I'm in!

Holy crap. For Week 1, I selected a straight ticket -- I picked every team in the left column. Weird.

Wow, nearly 20 ... keep'em coming ... pussies. :)

That's because the left column is the favourites and the right is the underdogs!

Yea, no reason for underdog picks in the first week, nobody really knows what's up.

Last year I read an article (it might have been Gregg Easterbrook's "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" -- I can't remember) in which it was stated that over the course of the entire season, the following simple system has beaten the picks of virtually every pundit out there. For every game:

1) Pick the team with the better record.

2) In case of a tie, pick the home team.

Sounds oversimplified, and it is, but the beauty of it is it plays the odds, doesn't overthink the nuances, and doesn't jump on bandwagons.

Obviously, this isn't an optimal strategy for week 1, when you have no prior information, but its success improves dramatically as the season progresses.

If I remember correctly, no pundit in the past few years has exceeded a 70% correct pick rate, and I don't think many get above 60%. Some of the most famous score an abysmal 25% or less! The strategy above is rarely beat by more than one nationally known pundit.

So I went 13-3 for the week. Not bad. Two of my mistakes almost everyone else made too, so I don't feel terrible about them. Who would have guessed Denver over Cinci, much less San Fran over Arizona?

My roommate is in a $50 pool every week with his family and he got it this week with his Denver over Cincinatti pick. I was actually close to picking San Francisco over Arizona just because I thought Mike Singletary is really changing the culture over there. I didn't do it though :/

I went Cinci over Denver. So did the Ninja and beingBOILEDhurts (Forgot who you are).

The one pick that everyone got wrong was, like you said, 49ers over Arizona. Shouldn't have taken that gamble on Miami, though. They got their ass handed to them by the Falcons.

Don't know if you found it, but you can see everyone's previous picks here.

http://football.fantasys.../22111/grouppicks?week=1

DOMINATION!!

A make or break week coming up. I'm predicting a lot of upsets, I hope it pays off (though it likely won't).

10 out of 16 incorrect. Ouch.

So, Green Bay or Minnesota, people?

My algorithm forces me to pick Minnesota, sadly. Better record AND at home.

My current record in the Pick'em league is 33-15 (.688), 4 points behind the league leader Rockmolder and a mere 1 point ahead of MassPackerFan's Random Guesses.

I'd like to know what THAT says about the state of the NFL these days. ;)

I was right up there in at the top of the board until last week, which went as bad as possible. 6-10. What the fuck?

I'm predicting Green Bay this week.

Woot woot

Congrats MassPackersFan. Lost by 3 points after missing an entire week (week 10) :(