Woohoo! I did so bad last year I have nowhere to go but up.
Week 1 Strike 1
Damn 49ers
Ah. I forgot about tie breakers, or the need for them, completely. It didn’t help that the week wasn’t over yet at the time.
Ah, yes. There comes a time when a fan pays enough attention to his own team that he knows when not to pick them. I expected them to win, but there were enough questions about their readiness for the start of the season in a tough stadium that I couldn’t pick the 49ers to win when a strike was on the line.
Hey refs, thanks for the Megatron call – saved me from my first strike!
Week 2 Strike 2
Thanks Dallas
Stuffy, because you have PMs turned off, I’m reminding you here that you haven’t made picks yet. Everyone else I sent a PM to.
We had some close calls this week. New Orleans and Atlanta barely squeaked by and they made up 12 of our survival picks. Credit to Garygnu for the ballsiest pick of the week: St. Louis.
I’m top of the Pick’Em. :eek:
This is the first tricky week of survivor. Very strange when my best bet is picking against the only undefeated team in the league…
Yeah, I was right, this week was pretty nasty.
We had 2 people get a striket with Cincinatti, 6 people with San Diego, 3 with New Orleans, and 1 with Dallas.
That leaves 8 of us eliminated from the competition (keep an eye out for later in the season - we’ll restart if a winner is determined) and 11 with one strike, leaving only 5 people (Me, Varlos, Gray Ghost, Borschevsky, and Petey) perfect through 5 weeks.
Conservation of Luck seems to be holding true for me, considering how absolutely putrid my team is in the Big League. Can’t even blame Favre for most of it, although John Fox can get fired any day now, really. How the Panthers have turned Williams and Stewart into total garbage, I have no idea. I think the auto draft team is beating me in Big League at this point.
Rest assured, I will come back to reality in the Pick 'Em/Spread/Survival Leagues any day now. But right now it’s nice to have an area of football picking where I’m not totally incompetent. Crazy game in New Orleans yesterday.
We only lost two in survival this week, with Court Jesters having Chicago and Cyberhawk with Oakland.
People are going to have to make some tough calls next week. The only game that’ll be pretty easy to pick is Baltimore vs Buffalo, but a lot of people have already used Baltimore. I guess you could make a case for Dallas vs the Giants and the Browns vs NO for being strong picks but I suspect those games will be closer than the records indicate. Lots of very close games.
So far this fantasy season — in the big league and the yardage pool, at least — minor bragging on my part has been the apparent catalyst for an unexpected swoon. But, what the hell…
If Tennessee wins tonight (and covers), I’ll have at least a share of the lead in both the spread and confidence pick 'em leagues (w/ no strikes in the suicide pool). Now, I’m an (objectively) above average handicapper, but of course there’s a ton of variance in the spread pick 'em, and no one should ever EXPECT to win such a league so long as it has at least 3 participants. OTOH, I pretty much do expect to win the confidence league every year (done it twice before, plus another top 2 or 3 placing at some point, I think). I might have trouble pulling away from Isotopes this year, though. Our picks are frequently quite similar; in Week 5 we (correctly) picked the same two underdogs to win outright, and the average difference in confidence points assigned per game over the past two weeks is just 3.64. Compare that with me and NurseCarmen, in 3rd place right now, who assigns a lot more confidence points to underdogs than I do, and has an average difference of 5.21 points assigned per game. (Yes, this is what I’ve been doing instead of unpacking.)
So, long story short, I rock at this, and would like to see a repeat of (IIRC) two years ago, when I won the confidence league and came in second in spread pick 'em, only losing that in the final week after leading big for most of the season … except, you know, I don’t want to lose in the last week…
[Cue nosedive.]
As a die-hard Giants fan, let me make one thing perfectly clear: anyone who picks either of these teams in a suicide pool this week needs to have their head examined.
You’re inconsistent and at the extremes 2009 results. You were an improbable 67-171 on spread (if we assume spread picks to be 50/50, what are the odds on that?) and 105-135 on the pick 'em aspect of confidence. (18th out of 19 and 21st out of 24 respectively).
From your fantasy profile
2009: 21/24 confidence, 18/19 spread
2008: 1/18 confidence, 2/19 spread
2007: 1/22 confidence, 5/17 spread
2006: 18/21 confidence
2005: 10/13 and 20/34 (type ambiguous)
2004: 1/12 (type ambiguous)
That’s some crazy variance there. I notice that both of us have RGP and/or 2+2 leagues in our history. That has to be some sort of nerd convergence event.
Edit: Looking at my 2009 results, I had a remarkably dominant year. Dunno what’s wrong with me this year.
Today might be a survival wrecking ball.
It might be a good week to avoid the obvious. Go Seahawks!
Denver got Fear the Turtle and Asterion. New Orleans (HA!) got Selhurst Blues, ToeJam, and Isotopes. That eliminates 4 people, gives 1 guy his first strike, and leaves 4 of us perfect.
I will now personally wish the Cleveland Browns to lose every remaining game this season, because their two wins and my two Survival losses came against them.
Doing better in the pick’em though.