15th Annual Superbowl Early Picks thread

The Game Room
1

Kinda late, but no one else started the Superbowl Pick thread. Here are the previous winners.

Year 1: Trillionaire
Year 2: Uncommon Sense
Year 3: Airman Doors, USAF
Year 4: Grits and Hard Toast
Year 5: Hal Briston
Year 6: dalej42
Year 7: Justin_Bailey
Year 8: Hamlet
Year 9: Hal Briston
Year 10: enalzi
Year 11: Jahiegel
Year 12: borschevsky
Year 13: Oakminster
Year 14: borschevsky

It’s simple to play – just post your pick for the two Super Bowl teams, and the final score. Deadline for submissions will be 4:00 pm Eastern on Saturday, January 6th (just before kickoff of the first playoff game).

Format your choices as you like, and I will figure it out. Simple is better.

As always, just in case you don’t follow football but still wanna play along, just pick an AFC team, an NFC team, and a couple of numbers that sound vaguely football-scorish.

AFC Teams:
Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, Tennessee Titans, Buffalo Bills

NFC Teams:
New Orleans Saints, LA Rams, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons

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I will go out on a limb and pick Vikings 21, Jaguars 17

2

Saints 30, Patriots 27

3

Vikings 24, Steelers 17

4

Pats 27, Rams 17

5

Steelers 28, Falcons 24

6

Patriots 24 Vikings 17

7

And just to confirm, same tiebreaker rules as last year? Minimum sum of absolute differences of predicted vs actual final scores?

8

Patriots 34, Vikings 24

9

I think everyone is good with it. The only question from last year was if we wanted to switch 2 and 3:

  1. Picked both teams, got winner correct
    **2. Picked both teams, got winner wrong
  2. Picked winner correctly**
  3. Picked loser correctly
  4. Closest to actual score (number of points the prediction was off off from winning team score plus the number of points off from the losing team score)

It ended up being a moot point (as multiple teams picked the Pats over Falcons), but I don’t think any resolution was made.

10

Pats 48 Vikings 27

11

Vikings 28 - Steelers 24

#idonthaveaclue

12

Patriots 45, Panthers 17

13

If it was a roulette wheel, there would be a 1:36 chance of picking both teams vs a 1:12 chance of picking the winner. Obviously it is not like a roulette wheel, but sometimes it seems pretty close. I think picking both teams does count for a little more than just picking the winner. Perhaps if the winner is a lower seed, that might count for something.

14

FWIW, I agree with the bolded. If we’re being asked to pick both teams that make the big game then it should count more than just picking the winner.

But whatever the group decides is fine.

15

I concur - picking both SB teams should always beat picking the winner and a no-show.

16

Patriots 38, Vikings 31

17

Vikings 23; Patriots 16
By typing out “Patriots” in full I’ve jinxed them; I don’t know how I know this…

18

Rams 31; Jaguars 17

19

Patriots 31, Saints 26

Real Prediction: It’ll be called the “AARP Bowl” since the combined age of the 2 starting quarterbacks will be 79 (Drew Brees turns 39 on 1/15).

20

I know the Chiefs will disappoint me during the playoffs like they always do, but I’ll be optimistic that it’s not until the very end.

Vikings 17, Chiefs 16