Beatpaths

Every year I pick an “official” algorithm. This year’s official algorithm was a basic vanilla algorithm, mostly because I realized I didn’t like the sudden dramatic shifts in rankings in the “beatflukes” variant that I used last year. Throughout the season, a couple more variants were developed and discussed in the comment threads. [...]

Beatpaths picks were 2-0 for the conference round. I actually missed the Giants game but it seemed like a doozy.
Here is the new beatpath graph. The main difference is that the Giants reclaim their beatwin over Chicago.

And here are the rankings. The only change is that Jacksonville looks better due to tiebreakers. [...]

The picks should be pretty obvious from the rankings, but here is how the outcomes will affect the graph:
San Diego at NEW ENGLAND: New England has a beatwin over San Diego. If San Diego wins, they shed that beatwin to become the only other team without a beatloss. Interestingly, Tennessee would be the [...]

Awesome! What a great weekend. The beatpaths picks were 2-2 this weekend.
Here is the new beatpath graph – the only difference is San Diego’s beatwin over Indianapolis.

And, the rankings:

Rank
Team
Notes
Last Week
BeatPower

1

(Beat JAC) Awesome, awesome, awesome – for the first time all season, I believe (correct me if you know I’m wrong), we [...]

Just getting in under the wire here – I had a hard drive crash on Monday morning and I am just now getting back up and running…
And we’re on to the best weekend of the NFL year! Four great, great, great games. Hopefully. Here are the picks.
Seattle at GREEN BAY: Green [...]

The Wildcard round went about as expected, with the exception of Seattle defeating Washington at home, in what was already considered a very closely-matched game (#20 at #21). Here’s the new graph:

And, the updated rankings:

Rank
Team
Notes
Last Week
BeatPower

1

(Bye)

1

100.0
(31/31 – 0/31)

2

(Bye)

2

96.2
(25/26 – 1/26)

3

(Bye)

3

92.0
(22/25 – 1/25)

4

(Beat TEN) We had two teams that were very relieved [...]

On to the picks! As always, the analysis of each of the following games is in exclusion of any other outcome.
WASHINGTON at Seattle: Neither team has a beatpath to the other, and they’re currently quite lowly ranked – #20 at #21. So, a very close game. If Washington wins, it immediately gets [...]

According to the season-end beatpath graph, the playoff seedings should be the following:
AFC: NE, IND, SD, PIT, JAC, TEN
NFC: DAL, GB, TB, SEA, NYG, DET
The AFC seedings match the NFL seedings, and the NFC swaps TB and SEA, while awarding DET instead of WAS for #6. But several teams get “screwed”. [...]

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 have been posting NFL picks. We’ve just finished with the regular season. For the final week, we posted our only losing [...]

The picks were absolutely horrible this week at 6-10 – I guess that’s what you get when half the teams in the league don’t activate half their starters. The big story in the graph this week is the re-emergence of the DEN->PIT beatwin – it impacts a lot in the standings.

Rank
Team
Notes
Last Week
BeatPower

1

(Beat NYG) An [...]