Short Week... Week 10

So this week starts Thursday Night Football on the NFL Network. That means it's a short week and all of your picks need to be in by 8:20 tonight (Thursday, November 12th). This weeks Game Of the Week puts the surprising Bengals (6-2) in Pittsburgh (6-2) in a battle for the AFC North Division lead. A win by the Bengals this week would put them 5-0 in the Division with sweeps against the Ravens and Steelers, and at 7-2 they'd be in great position for a playoff run.

The other key matchup this week, which I think is overhyped, is the Patriots in Indy. While this is always a good game, I just don't think the Patriots have what it takes to knock out the undefeated Colts. This isn't the 16-0 Patriots from two seasons ago, and it certainly isn't the dynasty Pats from the early part of the decade, but surprisingly the Colts are only 2.5 point favorites AT HOME. For those of you who aren't aware, the home team always gets 3 for home field advantage. So what that means is that if this game were held on a neutral field the Patriots would actually be a very slight favorite. Apparently the oddsmakers aren't fans of Indy at home this week.

One other somewhat interesting game, if only because of the history, is the Cowboys in Green Bay.

If you're interested in train wrecks, may I suggest the Chiefs in Oakland? That game should be ugly... of course you could just go watch your local pop warner team and see the same level of play... and you'd be supporting the community.

Remember, short week this week... get your picks in by 8:20pm tonight. Good luck to everyone below me in the standings... J.D. Gravatt and bfaries.

Week 9

So week 9 sucked. That's all I'm saying about it. For me to have a chance and for the Ravens to have a chance in the AFC North they needed to win. They didn't and they loooked terrible doing it. So now I'm 4 games out in the division and 3 games out in the wildcard with only 4 to play until the Frenzy playoffs start. With a Colts win LRobbins remains undefeated. In the four seasons that I've run this game only one person has gone undefeated the entire season... Me... and that was the first year I ran it and there wasn't any money on the line so it didn't even really count. I'm not so sure she'll be able to put it off this year, though, as her remaining schedule looks pretty difficult.

On to the 1-loss players... Cam2109 and jharris got wins out of the Steelers, so they are neck and neck atop the New Castle Division, Fumble kept pace with LRobbins by also choosing the Colts, Jay Dub got a 1 point win out of the Chargers over the struggling New York Football Giants to remain up there as well, and the Patriots kept Jeff C. on top in the Sussex division.

In other games from week 9, the Eagles looked listless in their loss to NFC East rival Dallas, the Saints came out flat again, but made a comeback to beat the Panthers and remain unbeaten along with the Colts, the 49ers got beat by the Titans, and the Falcons got a win over the Redskins.

It's time to start talking playoffs as the playoff picture should start to firm up over the next couple of weeks. If the playoffs started this week, these would be the matchups (with several good records on the outside looking in):

Round 1
First Round BYEs, who would still have to make a pick only to be used in tiebreaking if necessary:
#1 LRobbins (7-0)
#2 Cam2109 (6-1)

#3 Jeff C. (6-1)
   vs.
#6 jharris (6-1)

#4 D10206156 (5-2)
   vs.
#5 Fumble (6-1)

So that means, 5 5-2 players and 1 6-1 player wouldn't be in the playoffs. That's a pretty strong year so far.