In my ongoing campaign to eventually someday be included on King Kaufman’s Panel O’ Experts and compete for his grand prize of dinner at his house, even though I’ll never win, I am posting NFL picks. This is for Week 14.
Please note that if you actually use pure beatpath picks for your own picks, you’re insane. We don’t even pay attention to home field advantage here. Last week we were 9-7, but who cares. We are now 120-72, for a 62.5% pick percentage, but who cares.
Week 1: 9-7
Week 2: 10-6
Week 3: 8-8
Week 4: 8-6
Week 5: 9-5
Week 6: 9-4
Week 7: 11-3
Week 8: 11-2
Week 9: 10-4
Week 10: 7-7
Week 11: 11-5
Week 12: 8-8
Week 13: 9-7
CHICAGO at Washington: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Chicago is slightly favored. Either way, a victory would be beatlooped away, by Detroit and Green Bay respectively, for no change in the graph or rankings. A meaningless game for the NFL Network!
St. Louis at CINCINNATI: Cincinnati has a beatpath to St. Louis. If St. Louis wins, it creates a beatloop with Baltimore, slightly hurting Jacksonville, Buffalo, and Cincinnati.
DALLAS at Detroit: Dallas has a beatpath to Detroit. If Detroit wins, it creates several beatloops and Dallas loses several key victories. Detroit would also shed their beatloss to the Giants, leaving them with no beatlosses. Dallas would sink a couple of slots, and Detroit would rise one, but the Giants would fall quite a bit.
Oakland at GREEN BAY: Green Bay has a beatpath to Oakland. If Oakland wins, they’d enter into beatloops with Detroit, San Diego, and Minnesota. This wouldn’t affect Green Bay as they are already in beatloops with those teams, and it wouldn’t really affect Oakland either due to reinforced beatpaths. The only difference would be the Giants rising one slot, above Jacksonville.
Miami at BUFFALO: Buffalo has a beatpath to Miami. If Miami wins, they split the season series with Buffalo, with no impact on the rankings or graph.
TAMPA BAY at Houston: Tampa Bay has a beatpath to Houston. If Houston wins, it creates beatloops with Atlanta and Tennessee. Houston would rise into the top half of the league, and Tampa Bay would drop slightly. Houston’s worst beatlosses would be to San Diego and Indianapolis, not bad.
SAN DIEGO at Tennessee: San Diego has a beatpath to Tennessee. If Tennessee wins, it would create beatloops with Denver and Indianapolis. San Diego would be hurt by not having Denver below it anymore, and Tennessee would rise, which would help both Tampa Bay and New Orleans.
Carolina at JACKSONVILLE: Jacksonville has a beatpath to Carolina. Carolina hasn’t had the split personality syndrome of the past couple of years, they’ve just been consistently less than mediocre. If Carolina wins, the resultant beatloops would basically hurt Houston a few slots.
NY GIANTS at Philadelphia: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but the Giants are favored. If the Giants win, they rise a couple of slots and regain a beatwin to Philadelphia. If Philadelphia wins, the season split busts a beatloop with Minnesota, although Philadelphia is still in a beatloop with Minnesota and Chicago. Minnesota would regain their beatwin over the Giants – they’d rise, and it would also slightly hurt Pittsburgh.
Arizona at SEATTLE: Neither team has a beatpath to the other (surprisingly), but Seattle is favored. If Seattle wins, it would bust a beatloop and they’d regain a beatwin over San Francisco. Reinforced beatloops would mean no change in the rankings or graph. If Arizona wins, the bottom part of the graph would get a lot more vertical, and Arizona would be slightly helped.
MINNESOTA at San Francisco: Minnesota has a beatpath to San Francisco. If San Francisco wins, it would create a beatloop with the Giants, and with Atlanta. The loop with Atlanta would again make the bottom part of the graph more vertical, and would hurt Atlanta quite a bit.
Pittsburgh at NEW ENGLAND: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but New England is favored. If New England wins, they’d have a beatpath to everyone in the league. If Pittsburgh wins, they’d beatloop with the Jets, and it would have no effect on the rankings or graph!
CLEVELAND at NY Jets: Cleveland has a beatpath to the Jets. If the Jets win, it would create beatloops with Cincinnati and Baltimore, but reinforcements would mean no changes in the graph or rankings.
Kansas City at DENVER: Denver has a beatwin over Kansas City. If Kansas City wins, they’d split the season series. Tampa Bay and Kansas City would both be slightly helped.
INDIANAPOLIS at Baltimore: Indianapolis has a beatpath to Baltimore. If Baltimore wins, it would create some crazy four-team beatloops involving Jacksonville, Buffalo, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Denver. Cleveland would be helped, Jacksonville would be hurt. There would also be a lot of scrambling in the lower half of the rankings, but Baltimore would get some good help there.
NEW ORLEANS at Atlanta: This is the closest game of the week – neither team has a beatpath to the other, but New Orleans is favored. If New Orleans wins, they regain their beatwin over Atlanta, hurting Carolina and Atlanta. If Atlanta wins, they split the season series, busting a beatloop with Houston, although they end up creating a more complicated longer beatloop, helping Chicago and hurting Houston.
Conflict picks look to be:
WAS>CHI (hey, 1-0 already!)
ARI>SEA (ick, I do NOT like that pick. ARI gets credit for their win over CLE with my algorithm, but a loss here would surely send them back down.)
and… that’s all. Despite a drastically more vertical graph, the picks are pretty much the same.
As an aside, a interesting tendency occured to me about graph dynamics:
If a team has a losing record, then they are better off if their wins are against other bad teams, so they get some solid footing on the graph. Wins against good teams will just get cast aside. (See: NO not getting any love for beating Jacksonville or Seattle; Buffalo getting a solid ranking by winning the games they should win.)
If a team has a winning record, though, then they are better off taking their losses in crazy fluke games against bad teams, and winning the big games against other top teams to keep them up high. (See: Pittsburg avoiding any beatlosses, a solid Tampa team with a mediocre beatpath rating because it has lost to the teams in its level.)
Looks like I’m the first to point out that the Patriots have a beatpath to everyone. I’m guessing this won’t hurt the Steelers much, and I don’t think any big upsets took place this week to impact the graph hugely.
Yeah, we’re actually 13-2 so far this week. One game to go. Then again I’m sure most of the other pickers had good weeks, too.