Last minute comebacks, upsets, meltdowns and questionable coaching decisions dotted the Sunday and Monday NFL landscapes. It’s great to have football back again.
Given the weirdness that took place last weekend, particularly at the end of some of the early games, I’d say we came out of the weekend relatively intact. Nobody embarrassed themselves too badly and Tony, who thrives on picking the unpredictable, nailed the week with a 12-4 mark. He’s in control of the leader board after one week. Dr. Phil from the audience also made picks last week – if my count is right, he hit an 11-5 mark — maybe he should join the staff.
OK, enough of the “assessing our depth” and “it’s not about winning” quotes that come with pre-season. It’s time for real football.
Rosters are nearly set. The pretenders are off into obscurity, looking for real jobs. And kickoff is just three days away.
We’ve been doing these picks for a few years now. Last year we actually did pretty well. There were four of us. Tony and I tied at 166-89-1 records for the season. Anthony Maggio went 157-98-1. Rich picked 154 correctly against 101 misses and the lone tie – we all matched up fairly well with a collection of experts whose picks are observed via NFLPickWatch.com. In 2011 I beat Tony with a 172-84 mark compared to his 169-87. And in 2012, I used a 27-5 run through the last two weeks of the regular season to go 166-89-1 again, compared to his 161-94-1.
This year Anthony, Tony and I are joined by John Vomhof Jr., who chipped in on a few of our fantasy football buy/sell posts. He’ll be ramping up as the season moves forward. Without further ado, here are our long-sought picks for week one: (more…)
As a matter of course, I like to provide a year-end wrap-up of our picks and bets. It’s a good reference for the future and it provides a level of accountability.
So … after a pretty decent regular season of straight up picks, things were less stellar in the playoffs. I guess that makes sense, as most of the teams that make the postseason are pretty good (for now – but just wait until the playoff field inevitably expands).
As for the Super Bowl, coin flip my backside. A game that on paper looked like one of the more intriguing match-ups in quite awhile turned out to be a snoozer.
The Seattle Seahawks made all of us at Zoneblitz look like fools by getting a quick lead on the Broncos and then teeing off on Peyton Manning, making the future Hall of Famer look downright ordinary in the first blowout Super Bowl in awhile. I was not at all surprised Seattle won. I was stunned at the ease with which the Seahawks dispatched Denver.
Each of us picked the Broncos in a close game. Each of us was wrong. That gave Tony the postseason win for correctly predicting seven of the 11 outcomes straight up. Anthony Maggio and I both hit six.
Throughout the entire regular season and into the playoffs I was abysmal against the spread this season. I’m going to have to do some reading during the offseason in order to improve on that in 2014. What an embarrassment. After a 27-38-3 debacle during the regular season, I nailed the line just 3 of 11 times during the playoffs, including botching the Super Bowl — switching to Denver after entering the season having picked Seattle to take home the Lombardi Trophy. Disappointing choice.
I saved face a bit going 6-5 in over/under picks during the postseason, but I’d still be getting killed in Vegas if this were anything more than hypothetical.
And so, with that, we’re heading into the post-season. We’ll have some more thoughts on the Hall of Fame class in the days ahead. We’ll also start looking ahead at fantasy football in 2014 and at the draft. Stay tuned.
We’ve gone through 20 weeks of football in anticipation of this game – no I still don’t count the Pro Bowl. Denver’s offense versus Seattle’s defense … have I mentioned that I picked this game before the season?
It’s about all I’ve gotten right … well, except for the championship weekend picks. Here’s how we ended up last weekend.
Championship week
Playoff total
Tony
1-1
7-3
Andy
2-0
6-4
Anthony
1-1
6-4
And here’s what we think is going to happen on Sunday.
Well, the divisional round of playoffs wasn’t quite as spectacular in its drama and excitement as wild card weekend was, but there were still some quality football games. And the results set up two fantastic match-ups in the Championship games.
As far as last week’s hypothetical wagers go, San Diego’s late rally wasn’t enough to upset the Broncos, but it did give the Chargers a cover, which dropped me from 3-1 to 2-2 against the spread. I did go 3-1 in over/under bets, so not all was lost.
So, for the playoffs, I’m 3-5 against the spread and 4-4 in over/unders. Not going to hit early retirement that way: Still plenty of room for improvement. And it doesn’t bode well. I feel like I know who is going to win this weekend’s games, but I think the spreads are right on the nose and I expect two close, tough games (Odds current as of 3:45 p.m. Wednesday per VegasInsider.com).
There were a lot of interesting match-ups in the conference semifinals this past weekend and many different results would have created compelling conference championship games this weekend.
But at the end of the day, isn’t the final four probably the most interesting pair of games you could have hoped to watch?
Some may be tiring of the Peyton Manning/Tom Brady rivalry, I suppose. But not me. And this year’s is made more compelling by how many times New England has had to evolve throughout the season in dealing with the losses over time of Aaron Hernandez, Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski and, for a chunk of the season, Danny Amendola — and that’s just on offense.
And in the NFC, this is the game I’ve wanted to see all along. I pegged San Francisco and Seattle as the top two teams in the conference heading into the season and, though it didn’t play out exactly how I expected it would, in the end that was the result.
It’s great to have football back again.
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Where you at, Robert The Greatest?
Paul: thank you for mentioning Mike Tanier. Didn’t know about his work previously. Good access and insight.
thanks
Sharpe, Holmgren, Holt, D.Woodson, Jared Allen and Antonio Gates for me.
Thanks Bill - added you to our competition (along with entries from me,Brian,Marie,Jeff Justin,AndyP, Brad), for any others interesting in…