Photo: Denny Medley, USA Today Sports

We are proud to bring you the return of the Footballguys.com Staff Confidence Pool Challenge. 22 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.

WEEK 1 RESULTS

Dave Larkin was this year's first weekly winner. Despite missing both of the games on Monday night, Larkin as accumulated enough points on Thursday and Sunday to finish in 1st with a respectable 111 points. Like everyone else, Larkin missed on both Philadelphia and Seattle, but his other three mistakes were for just six combined points. In a confidence pool, it's as much about managing risk as it is picking the right winner. Despite only mising three contests this week, Justin Howe finished second with 109 points. He only lost 7 on Seattle but losing both contests on Monday cost him 20 points and he finished second this week. 

So if you're new to confidence pools, or are just finding this article for the first time, the bottom of the main table usually tells the story. With 22 hardcore football fans picking each week, you will start to see the teams that they really believe in and those that they expect to win, but wouldn't be surprised if they lost. Green Bay and New England were heavily favored by the board this week, but so was Seattle given the strength of their team and the fact that they were plaing St. Louis. The Rams pulled off a huge upset and it took down a whopping 274 confidene points. Compare that with the Eagles on Monday night. Everyone on staff picked the Eagles to win as well, but the confidence points were almost 100 points less. If you look through that column, you see a lot of single digit weights, meaning the staff was less confident in the Eagles than they were in Seattle. Rightly so it would seem. Finally, take a look at Buffalo-Indy. The field was heavily behind the Colts, but a couple guys backed the Bills instead. Notice that three of the top 4 finishers had the Bills winning that game? Had Grant picked the Bills instead of the Colts with the same 7 point wager, he would have won this week's contest. 

OVERALL RANKINGS

So aside from the weekly winners, we're going to track the overall success of each team from week to week. In any given season, a staffer might win three or four weekly games, but taking down the overall crown takes consistent weekly performance. The overall winner may not even be the top scoring team in any given week. This week's overall board just matches the table above. 

THIS WEEK'S PICKS

Here are the picks for this week.

HEAVY FAVORITES

So with a little more knowledge, this week's picks look a bit different than the week 1 selections. Despite last week's tough loss, the Saints are the most favored team this week with 324 confidence points and everyone picking them to win. St. Louis is now a universal ananimous selection to win instead of a unanimous selection to lose and Green Bay is also picked by everyone in the field, although at a significantly lower confidence weight than the other two. Cincinnati, Baltimore and Philadelphia are also strongly backed by the staffers this week. 

DUAL SUPPORT

Division rivals Detroit and Minnesota were this week's tough call. They had the lowest combined confidence points for their contest, and the Vikings only received 1 more point than the Lions this week. The Vikings are playing on a short week, but both teams really still have some questions marks which accounts for the low confidence either way. The Giants-Falcons game is also a tough call, with neither team looking impressive in their games last week. Tonight's game with Denver and KC will split the field pretty well right out of the gate. 

ODDS AND ENDS

If you have followed this series for a couple years now, you know that just 'picking the winner' of every game is not easy. In the last four seasons, it's happened only twice. There is always a game like Seattle-St.Louis where everyone, including Vegas thinks its going to go one way and it goes the opposite. Use this article as a guide to help you with your confidence pools, but don't be afraid to buck the trend if you feel strongly about a game. As you see this week, just picking one additional winner can make all the difference. 

Good luck this weekend!

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