the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft by beating the Panthers on Thursday night. At 1-8, the Panthers are now the frontrunners to land the top pick, but that's not actually going to help them because they traded away the pick away. The Panthers sent their 2024 first-round pick to the Bears as part of the deal that allowed them to acquire the No. 1 overall pick in 2023, which they used on Bryce Young. 

Here are our grades from the game: 

PANTHERS GRADE: C-

It took 10 weeks, but the Panthers might have finally hit rock bottom. That's the only way to describe it when you have the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft (Bryce Young) and he gets outplayed by an undrafted free agent (Tyson Bagent). The Panthers' only TD in this game came on a punt return on a night where the offense never came close to scoring. Young struggled with his accuracy, especially during a first half where the Panthers put up just 97 yards of offense. Carolina only had one offensive drive in the entire game that made it inside Chicago's 20-yard line. The Panthers defense played well enough to keep this close, but Carolina couldn't steal the win here because the offense sputtered for nearly the entire game. The Panthers also made some questionable coaching decisions, especially on their final offensive drive, which ended with Eddy Pineiro falling short on a potential game-tying field goal from 59 yards away with just 95 seconds left to play. 

Carolina note

• Rough start. With the loss, the Panthers are now 1-8 on the season, which is tied for the worst nine-game start in franchise history. The Panthers have started 1-8 three other times with the most recent instance before this year came all the way back in 2010.  

BEARS GRADE: C+

The Bears defense must have gotten a pep talk from the 1985 Bears because they played like them on Thursday night. In what was easily their most impressive game of the season, the Bears shut down the Panthers' offense, holding them to just 213 yards and six points. They kept constant pressure on Bryce Young, who was sacked three times on a night where the Bears also held the Panthers to just 43 yards on the ground. Offensively, this game was all about revenge as two former Panthers players -- DJ Moore and D'Onta Foreman -- accounted for more than 50% of Bears' offensive output with the duo gaining 150 of Chicago's 295 total yards. Foreman was especially good with 92 scrimmage yards while also scoring the game's only touchdown. The offense did struggle at times and the special teams did give up a punt return TD, but the defense played so well that none of that mattered. 

Chicago note

• Almost perfect. The Bears offense didn't have any turnovers, Tyson Bagent didn't get sacked a single time and the defense didn't surrender a single touchdown. Hopefully, Bears fans appreciated that all-around performance because it marks the first time since 1998 that the Bears made it through an entire game with zero offensive turnovers, zero sacks taken and zero touchdowns given up. The Bears' win marked just the second time in NFL history that an undrafted rookie QB has beaten the No. 1 overall pick from the same draft class. The only other time it happened came in 2019 when Duck Hodges led the Steelers to a win over Kyler Murray's Cardinals. 

If you want to check out more of our takeaways from the game, be sure to click here. 

If you've been reading the newsletter regularly, you may have noticed that we've been celebrating the halfway point of the NFL season all week and we're going to continue that today by breaking down the Rookie of the Year races. 

Here's how Josh Edwards sees the two races at the midpoint of the season: 

Offensive Rookie of the Year

• Favorite: Texans QB C.J. Stroud. "Stroud has led the Texans to a 4-4 record through the first half of the season. He has had his Rookie of the Year moment leading Houston to a comeback victory with 46 seconds remaining against the Buccaneers. His production has not been the result of a nickel-and-dime offensive attack. The Ohio State product has the fifth-highest air yards per attempt (8.5), according to TruMedia, and he now has the NFL record for most passing yards by a rookie in a single game."
• Sleeper: Dolphins RB De'Von Achane. "For any sleeper to become a possible OROY winner, Stroud will have to come back down to earth a bit. If he continues his current level of play, then he is going to run away with the award. Achane has only played in four games but he averaged 131.75 all-purpose yards. If he returns from injury soon and continues to produce, then he could have a shot."

Defensive Rookie of the Year

• Favorite: Eagles DT Jalen Carter. "Carter's 14.9% pressure rate is the fifth highest among interior defenders, according to TruMedia. He has just four sacks to show for his efforts but the No. 9 overall selection is consistently impacting the backfield and disrupting play."
• Dark horse: Rams EDGE Byron Young. "Young leads all rookies with five sacks and two forced fumbles. His 13.6% pressure rate is the third highest by a rookie this season, according to Trumedia. If he finishes with 10+ sacks, then he is going to be under consideration."

Edwards actually broke down the chances that several players might have to win each award, and if you want to see his full list of rookie of the year candidates, be sure to go here. 

I hope you're not tired of reading our picks yet, because we have even more of them coming at you right now. This batch will be coming from NFL senior writer Pete Prisco along with Will Brinson, Jordan Dajani, Tyler Sullivan and myself. After getting off to a hot start this season, we've cooled down slightly, but we're still above .500 after going 3-2 last week. 

Heading into Week 10, we still have our head above water with a 23-21-1 record against the spread with our picks that have been featured in the newsletter.

Here's how things are going to work: I'm going to give you one pick from each guy and then direct you to the rest of their picks. That way, if you like their pick, you'll be able to read the rest of them, but if they pick against your favorite team, you can ignore the rest of their picks and move on. 

• Pete Prisco: Steelers (-3) 23-17 over Packers. From Prisco: "I think the Steelers defensive front will create problems for Jordan Love as Pittsburgh wins again. The Steelers have extra rest and they're at home." For the rest of Prisco's Week 10 picks, be sure to click here.
• Tyler Sullivan: Cardinals (+1) 24-21 over Falcons. From Sullivan:  "Despite Atlanta's talent, Arthur Smith seems to go out of his way not to utilize his top-tier skill-position players and it's resulted in two straight losses. Nothing suggests that'll change this week, so I like Arizona as a slim home dog to welcome back Kyler Murray with a victory. Also, Atlanta is 0-7 ATS in non-divisional games this season." For the rest of Sullivan's Week 10 picks, be sure to click here.
• Will Brinson: Lions (-3) to cover against Chargers. From Brinson:  "Short week for the Chargers, who head back across the country after a "dominant" win over the Jets only to face off against a much more difficult test in Detroit. ... The Lions will protect Jared Goff much much better than the Jets did for Zach Wilson, and the Lions can exploit the Chargers pass defense to make L.A. one dimensional." For the rest of Brinson's Week 10 best bets, be sure to click here.
• Jordan Dajani: 49ers (-3) 27-21 over Jaguars. From Dajani:  "The 49ers are on a three-game losing streak, but that skid comes to an end this week. ... Don't get it twisted, I think the Jaguars are a good team, but I'm betting on the 49ers to rebound with Deebo Samuel and Trent Williams potentially returning to the lineup." For the rest of Dajani's Week 10 best bets, be sure to click here.
• John Breech: Patriots (+1.5) 20-17 over Colts. From me:  "Gardner Minshew has started 41 games in his career, but he's never faced Bill Belichick. No one is better than Belichick at confusing opposing quarterbacks and it's never easy to face him for the first time. The Patriots might fire Belichick and leave him in Germany if he loses this game, but the good news for him is that I don't think he's going to lose." For the rest of my Week 10 picks, be sure to click here. 

For more Week 10 NFL picks, you can check out out our CBS Sports picks page here. 

Since you're probably tired of picks at this point, we're going to spice things up by giving out some bold predictions, which are like picks, except spicier. Garrett Podell has five bold predictions for Week 10, and we're going to share three of them below. Last week, Garrett boldly predicted that the Vikings would win their first game without Kirk Cousins and that's exactly what happened. 

Let's see what Garrett has in store for us this week. 

Bold predictions for Week 10:  

• 1. C.J. Stroud leads Texans past Bengals. "After setting the rookie passing record in Week 9, Stroud's next big accomplishment will be halting the Bengals' four-game winning streak with a stunning road win in the state where he went to college. Stroud has been letting it rip all season. His 8.5 air yards per pass attempt are the fifth most in the NFL entering Week 10, his 14-1 touchdown-to interception ratio leads the NFL entering Week 10 and his 102.9 passer rating is the fourth highest in the league entering Week 10."
• 2. Titans finally win a road game.  "Dating back to last season, the Titans have lost 12 of their last 15 games, including their last eight on the road -- five of which have come this year. Their road misfortune will turn around against the Buccaneers in Week 10. The Bucs are on a four-game losing streak right now, a stretch in which their 24.8 points per game allowed ranks as the fourth most in the NFL while their 426.0 total yards per game in this stretch is the most in the NFL. Will Levis follows in C.J. Stroud's footsteps and shreds Tampa Bay's secondary, powering Tennessee to its first road win in nine games."
• 3. Seahawks LB Boye Mafe DOESN'T sack Sam Howell. "The NFL's longest active streak with a sack doesn't belong to Myles Garrett, Micah Parsons or T.J. Watt. It belongs to Seahawks edge rusher Boye Mafe, a 2022 second-round pick out of Minnesota. His six-game streak is tied for the longest sack streak in team history, but it will be ending this week. Sam Howell is the most sacked QB in the NFL this year, but he's now become more accustomed to passing while being pressured as he leads the NFL in passing yards when pressured (262) in the last two weeks. The bold prediction here is Howell gets the ball off quickly enough while under pressure to avoid being sacked by Mafe."

Garrett has five bold predictions for Week 10, and you can check out all of them by clicking here. 

It's been a busy 24 hours in the NFL, and since it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything that happened, I went ahead and put together a roundup for you. 

• Pete Carroll wants to see all plays subject to review. The Seahawks coach, who used to be against instant replay, now wants the NFL to have the ability to review ANY play that needs to be reviewed. Carroll had some interesting comments about replay this week, and you can check them out here. 
• Tee Higgins ruled out in Week 10. The Bengals receiver (hamstring) will miss Sunday's game against the Texans, Zac Taylor confirmed Friday. Bengals are banged up going into Week 10 with Ja'Marr Chase also dealing with an injury. They play on Thursday in Week 11, so anyone who misses Sunday's game could also end up missing that game, which is in Baltimore. 
  
• Jason Pierre-Paul wants to play this year. The two-time Super Bowl winner wants to play this year and he's hoping to sign with a contender. JPP told CBS Sports HQ Senior NFL Insider Josina Anderson that he still has some gas left in the tank, "I feel like I can still make a contender shift now. There are plenty of teams that still need a pass rush." JPP won a Super Bowl with the Giants in 2011 and then with the Buccaneers in 2020, and now, he's looking to earn a third ring. 
• Former Super Bowl winner dies at 41. Matt Ulrich, who won a Super Bowl with the Colts sin 2006, passed away this week. Colts owner Jim Irsay announced the news on social media. Ulrich's NFL career only lasted two seasons, which both came with the Colts. He played in 10 games over two years and was part of the Indy team that beat the Bears 29-17 in Super Bowl XLI.