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 15.
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 14-2, but who cares. We are now 134-74, for a 64.4% 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
Week 14: 14-2
DENVER at Houston: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, and they’re pretty evenly matched, but Denver is favored. If Denver wins, they get a beatpath over Houston, which slightly helps San Diego over Pittsburgh, and hurts Houston. If Houston wins, Denver loses their beatpath over Tennessee – Minnesota, Tennessee, and the NFC South are helped, while KC is hurt more.
CINCINNATI at San Francisco: Cincinnati has a beatpath to San Francisco. If SF wins, it creates a beatloop with Baltimore – Buffalo and Cincinnati would be hurt by it.
NY Jets at NEW ENGLAND: New England has several beatpaths to the Jets (as well as to every other team in the league). If the Jets win, it creates a season split for no change in the graph or rankings.
TENNESSEE at Kansas City: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Tennessee is slightly favored. If Tennessee wins, they enter into a beatloop with Cincinnati, which busts an earlier longer beatloop with Houston, which would make TEN->HOU->KC re-emerge, help Tennessee, and hurt Tampa Bay and Houston. New Orleans and Carolina would also be helped, while Kansas City would be hurt. If Kansas City wins, it’d create a beatloop with Houston, which would make KC->CIN->TEN re-emerge, which would scramble the graph even more, swapping the order of several adjacent teams. Tampa Bay, Houston, Chicago hurt, Kansas City and Cincinnati helped… very interesting game that hurts Houston and Tampa Bay either way.
SEATTLE at Carolina: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Seattle is favored. Seattle plays for a beatpath that would ever so slightly help them and hurt Carolina. If Carolina wins, they shed their beatloss to Tampa Bay, which helps them slightly.
JACKSONVILLE at Pittsburgh: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Jacksonville is favored. If Jacksonville wins, they’re slightly helped and Pittsburgh is slightly hurt. If Pittsburgh wins, it creates a beatloop with Denver, which would make PIT->SEA->CHI->DEN re-emerge, which would have a pretty large effect on the graph. It would help the first three teams more than it would hurt Denver.
Buffalo at CLEVELAND: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Cleveland is favored (which is bad news for Denver’s playoff chances). Both teams are playing for a beatpath. If Cleveland wins, it would hurt Jacksonville and Buffalo. If Buffalo wins, it would have another large effect on the graph, mostly by hurting Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Seattle, and Philadelphia.
GREEN BAY at St. Louis: Green Bay has a beatpath to St. Louis. If St. Louis wins, it creates a fresh beatloop with Carolina, which has no effect other than slightly helping Chicago or hurting Tennessee.
Atlanta at TAMPA BAY: Tampa Bay has a beatpath to Atlanta and they are so favored. And wow, hearing the news about Atlanta this week. I thought it was weird enough that Petrino made the cuts he did, but when it became clear and acknowledged this week that it really was part of him having trouble dealing with players that are grown men… he really played a large part in ruining this team. I feel bad for them. If Atlanta wins, it just creates a season split, for no effect on the graph or the rankings.
Arizona at NEW ORLEANS: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but New Orleans is favored. If New Orleans wins, it shuffles some things around and Arizona gets hurt a lot thanks to the ATL->SF->ARI re-emergence. If Arizona wins, reinforced beatloops lead to no effect in the graph or rankings.
BALTIMORE at Miami: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Baltimore is favored. Baltimore slightly helps themselves with a win and a beatpath. If Miami wins, it creates a beatloop with the Jets, for no effect in the graph or the rankings.
INDIANAPOLIS at Oakland: Indianapolis has a beatpath to Oakland. If Oakland wins, they create beatloops with Houston and Tennessee, which would hurt Jacksonville, Tennessee, but also significantly help Oakland, as their worst beatlosses would then be to Chicago and San Diego.
Philadelphia at DALLAS: Dallas has a beatpath to Philadelphia. If Philadelphia wins, it would create a season split for no difference in the graph or rankings.
DETROIT at San Diego: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Detroit is favored. Both teams are playing for a beatwin. If Detroit wins, Jacksonville is slightly hurt, while Houston is helped. If San Diego wins, Minnesota and San Diego rise above Detroit.
Washington at NY GIANTS: The Giants have a beatpath to Washington. If Washington wins, the season split has no effect on the graph or rankings.
Chicago at MINNESOTA: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, but Minnesota is favored. If Minnesota wins, the season sweep would give them their beatwin, helping both them and San Diego rise in the rankings. If Chicago wins, the season split would bust a few beatloops, leading to some interesting new longer beatloops. Minnesota would really take a tumble, while Denver would rise in the rankings due to shedding their San Diego beatloss.
Sorry about Denver, but maybe this week will be more interesting in terms of graph movement than last.
What am I, 0-4 on Thursday nights? And that sucked, I couldn’t watch the tv… but the stats made it seem like they just didn’t even show up.
I couldn’t see the game either, but it looks like Denver stayed in the game until the 4th quarter, but it really would’ve helped if they could’ve put together a drive to get in the end zone without the benefit of a short field.
From the game comments, it sounds like the graph is getting pretty stable, and for the most part now we’re likely just going to see some reshuffling in the middle as loops get created and broken apart. The TEN/KC game is interesting in how it negatively affects some teams just by existing.
Yeah, it was a 4 point game going into the 4th quarter, with Denver having put together their first nice drive of the game. Two long Houston TD drives sandwiched between a 3-and-out changed the look of things pretty quick. So much for momentum.
I know I’m the millionth person to say this, but right now the Texans look pretty smart for snagging Mario Williams over Reggie Bush or Vince Young.
I’m sure if Shannahan could pick anyone to get eliminated from the playoffs by, it would be Kubiak. After all the media coverage of frosty Belichick/Mangini exchanges, it was surprisingly refreshing to see genuine warmth in a postgame handshake.
BTW, the outcome of the DEN/HOU game doesn’t change any of the picks, but the DET/SD game is more closely matched now due to MIN and SD rising. SD is only two behind DET, and that’s within that space where I’ve noticing that giving a home field bonus slightly increases pick accuracy.
I screwed up on inputting the den/hou score, marking it as a denver win. Curse my biases. So, it turns out that that game outcome actually does change one pick, of San Diego being favored over Detroit.
In addition, the combination of that outcome and the SF/CIN outcome tonight means that Pittsburgh is actually favored over Jacksonville.
The official picks stay as-is, but I just think that’s interesting. Maybe someday I’ll have a dynamic live-updating beatpath graph/rankings that reacts to outcomes – or even the scores of games in progress – as they happen.
YEAH MIAMI!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
There goes the shot at a pair of perfect seasons this year. Curse you, Ravens, curse you!
RE: Frosty Belicheck/Mangini handshakes, looks like they both were tired of hearing about that and decided to play extra nice after the game.
It’s just my impression, but it seems that the truly terrible teams have either been blown out (relative to conditions) or winning outright; no close losses without outside reasons.
With San Diego swamping Detroit, and Cleveland winning, and assuming San Diego beats Oakland in Week 17, then it means that Denver’s loss to Houston was irrelevant. Which also means that the victory over KC was irrelevant. So it might mean that Denver’s loss to Oakland is actually when they were eliminated from the playoffs in hindsight. I think the whole eliminated-in-hindsight question is interesting. What I mean by that is that with how the other games are working out, Denver ending on a four-game-win-streak – KC, HOU, SD, and MIN… still wouldn’t have been enough.
Brian Westbrook is so awesome.