SDMB NFL Pick 'em and Survival Leagues 2023

The Game Room
1

Sorry, I’m late getting the ball rolling on this. Most of the OP will be a repeat from last year’s thread. I think this is actually our 19th year doing these.

Those of you who played last year should have an invite in your e-mail or you can sign up through the information in the thread. Survival leagues don’t have a re-invite option so you’ll have to sign up for that separately.

To everyone else:
Everyone is invited to play - it’s not like fantasy football where you have head to head matchups every week, everyone plays against the whole league, so if you end up dropping out mid-season it’s not a big deal. So try anything you want.

Pick 'em:

In NFL Pick 'em leagues, each player predicts the outcome of every NFL game. There are three different types, and we run all three. You can join any or all of them.

Straight up: You simply pick the winner of each game, and get a point if correct.

Spread: A spread is determined for a game (like with sports betting), where one team has a certain amount of points given to them, and you have to pick the game with that adjustment taken into account.

Confidence: The most complex one, but in my view also the most fun. There are no spreads, so you pick the winner straight up. But you get a confidence value you can assign to every game, 1 through the number of games being played that weekend, and can only use each number once. So if there are 16 games that weekend, you’ll assign the confidence number 16 to the game where the outcome seems most clear to you, 15 for the next one, all the way down to 1 for the one you’re least sure of. If you pick correctly, the confidence value of your pick is added to your weekly score. If you only play one league, I suggest the confidence league.

Survival:
Each player picks one team that has to win each week. If your picked team fails to win, you get a strike. You can only use each team once. Three strikes and you’re out.

These leagues can hold up to 50 players each, so we’re not really at risk for filling up, and you’re competing against the whole league, not one other team per week like fantasy football, so it’s not a big deal if you end up dropping out. I’d like for everyone to play all the way through the season, but it won’t hurt anyone if you don’t, so feel free to sign up if you’re only a little interested. The more the merrier.

Sign up page for pick 'em
Sign up page for survival

The password for all leagues is cecil. Group numbers are:

Pick 'em: 33041
Spread pick 'em: 33043
Confidence pick 'em: 33044

Survival: 18559

2

Thanks for doing this again, @SenorBeef. I did receive an email for the Survivor league (as well as the Spread pick 'em league), and I signed up for both.

Thanks again!

3

Reminder to get your Thursday picks in. You don’t have to do them all by Thursday, just the game itself and the tiebreakers at the bottom.

4

Do we ever use those tiebreakers?

5

Every week there’s an official winner of each league for that week - their score is bolded or a different color or something in the weekly score shit. If 2 players have the same number of correct picks/score, it goes to the tiebreakers. But… in retrospect… I doubt anyone cares that much about that and I should probably have turned it off to save the extra 15 seconds of work everyone puts in every week. I do look at it sometimes and it Unfortunately I don’t think the rule can be changed after league creation.

In case you guys didn’t notice, there is an “import” function on the top right in case you’re playing in multiple leagues. You can make your tiebreaker picks once and then import them into the other leagues to save time.

6

Actually I just looked and you can indeed still change the rules I guess before the season starts. Should I turn off the tie-breaker section or do people enjoy that?

7

I vote for turning off the tiebreakers.

8

Thanks for setting us up again @SenorBeef!

I’m pretty indifferent to the tie-breakers. I usually forget about it until after the Thursday game.

9

I went ahead and disabled the tiebreakers. If we did something with the weekly wins (like if I kept a running count in the thread) they’d be useful, but I know I’m too lazy to do that every week. Get your Thursday picks in.

10

I seem to be listed twice in the survival league - not sure how that happened. I’m only able to access one of the entries, so I made my pick there. If there’s a way to delete the second instance, go ahead.

11

I can kick people out, but since yours are identically named, and the remove member screen is just a list of names, there’s no way for me to know if I’m removing the correct one, so we’ll just leave it and it’ll disqualify itself by week 3.

23 people in the survival league this year and a healthy number in the pick 'em leagues - I don’t have a count on previous seasons but it feels like growth to me. I’m a little surprised.

3 strikes in the survival league although a lot of people came close with the commanders/cards game.

12

Well I didn’t ask anyone’s permission, but I invited two people and they both joined. :smiley:

13

Thank you for disabling the tie-breakers.

14

I’m not going to put out reminders every week but just for the first few weeks while we get in the habit don’t forget to pick your Thursday games. Edit: didn’t mean to reply to Bashorian specifically on this post, just a general post.

17

Somewhat rough week in survival. The most popular yahoo pick was Jacksonville over Houston and that lost. About a quarter of yahoo users, but only 5 of us. Baltimore and Dallas lost too, in total giving us 7 strikes in total this week. So far half of the 22 players have made it through week 3 without a strike.

18

I hate picking the Thursday game, but I was sure of this one for survival

19

Doing terrible this week, but my Survival was one of only two correct picks so far.

20

Very close call for a bunch of us that picked Buffalo this week but ultimately almost no strikes in survival. Just one who picked Philadelphia.

Going into week 7 we have 7 players left with no strikes

21

Tough week in survival where none of the games are clearly look like blowout safe picks. Biggest spread is +7.5. Over 50% of yahoo picked Seattle, which gives people a big opportunity if they end up losing and you won with another pick. But it’s slim pickings.

22

I view that game as a toss-up. Why does anyone have confidence that Seattle will roll over Arizona?