Eliminator Pool: Week 12

Photo: Rich Barnes, USA Today Sports

Over the past few years, we have given the subscribers of Footballguys.com some help in playing office pools, one of the most popular methods to follow the NFL aside from fantasy football leagues.  For the past few seasons, the staff members have done the Staff Confidence Pool Challenge, where numerous staffers try and pick the winners each week with a confidence ranking, and Jeff Pasquino’s “For The Win” column where Jeff attempts to pick each and every NFL game against the Las Vegas spread.  Both of these have been very popular features, so this year Footballguys is adding a combination of the two called the “Against the Spread” Challenge and also the Eliminator Challenge, where staffers have to pick a team to win each week.  Just one?  That sounds easy, but here is the catch – you can only pick the team you choose in a given week once all season long.  Many contests and pools out there get pretty big, so an Eliminator (or Survivor) Pool can go 16 or 17 weeks. 

Note that the links above are for 2013 articles.  Please see the Week 12 2014 Page at Footballguys.com for the 2014 Week 12 updates.

Jeff Pasquino has provided some insight into this kind of contest with two pre-season articles, first one that describes this kind of contest along with some advice on how to pick a team each week:

Survivor Pool Strategy

The second article is rather interesting, which describes Jeff’s pre-season plan to get all the way through 17 weeks.  Will it work?  We are about to find out.

I Will Survive

This pool will run all season long, but to keep participation up, the pool will crown the staffer with the best W-L record for the season (which means that everyone in the pool will continue to make picks every week). 

THIS WEEK'S PICK SUMMARY

Here are the picks for this week, along with the results and standings so far:

DISCUSSION

This year we have 22 staffers are in the pool, and if this was really a "one and done" tournament, it would all be over now after the calamitous Week 11 results.  Less than half (8 of 22) of the staff had a correct pick in Week 11 in one of the worst weeks across the board in recent memory.  That gives everyone in the pool at least one loss and all but three staff have two or more.  So there's no question that upsets rock the boat here, and you really need to just take the best team each week and hope for a quick ending in smaller leagues (about 50 teams or less).  In large tournaments or those with buybacks (or even like here, where best record wins), you do need to plan.

So how does Week 12 look?  Well, we have quite the spread of picks here, as nine different teams were chosen at least once.  The most popular were Indianapolis hosting Jacksonville (nine picks) and San Francisco at home against Washington (four selections).  Many who did not go with either the Colts or 49ers had used them already, so that explains the variety of picks.  Two staffers chose Chicago and Green Bay, while unique picks came in for Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Philadelphia and St. Louis. It should make for a lively week.

COMMENTARY

Each week, contestants are invited to submit any comments that they might have about their picks. If they submit them early enough, we post them with the article. If not, the comments will be within the section below.

Jeff Pasquino:  I tripped up in Week 11, and I saw it coming.  How did the Saints lose at home?  Well, I did see it as a rough week - and even the winning teams were not by a wide margin (unless you count the unexpected blowouts).

This week comes down to the big favorites if you have them, and the Colts should be the top pick.  I can't use them as I picked them already, so I took the next biggest favorite, but the Eagles are used up too.  That leaves San Francisco at home against a train wreck in Washington.  I did not consider many teams after that choice, as that is an easy call for me.

Steve Buzzard: What a week last week! It brought me a championship and significantly cut the playing field in others. I had that Chargers game circled for weeks and was glad that things worked out there.  This is another week that I think could turn out favorable for me as I have a lot of the better values left and my opponents are mostly missing the big ones.

In this pool I am going with the Colts and they would be a very solid choice as a solid 14 point favorite against the Jaguars at home.  In the last 8 Colts losses they have allowed an average of 40 points and haven’t lost a game in which they allowed under 30 during that whole streak.  The Colts looked terrible against the Patriots but I don’t think the Jaguars can score that much nor will Andrew Luck let the offense score less.

However, there is one reason why I might go against the Colts and that is if I had both the Eagles and Colts left. This would allow me to use the Eagles this week against the Titans and the Colts next week against Redskins which would be the best two game value on the board.

If you have used both of these teams I would go with the 49ers against the Redskins.  It doesn’t look like Robert Griffin III is all the way back yet and the Redskins are looking absolutely atrocious losing the last two weeks in a row to the Vikings and Buccaneers. 

From there I would take any of the other elite options you have left and hope you can move on to the round.  I would take each of these teams over the Chiefs who are being picked a lot more often at 12%. My overall preferred preference would be the Eagles, Colts, 49ers, Packers, Seahawks, Broncos, Patriots, and Chiefs.

Good luck this weekend!

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.

Follow @JeffPasquino