Staff Confidence Pool (No Spread): Week 6

Photo: Andrew Nelles, USA Today Sports

We are proud to bring you the return of the Footballguys.com Staff Confidence Pool Challenge. 20 Staff members will pick the winner of each NFL game, and rank each choice from most confident (16 points) to least (1 point). As a tie-breaker, the person who is closest to the total points scored on the last Monday Night game will be the winner. Winners will be announced from week to week and the best overall record will be crowned Confidence pool Champion. Picks and ranks are due on Wednesday, so any late-breaking news may not be reflected in the choices. Also please note that no point spread is taken into account with these picks – it is a straight up pick of which NFL team will win this week. See the other confidence pools for picks against the spread (ATS) or Survivor / Eliminator style.

RESULTS FROM LAST WEEK

With heavy points on the Seattle game from most of the competitors, the Monday Night Football game didn't have much of an impact on the outcome. So Andrew Garda came home with this week's top honors after Sunday night. Andrew only missed two games this week, giving him 13 correct points and his highest point total for the season. He narrowly beat out Miglio who also had 13 correct picks, but lost 2 more points on Tennessee than Garda did on Chicago. Buzzard missed the same two games as Miglio, but he lost more on Detroit and finished 4th. 

Detroit was picked by everyone to win, so the Buffalo upset took down a lot of confidence points. The Bengals were also a heavy favorite, but not with a lot of confidence points. Their loss to the Patriots this week didn't hurt nearly as much as the Detroit game did. Tremblay was hurt the worst by the Bengals and Lions, and he finished at the bottom of this week's contest because of it. Wood had enough tough week with early losses of Tennessee and Chicago hurting him the most. 

OVERALL RANKINGS

Larkin had a good week, scroing 100 points, but he slipped into second as Hindery had 103. Haseley held on to third, but he lost ground on the leaders. He is not 21 points out of the top spot compared to 11 from last week. With Haseley, Bitonti and Cummings all finishing with less than 100 points, the next six players closed the gap on third place with a solid week. 

Garda's win gave him a boost and he climbed several spots toward the middle of the pack. Wimer also turned in a strong week, and Tremblay fell even farther into the basement. 

THIS WEEK'S PICKS

Here are the picks for this week.

HEAVY FAVORITES

This week we have another example of many players taking the same teams and ranking them with a lot of confidence points. Denver drew the most points this week with 277, but the Bengals, Chargers and Seahawks were also picked by everyone in the field. Green Bay drew 200 confidence points, and the Colts, Ravens, Titans, Cardinals and 49ers were also heavily favoried to win their respective matches. 

DUAL SUPPORT

Pittsburgh received more than double the confidence points that their opponent Cleveland did, but their combined total was still just 74 total points. Atlanta and Philadelphia are both heavily favored when it comes to expecting them to win, but neither of those games received more than 100 total confidence points. Although the field predicts that these three teams will win, there isn't a lot of confidence in thier selection. 

ODDS AND ENDS

There are a lot of confidence points placed on road teams this week which is a bit unusual given that home teams win more often than not. Indianapolis, Green Bay, New England, Baltimore, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco are all favored to win by a majority of the board despite being on the road. An upset or two could really have a big impact on the field. 

Good luck this weekend!

Follow @FBGWILL