Eliminator Pool: Week 18

Photo: Chuck Cook, 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 2012 articles.  Please see the Week 18 2013 Page at Footballguys.com for the 2013 Week 18 (Wild Card Weekend) 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).

FINAL PICKS SUMMARY

Here are the final picks and standings for 2013: 

DISCUSSION

Week 17 was only modestly eventful, as all but Miami won their games and everyone in the pool advanced with one win.  That meant the standings barely budged, and the Top 3 all tied for the league lead.  Three staff members sit atop the table at 14-3 (Matt Bitonti, James Brimacombe, and Steve Holloway) – creating a three-way share of the 2013 Staff Eliminator Pool title.  Congrats go out to all of them.  The rest of the staff fared well overall, with both Andy Hicks and Aaron Rudnicki finishing one step behind at 13-4.  It should be noted that both Matt Bitonti and Andy Hicks’ costly error of picking Atlanta twice had an impact, but Bitonti shared the title at least and Hicks finished atop the Confidence Pool and also the Against the Spread Pool, so he cannot feel bad at all – but the elusive Triple Crown will have to wait for at least one more year.  

It was a fun year, and we look forward to doing this once again in 2014.  Thanks for reading and following along!