NFL Survivor Pool

The Raiders did it again!  Another upset and through fifteen weeks, we are down to 26 players. The silver and black are now responsible for 31% of all losses in the pool (139 of 449). Anyone else want to pick against them?

This week, if you want to pick in the Friday night game, I must have your pick by Friday evening at 5pm ET. All other picks are due Sunday at 10am ET.  The linesmaker feed is still all sorts of messed up, so I might have to do the odds manually again.

Happy holidays!

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Ugh, linesmaker is down this morning so the auto-picker didn’t work, so I’m using sportsbetting.com manually instead. Only one player didn’t get in a valid pick this week, so he got the Titans (top of that odds sheet).

Open thread below.

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And for the third time in the last four weeks, the Steelers choked against supposedly inferior opponents, upping to total of 39 players eliminated.

So for those clamoring about getting rid of buybacks next year, I’ve pretty much made up my mind. All of the other rules I think will stay the same.  Look at this way: Let’s assume the season is only fourteen weeks long. So we now have 48 players left, splitting a pot of $5,240. That’s roughly $109 per player.

But 16 of those remaining players used their buyback to stay in the pool. Let’s assume we didn’t have buybacks this year, so we’d have 32 players left with a payout of $113 per player. So if I get rid of buybacks, not only does it spare me the headache of having to keep track of buyback payments in addition to hundreds of picks every week, the payout of those that survive (remember, it IS a survivor pool) is actually higher!

Basically if you have buybacks, you just end up with more players splitting a bigger pot. It all evens out in the end. And like I just said, it’s a Survivor Pool. The only reason I had buybacks was to keep it running longer into the season when I first started out with much fewer players. Wouldn’t have made it much past the halfway mark of the season the first couple of years, but there’s no reason now that we’re almost guaranteed to have multiple winners after seventeen weeks.

So this week, we have both a Thursday and a Saturday night game. If you want to pick in the Thursday night game, I must have your pick by Thursday afternoon at 5pm ET. If you want to pick in the Saturday night game, I must have your pick by Saturday afternoon at 5pm ET. Anyone who picks those games will have their pick revealed as soon as the system records the final score. All other picks are due Sunday at 10am ET.

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For the first time this season, and it only took 14 weeks, but everyone actually got in their picks this week. No auto-picks, reveal at 11.

Open thread below.

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Early recap this week since noone picked the Sunday or Monday night games.

Another stumble by the Steelers, the second in three weeks, knocked out another 14 players. So after thirteen weeks, we have gone from 367 to 54 players.  If we hadn’t had buybacks this year (they are gone next year), that number would be 34.

So let’s update who is picking who so far this season.

A few weeks ago, NFC teams held the advantage in times picked, and that continues to be true. Out of 2,776 picks so far this season, NFC teams have been picked 1,565 times; AFC 1,211.

Led by the Eagles, the NFC East is still the most popular division to go to, at 22% of all picks. The NFC North is second at 18%, and the AFC North is next at 17%.  The Ravens are the most popular pick so far, edging out the Eagles by seven. The Vikings and Packers come in third and fourth, respectively.

However, breaking that down by wins, the Ravens is still on top, winning 211 of the 217 times they were picked.  Coming in second, the Vikings are perfect so far, going 192 for 192. They needed overtime to pull it out today, but the still-undefeated Saints are third with 160.

Which teams turned out to be bad picks?  Well, the Packers top this list, having lost 91 of 180 picks. Primarily due to their upset loss to the Raiders, the Eagles come in second, 73 of 210.

Speaking of the Raiders, their upsets against picked teams are responsible for eliminating 118 players, which is almost a third of the pool.  First they beat the three-point favorite Chiefs in week two. Then it was the 14-point favorite Eagles in week six. Then it was the nine-point favorite Bengals two weeks ago. And finally the 15-point favorite Steelers this afternoon.

The Bengals come in second, having caused 82 eliminations.  74 of those came in their week two upset of the eight-point favorite Packers, so a number of those players did buy back (13 of those players are still in the pool now).

There are still four teams that noone has picked so far: the Browns, Raiders, Rams, and Buccaneers.

All picks are due at Sunday at 10am ET. If you want to pick the Thursday night game, those picks must be in by Thursday at 5pm ET.

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