2018 NFL Pick Em Champion!
I'm a sore winner, so I'm proud to let everyone know I'm the 2018 NFL Pick Em Champion of my 3 person crew. Booyah!
The concept is simple: There's anywhere from 13 to 16 NFL games each week, and all we have to do is pick the winner: Pick Em. No spreads, no over/under; just straight up win or lose... It's Myself, and my friends Hei Lun and Scuzz.
Well there was one thing I made sure to do as well: Make a benchmark to beat. What's a better benchmark than just by default always picking the home team? Doesn't matter who is playing who, or where the game is played, just go with the home team always. Most websites and articles point to a 60% win percentage or "home field advantage," so we have to do better than mindlessly grabbing all home picks. Seems like a solid benchmark.
Week 1 Pittsburgh, a powerhouse team is taking on the Cleveland Browns, a rebuilding team playing with a quarterback that came from the somehow playoff 2017 Buffalo Bills. This game is in Cleveland. We can beat this underdog home team easily, right?
NOPE. CHUCK TESTA. TIE GAME.
Throws us into an early loop, because we didn't exactly account for what happens in the situation of a tie. No one wins, but no one loses. Do we take a half a point each? What's protocol? Well, protocol is: we picked the winners, and our pick didn't win, therefore: we lost. Mark that down.
Hei Lun takes Week 1 with a record of 11-5.
What if someone else also had a record of 11-5? I'm glad you asked. We picked a tiebreaker which is pretty standard in a Pick Em League: Total Score of the Monday Night Football Game. Aren't there two Monday Night Football Games for Week 1? Yes there are! Add the total scores of both games together. Closest to the correct score wins. We don't use Price Is Right "closest without going over" rules, just the closest.
Week 2 Minnesota is taking on Green Bay in Green Bay. Green Bay never loses at Lambeau Field. We again all take Green Bay to win.
NOPE. JUST CHUCK TESTA WITH ANOTHER REALISTIC MOUNT. TIE GAME.
We all lose that game, again, for a second week in a row. The first time in Super Bowl Era NFL history two games in the first two weeks ended in a tie. Luckily for us, this will never happen again.
I squeaked out a Week 2 win with a 9-7 Record, only winning with a tiebreaker. Monday Night Football saw the Chicago Bears play the Seahawks in Seattle. Scuzz (also 9-7) guessed 45 points, I guessed 44, and the final score of the game was 41: Chicago 24 - Seattle 17. I was closest, I win. Give me that point.
I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty of each individual week from here on, so here's the Stat Page from our Spreadsheet:
TNF - Thursday Night Football (Includes Thanksgiving)
Saturday - Games Played on Saturdays
Day (S1) - Games Played at 1pm or earlier on Sundays (includes London)
Night (S4) - Games Played at 4pm or 4:25pm on Sundays
SNF - Sunday Night Football
MNF - Monday Night Football
Tiebreaker Points - 1 Point for each time we had the closest guess to final MNF score.
Tiebreaker Scores - Total scores from every MNF game added up. (Points under "Home" were the actual scores from those games)
TB (Y/N) - Was the week determined by a tiebreaker? Yes or No?
The more weeks you win, determines who wins Pick Em, not by the most wins overall, but I really enjoy numbers, so I tracked a lot of them along the way. You can see Hei Lun took the overall win crown by four, however, I won 8 weeks, he only took 7, and Scuzz won 2 weeks. Boom. Champion. This Guy. *Thumbs*.
"So I won the popular vote, but you took the electoral college?" -Hei Lun
I'm the champion, the one true winner! Even if I literally squeaked by the skin of my teeth. Half of the weeks I won came down to a tiebreaker, and only the weeks I won even needed to come down to a tiebreaker.
Also, I think we're bad at picking games. I'd assume doing our research and choosing wisely would come out around 66%-75% win percentage, but no. Home teams were right where they normally are at a 60% win rate, and the best we could muster was Hei Lun's 63%, my 62% and Scuzz at 61%. Fun Fact: I was actually down by 1 game against the Home Team strategy going into the last week. I picked a lot of road wins and some of those games came down to the final minute (See: Atlanta, Dallas).
This was fun, and it gave us something to look forward to every Sunday, so I'm hoping we can do this all again next year as well.
Joe
The concept is simple: There's anywhere from 13 to 16 NFL games each week, and all we have to do is pick the winner: Pick Em. No spreads, no over/under; just straight up win or lose... It's Myself, and my friends Hei Lun and Scuzz.
Well there was one thing I made sure to do as well: Make a benchmark to beat. What's a better benchmark than just by default always picking the home team? Doesn't matter who is playing who, or where the game is played, just go with the home team always. Most websites and articles point to a 60% win percentage or "home field advantage," so we have to do better than mindlessly grabbing all home picks. Seems like a solid benchmark.
Week 1 Pittsburgh, a powerhouse team is taking on the Cleveland Browns, a rebuilding team playing with a quarterback that came from the somehow playoff 2017 Buffalo Bills. This game is in Cleveland. We can beat this underdog home team easily, right?
NOPE. CHUCK TESTA. TIE GAME.
Throws us into an early loop, because we didn't exactly account for what happens in the situation of a tie. No one wins, but no one loses. Do we take a half a point each? What's protocol? Well, protocol is: we picked the winners, and our pick didn't win, therefore: we lost. Mark that down.
Hei Lun takes Week 1 with a record of 11-5.
What if someone else also had a record of 11-5? I'm glad you asked. We picked a tiebreaker which is pretty standard in a Pick Em League: Total Score of the Monday Night Football Game. Aren't there two Monday Night Football Games for Week 1? Yes there are! Add the total scores of both games together. Closest to the correct score wins. We don't use Price Is Right "closest without going over" rules, just the closest.
Week 2 Minnesota is taking on Green Bay in Green Bay. Green Bay never loses at Lambeau Field. We again all take Green Bay to win.
NOPE. JUST CHUCK TESTA WITH ANOTHER REALISTIC MOUNT. TIE GAME.
We all lose that game, again, for a second week in a row. The first time in Super Bowl Era NFL history two games in the first two weeks ended in a tie. Luckily for us, this will never happen again.
I squeaked out a Week 2 win with a 9-7 Record, only winning with a tiebreaker. Monday Night Football saw the Chicago Bears play the Seahawks in Seattle. Scuzz (also 9-7) guessed 45 points, I guessed 44, and the final score of the game was 41: Chicago 24 - Seattle 17. I was closest, I win. Give me that point.
I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty of each individual week from here on, so here's the Stat Page from our Spreadsheet:
TNF - Thursday Night Football (Includes Thanksgiving)
Saturday - Games Played on Saturdays
Day (S1) - Games Played at 1pm or earlier on Sundays (includes London)
Night (S4) - Games Played at 4pm or 4:25pm on Sundays
SNF - Sunday Night Football
MNF - Monday Night Football
Tiebreaker Points - 1 Point for each time we had the closest guess to final MNF score.
Tiebreaker Scores - Total scores from every MNF game added up. (Points under "Home" were the actual scores from those games)
TB (Y/N) - Was the week determined by a tiebreaker? Yes or No?
The more weeks you win, determines who wins Pick Em, not by the most wins overall, but I really enjoy numbers, so I tracked a lot of them along the way. You can see Hei Lun took the overall win crown by four, however, I won 8 weeks, he only took 7, and Scuzz won 2 weeks. Boom. Champion. This Guy. *Thumbs*.
"So I won the popular vote, but you took the electoral college?" -Hei Lun
I'm the champion, the one true winner! Even if I literally squeaked by the skin of my teeth. Half of the weeks I won came down to a tiebreaker, and only the weeks I won even needed to come down to a tiebreaker.
Also, I think we're bad at picking games. I'd assume doing our research and choosing wisely would come out around 66%-75% win percentage, but no. Home teams were right where they normally are at a 60% win rate, and the best we could muster was Hei Lun's 63%, my 62% and Scuzz at 61%. Fun Fact: I was actually down by 1 game against the Home Team strategy going into the last week. I picked a lot of road wins and some of those games came down to the final minute (See: Atlanta, Dallas).
This was fun, and it gave us something to look forward to every Sunday, so I'm hoping we can do this all again next year as well.
Joe
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