More Suicide Bliss
Updated Standings and Balances
The 2008 edition of the suicide pool is completely different than other years have played out. Typically we lose 1 or 2 players early and then the bunch sticks together for a few weeks until everyone has used up their “sure winners”. Like Dallas. And New England. And San Diego. Ha!
Or lots of people pick any team playing against a “sure loser”… Detroit has fit that description for about 13 years, and this year it seems that you can add St. Louis, Oakland, or Kansas City to that list too. Most weeks anyway…
There aren’t so many sure winners this year, and this week saw another player taken down for picking one of them (Dallas, touted by many as the best most likely team to win the Superbowl this year). The sure losers weren’t s friendly this week either and 2 more players got taken out for picking KC to lose (we know they weren’t really picking Denver to win).
3 down, 2 to go!
The simple truth this year is that it’s been a wild and crazy season so far and any team has a chance to win on any weekend. It’s an old cliche in the NFL (“any given Sunday”), but it seems to be more true this year than ever! It’s kind of fun to watch actually!!!
It was a pretty quiet week in the main pool with most players sticking with the favorites, and the resulting scores were pretty close too. I got my lucky week in early this year with a couple of good picks in the morning games and was able to hold on through the afternoon.
What a Swing
It was a long fall from the top of the heap last week to the smelly bottom this week. I’m talking about Adrian of course. Winner last week and outpaced by 7 wins this week. In fairness Rich did have an amazing week (he practically had it locked up after the early games) and there wasn’t much of a chase from anyone else in the afternoon either. But still, to not even get one game in the afternoon hurts. A lot!
I have to say that Dallas is looking pretty good this year. Indy looks equally bad. Have the Chargers finally found their groove?? They have an uphill battle for the playoffs since they’ve already lost a crucial divisional game against Denver (can anyone spell Hochuli?). I guess they’re no worse off than Philly though (who have two 3-0 teams in front of them). At least Philly has a vacuum to slide into from the Patriots implosion… It was a lot like Adrian’s performance!
Speaking of Suckage…
Wow, what a game! First Romo throws a touchdown fumble to the Eagles in his own endzone (only 14 seconds after the Eagles had scored the prior touchdown), and then Donovan McFlab throws his own fumble in the 4th quarter to hand the Cowboys the game. (I’m not even going to mention how DeSean Jackson forgot to carry the ball all the way to the endzone in the second quarter).
Final: 41 to 37 for the Cowboys (for a whopping total of 78 points!!). And these guys are supposed to be the Superbowl contenders! What is it they say about offence getting you there but defence winning the Superbowl?? Both of these teams need to study that chapter of their playbooks sometime soon.
Congrats to Adrian for winning week 2 of the spread pool!! And condolences to Rich for bowing out of the Suicide pool this week. Six down, seven to go…
Something smells in the NFL
The 2008 NFL season is only 2 weeks old and so far the thing that stands out is how bad some teams are. Let me illustrate:
- I knew that Seattle was bad this year, in large part due to injuries, but I didn’t really comprehend how bad. Their situation is so low that they had backup QB Seneca Wallace practicing as a reciever all week, and they had also planned to use him to return punts. That went out the window when he hurt himself while warming up for Sunday’s game! Even still the team played all right on Sunday and even had leads of 14-0 and 17-6. However, they managed to take their suckage to a low normally reserved for road games and lost to the ‘Niners in OT. Ouch.
- Oakland is the worst team in the NFL. In fact they are the worst team the NFL has seen for years. It’s so bad that Head Coach Lane Kiffin and Defensive Coordinator Rob Ryan (who has the ear of team owner Al Davis) don’t talk to each other. When asked about the defensive paly calling during a press conference last week Kiffin said, “Do I have the exact belief we do on defense? No, but it’s hard to have the exact belief that we do. So, it is what it is.” How fast can Al Davis say, “You’re Fired!”?
- As bad as Oakland is, they beat the Chiefs yesterday. In Kansas City. Ouch.
- The officials are even adding to the stench this year. Referee Ed Hochuli’s blown call on the Denver fumble at the end of yesterday’s game in San Diego allowed Denver two extra chances to score when the game should have been over. They scored the touchdown on 4th down, and then successfully made a two point convert to win the game rather than kicking the 1 pointer to take it to overtime.
- This was actually the second big mistake on the day for Hochuli’s crew. Earlier in the game they had allowed Denver to keep the ball after Champ Bailey stripped it from Chris Chambers who was clearly down… San Diego challenged the ruling, but “the replay equipment [was] not working” and the ruling on the field stood as called. Denver scored a touchdown on that possession as well. The Chargers coach Norv Turner was livid following the game. I really have a hard time feeling all that sorry for him though. If he hadn’t let his team get into such a big hole early in the game (21-3 in the second quarter) then maybe they could have won the game outright instead of praying fro Denver to screw it up!
- How could I write a post about teams that stink without mentioning St. Louis? ‘Nuff said!
Baltimore at Houston postponed…
There’s a little bit of wind expected in the Houston area over the next couple of days, so Sunday’s game between the Ravens and the Texans has been pushed out until Monday night. There’s a little bit of controversy about this because the game will not be televised nationally even though it will be on a Monday night. But really, who would watch it anyway??
If for some reason the game gets postponed even longer then we will decide the weekly winner without counting that game.
UPDATE – this game has been rescheduled for Nov 9th. This change also impacts the Cincinatti Bengals game vs Houston that had been scheduled for Nov 9th. That game will now be played on Oct 26th. My plan is to have every game count towards the week in which it is actually played. I hope that office-pools.com will be updated to reflect that as well…
The Patriots as Underdogs
So here’s something we haven’t seen in a long time… The NY Jets (Go Favre Go!) are the favorites against the Pats on Sunday! Sure it’s only 2.5 points, but they’re still the faves. Even though they had no trouble taking care of business against the hapless Miami Dolphins last week, I’m still not so sure I agree with that spread.
New England is a pretty loaded team even without Tom Brady (anyone heard of Randy Moss??). Having said that the whole situation is pretty funny when you read the following quote regarding backup quarterback Matt Cassel:
When SI’s Don Banks ranked all 32 of the league’s backup quarterbacks before the season started, he didn’t even rank Cassel. He ranked Matt Gutierrez instead (30th), because he assumed that Cassel would be cut based on his preseason performance.
It could be an interesting week (and season) for the Patsies!
It’s a wrap…
With the Vikes and the Raiders stinking it up tonight, Ballinger managed to sneak in and steal the weekly win from Mr. K. Very sad. Congrats to Rob and good luck to everyone next week! The Standings and Balances are up to date…
We’re off to a great start!
What a crazy day! I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more 16+ point spreads for New England this year, and probably not very many 9+ pointers for Indianapolis either. There may be some big spreads coming out of Pennsylvania though!
Rich is off to a commanding lead for the first week of the big pool, and he’s going to be pretty hard to beat. Rob is 1 point back and there are a couple at 2 back, with 2 Monday night games to go.
UPDATE – the 2 guys at 2 back can’t beat Rob, so it’s either Rich or Rob for the week!
We had some serious carnage in the suicide pool as the Chargers let a lot of guys down! There were 4 picks for San Diego and another for Indy that got sent packing today. 5 down, 7 more to go!
Account Balances
The account balances page has now been updated to include the entry fees for NFL 2008. Many of you are still in positive territory, but not everyone. Please check out your balance and consider topping up your account if necessary…
We have Liftoff!
So the season is a go and the NY Giants took first blood. Of course it was only against the Redskins so they still haven’t proved that they didn’t fluke into the Superbowl win last year. They would have to beat a good team to do that…
The final player count rings in at 13 members, which is one more than last year. Welcome back Jack! I’m going to get the prize details sorted out right away, so that page will be updated tonight.
FYI – Tino is in the Suicide pool, but he’s having some issues with his account. We’re hoping to be able to sort that out shortly, and I will go back in and fix it so that he shows up in the grid. In the meantime his pick for week 1 is New England.
Note also that sometimes the grid on the office-pools site doesn’t automatically refresh. So if you ever go in and it looks like it’s all screwed up, it probably isn’t. Like tonight it looked like there were only 10 people registered in the suicide pool and of those several had missed getting their picks in. That was just an issue with the grid not showing up properly. All the data was stored properly though, and it is showing correctly now.
