Okay, it is now past 10am on the eastern seaboard. I’ve received all but thirteen picks this week. At the top of the linesmaker odds list are the Titans/Jets and Jaguars/Texans games.
Lots of different teams being picked this week, although it’s heavily skewed towards a couple.
The script will flip the picks at 11:30.
This week’s recap is a little early, only because there was a lot of interesting action yesterday. Tonight’s game can’t possibly be as exciting as the early games were on Sunday, could it?
For every season for the past seven years, there was always one week where big upsets changed the landscape of the pool, and this year is no exception.
In 2002, week two losses by the Chargers, Chiefs and Titans knocked out 48%.
In 2003, a week one upset of the Dolphins eliminated 56%!
In 2004, a week two Packers loss knocked out 38%.
In 2005, week one losses by the Rams, Panthers, Broncos and Vikings kicked out 52%.
In 2006, week seven losses by the Seahawks and Jaguars eliminated 59%.
In 2007, a week four loss by the Chargers swiftly knocked out 47%.
In 2008, week four losses by the Broncos and Cowboys knocked out 47%.
And this week, the Packers‘ overrated 3-4 run-stopping defense couldn’t stop the Bengals‘ unimpressive running game, and the Texans put up 420 yards of offense in Nashville. Combined, that’s 125 players out.
Then in the field goal fest in Oakland, the Chiefs couldn’t kick enough of them to beat the Raiders. Neither could the Steelers, when they would have counted the most. On the other hand, the Chargers kicked too many field goals instead of scoring touchdowns in their loss. This year’s Brady still doesn’t look like pre-injury Brady in the Patriots’ loss at the Meadowlands. Kurt Warner doesn’t look his age as he completes an NFL-record 92.3% of his passes to knock off the Jaguars.
If you’re keeping count, those five losses eliminated 13 more players, bringing Sunday’s death count to 138, or 39%.
I had a funny feeling about the Packers going into the week. Even Sporting News picked them as their “suicide/survivor pool team of the week”. Yeah, that worked out well.
Basically, if you’re not Joe Co. (whose proud accomplishment of losing two weeks in a row on not one, but two, entries eliminates those players from buying back again), you are eligible to buy back for $15 per entry. Please follow the original payment instructions on sending in the buyback fees. It must be received by Sunday at 10am ET.
All picks are also due at Sunday at 10am ET. Please don’t wait until the last minute, as a couple of you did. Your pick could have just as easily been late and rejected. You don’t have to wait until Sunday to send in your picks; I start accepting picks as soon as the Sunday games are over.
Have a good week!
Okay, all of week two’s picks have been entered. I received everyone’s except for one player, although a couple of you cut it way close–yours were received at exactly 10:00 am.
The system will auto-flip them at 11:30. I will be out the rest of the day, so hopefully everything works correctly. 
I will be unavailable to enter picks on Sunday, October 11th, so I’m moving up the pick deadline for week five to Saturday night at 9:00 pm ET.
I apologize if this inconveniences anyone, but otherwise, the system is going to auto-assign picks to anyone who doesn’t send in their picks before the last time I check my email on Saturday. Having to clean up that mess would be too time-consuming. Sorry.
Wow, what a crazy Monday night.
In case you missed it, both Monday night games had a similar storyline. The favored team (the Patriots and the Chargers) trailed for most of the game into the fourth quarter. They then need to score (and they do) with less than two minutes left to take the lead.
Good thing the Chargers game started after my bedtime. I would have gotten no sleep last night.
Overall, it was a good week one for most of the players in the pool. We officially have 367 players in this year’s pool, more than doubling last year’s player count. The 21 players that lost in the first week comes out to under 6%, which is some kind of record. Usually week one is pretty tumultuous, as you can see if you take a look at previous seasons.
I don’t really have much to say about the other Sunday games; I only watched the Eagles beat up the Panthers. It was an otherwise nice day in PA after a few days of constant rain, so I got some other stuff done. If anyone has anything to add about Sunday’s games, feel free to post a comment.
Week two’s deadline is once again Sunday morning at 10am Eastern time.
If you are able, please submit your picks as early as possible. With over 300 players, it takes a while for me to update everyone’s picks, and I’d like not to do 200 of them at 9:59am. Don’t forget to follow the instructions on how to submit your picks.
Also, please submit your picks from your own email address, the one you specified when you signed up. It just makes life easier. The chance of mistakes happening increases when you submit someone else’s picks, as already happened in week one.
The chance of your picks not even making it to me increases even more if you send it from a non-registered email address. I have all of the email addresses in the pool set up to bypass the spam filter. If you send your picks from an unknown email address, the spam filter might pick it up and discard it.
If you are one of the 21 players that lost in week one, you have the option of buying back that entry for $15/each. To buy back, please following the original payment instructions to send $15. It must be received by the same 10am ET Sunday deadline, so checks must be in Saturday’s mail delivery. Let me know if you need more instructions.
Noone picked Thursday night, so tomorrow (Sunday) is going to be the true start of the season for those of you in the pool.
I’ve processed the mail from today, so all checks that can be received have been received. If you are still marked as unpaid (your name is italics) and you were paying by check, then your check is going to arrive too late. Sorry. You will have to pay via Paypal by the deadline or else your name will be removed from the pool on Sunday.
For everyone else, all picks must be submitted by Sunday at 10am ET. Anyone who hasn’t paid their entry fees yet must pay via Paypal by the same deadline. Refer to the previous post on how to submit your picks.
When sending by Paypal, make sure you have a back-up funding source like a credit or debit card when you send the payment. This will cause Paypal to send your transaction as an Instant transfer, which means that the funds show up in my account immediately. If you do not have a back-up funding source, Paypal will send it as an eCheck instead, which means that Paypal won’t clear the transaction (and I don’t receive the funds) until the funds clear your banking institution, which can take 5-7 business days.
I’ve made a few enhancements to the site over the last few days:
So for you players that were notorious last year for forgetting to make your picks, note that last year I assigned the missing picks quasi-manually. I looked for heavier favored teams and fed those lines to the script that then made the assignments.
This year, the script will go from the top down, and for each player it will use the first available team it finds (available team = favored team that the player hasn’t used yet). For week one, that means players will be assigned the Falcons, since that is the first game listed on linesmaker.com.
Good luck!