Here’s the picks:

Once again, there are no good bets.

I forgot last week to put my Superbowl picks, this week it got interesting, New England is no longer the king of the hill, they’ve been replaced by Pittsburgh. Also, Brett Favre has knocked Green Bay out of the playoffs almost entirely. Think they miss him?

E.W.

The Great Depression of the 21st Century is very depressing.

 Ok Week 6 Picks

I have no rhyme or reason for some of these. I wanted to pick my Titans over NE, but I’m going against my gut feeling for common sense. I do think Jacksonville will pull out the win at home. And Baltimore v Minnesota might be a tight game, but I think the run will continue for the Vikings.

So here are the picks for Week 6
Update: Sun. Oct. 18.2009 – 12:30pm:
Ok this might be a bad idea, but I’m making a last minute change and going with NO Saints over the NY Giants. I think home field will make the difference today and this will be a big defensive game. NO’s has a better defense and I think they’ll shut down the Giants today.

Week 5 played out just about like my picks predicted. I’m amazed. The death of Coach Zimmerman’s wife on Thursday gave Cincinnati a greater reason and heart to win their game with Baltimore. Our deepest sympathies to the Zimmerman family and the Bengals for the loss of Mrs. Zimmerman. And kudo’s to the team for their caring support of their coach and giving him a win on weekend he really needed it.

Now some one explain how Buffalo could lose to Cleveland “IN” Buffalo? I just don’t get that one at all. Seahawks and Jacksonville was a surprise to me. Perhaps this is an indication that the Seahawks have stepped it up a notch. At least at home.

My poor Redskins are just in a down spiral. Too much money has been spent on players who demanded big bucks; but who aren’t playing to the status they demanded. Where’s the talent in the younger players? I think blaming everything on Coach Zorn is ridiculous. He can only do so much with Daniel Snyder’s interference. I hate that. Owners pay the bills and gloat about owning a team, but they don’t make player decisions, or interfere with the coaches they’ve paid to manage the team. They shut up, sit down and allow the professionals they hired to do their job!  And if they don’t think they should do that, then I’ll point them to the amazingly great success of Tony Stewart Nascar Driver/Owner who’s number one rule seems to be – delegation and let his staff do their job. Hasn’t the NFL learned how disruptive and destructive owners like Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder can be to a team. Someone smack these guys for me…please!

Ok so this is how the week played out. 11 wins, 3 losses in the 14 games played.

Here’s the picks:

There are two good bets this week (according to the computer…): Tampa will cover the spread, I buy that one, and Oakland won’t get shut completely out, not sure I buy that one. But just like on Wall Street, I’m gonna trust the machine.

E.W.

I miss the good ole days when the spreads moved some during the week, so I didn’t have only Oakland to bet on…

Here we go for Week 5:

Rumor has it that McNab will be back starting for Philadelphia. I’m sure the Eagles can take Tampa Bay with Vick playing; not so sure if it’s McNab. But I’m going with the Eagles anyway. Washington v Carolina is the next tough pick for me. I hate picking against my Skins, but I just don’t think they have the heart to take the Panthers IN Charlotte. Not to mention SirEvil was born and raised in Charlotte and the Panthers are his team. So even if they beat the Skins, we have a win in the family. Can’t beat that.

I think the high Minnesota is feeling off their win over the Packers will carry them through Sunday and a win over St. Louis. New England and Denver is the next hard pick for me. I think this one might be close, but the Broncos are playing at home and I think that gives them the edge. Same thing for the Jets and Dolphins. After watching Miami’s opener at home, I think they have some good skills this year and I don’t think NY can take them at home.

So here’s my Week 5 Picks. 

It was an exceptional almost perfect week. I didn’t expect NE to pull it out over Baltimore. I thought the Ravens were better than that. So that was my only losing bet this week. I’m honestly amazed at how good of a week it was. 13 games picked correctly out of 14 played. Wow, even if I do say so myself.

Speaking of Wow; Monday night’s game was amazing as well. I’m SO glad Bret and the Vikings pulled it out over Green Bay. It was indeed a hard hitting, hard fought game. I can understand making quarterback choices as part of the business of football. But after 16 years of loyalty; where was the loyalty to Bret when the time came? Where was Green Bay when Bret was facing one of the hardest decisions of his life? They were no where to be seen. Monday night’s game showed that lack of loyalty by Green Bay (to one of the leagues greatest players ever)  was an example of karma in action. Way to go Bret and the Vikings! I also think it was apropos that Aaron Rodgers threw his first NFL interceptions in the Monday night game. Not to mention the fumble. Again, karma in action.  

But the week goes on, which brings me to a Happy 40th Bret – life gets better from here. It did for me.

So here are the results from my Week 4 Picks:

Here’s the picks:

Again there aren’t any good bets this week.  Last week I got 9 games, but did better than break even on bad bets.  Here are the bets (all bad…) this week:

Mostly underdogs here cause it looks like Vegas is expecting some serious ass whoopin’s this week.
E.W.

I think I’ve accidentally found a good indicator of the economy.  Good bets depend on idiots, with too much money and too much time, running down to Vegas and betting on Detroit (or maybe Washington…) to win by 10.  Last year I think there were 3 weeks that didn’t have any good bets, the 5 or 6 years before that probably had only one week.  This year, so far, there are no good bets at all. No one is coming to Vegas and moving the spreads.

Ok,so it’s Week 4 and we’re learning a lot about each team. New England made some very bad choices in not renewing a few contracts and making trades of some key players. The Lions might be able to break their label as the worst team in the NFL and my poor Skins, well it’s looking like they’ve forgotten how to play ball. For now, here’s Week 4s picks:

We’ll see how it turns out.

All in all it wasn’t a bad week, though there were a few surprises. Who would have thought Pittsburgh would have lost. It might have been just by a field goal, but they’re better than the score proposes and should never have gotten into that dilemma. I can’t believe my Skins lost against the Lions, breaking their 19 game losing streak. And I had to sit by and watch my Titans self destruct as well. Had I kept up on the news of the games I would have picked the Eagles and Vick’s debut over Kansas City.

But even with those issues, I didn’t have a bad week and still beat SirEvil’s computer picks. Yes!

Here are my week 1 picks:

I wrote a new game simulator, the spreadsheet based one was painfully slow, took nearly 30 minutes to get answers out of it. Now it takes about 5 minutes to simulate over a million games. It got 11 this week, so I’m happy with it.

Week 2:

Got 7 games… ouch. I’m beginning to wonder if I passed stats II or not now. I recall having a headache, but not much else.

Anyway, here are the week 3 picks:

The computer has flagged no good bets for all three weeks so far, which makes me think that the rabid crazy fans who always bet big on Detroit don’t have money for Vegas lately. As a result, only pros show up to bet.

The better modeling program lets me do something I wanted to do before, predict the playoffs. So here it is:

So far for the first three weeks the Pats win the Superbowl. I show this game twice cause it matters who has home field in the calculation, and by default there isn’t a home field in the Superbowl.

E.W.

Statistics is the art of using massive computer resources to make predictions so non-statisticians can say, “I told you so.”