January 16th, 2010
2009 NFL Divisional Beatpaths Picks
Welcome to the best weekend of the NFL Season!
Pretty straightforward week of picks, overall. The Vegas line has the home teams winning, so does Isaacson-Tarbell.
On to the picks. Isaacson-Tarbell was 1-3 last week, while Beatpaths and ITB were 0-4. That’s probably the worst we’ve done on Wildcard Weekend, because up until this year it seemed we were more accurate in the playoffs than in the regular season.
| Isaacson-Tarbell | Beatpaths | Isaacson-Tarbell-Beatpaths | |
| Record So Far | 158-102 | 167-93 | 165-95 |
| Last Week | 1-3 | 0-4 | 0-4 |
| Arizona (11-6) at New Orleans (13-3): We’ve got #20 at #2 this week, but Arizona is notoriously difficult to predict – call it another side effect of being from the NFC West; there just isn’t much penalty to phoning it in some weeks. But I think it goes deeper than that. Kurt Warner has been more erratic week to week than I recall in previous seasons. He’s had long slumps and long periods of dominance, but it seemed this season had more ultra-highs and ultra-lows in short succession. So it is a tough call, but I don’t think you can responsibly go against New Orleans here. If New Orleans doesn’t break out of its semi-self-imposed slump, look out, but this is where they really have something to play for. This is a unanimous pick and a BeatPick. | NO | NO* | NO |
| Baltimore (10-7) at Indianapolis (14-2): We’ve got #19 at #3 here. It just seems wrong to have Baltimore ranked so low, but they did lose seven times this season. Indianapolis is a unanimous pick and a BeatPick. | IND | IND* | IND |
| Dallas (12-5) at Minnesota (12-4): Here we’ve got #4 at #9, and this is a conflict pick. Minnesota has a slightly better record, so Isaacson-Tarbell picks them. Beatpaths picks Dallas with the higher ranking. But since it’s not a BeatPick, ITB goes with IT and picks Minnesota for the win. | MIN | DAL | MIN |
| NY Jets (10-7) at San Diego (13-3): This is #10 at #1. This is a unanimous pick and a BeatPick, so San Diego is the clear pick here. | SD | SD* | SD |
January 17th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Moose hasn’t updated with playoff results, but it’s safe to assume that iterative would make the same picks.