Back to Football: Week Four Later

Football watching with other people was good. We had tons of food and could talk about the teams.

Here is the table for this week with some annotations about what is in each cell and some of the calculations going on. In addition to what goes on here, the numbers are also captured in two different charts that track the average accuracy of each type of pick and potential earnings over an entire season. If a team appears in the 'Win' column on a particular week, that information is logged in the 'Master' sheet for the appropriate week so the 'V Ws' and 'H Ws' columns display the updated Wins for those teams next week. Ties will be considered to be a half win and half loss and will have to be entered manually as needed.

• Ranks picks the Home team (H) if their Wins (Ws) are greater than or equal to those of the Visitor (V).
• Gut is subjective - based on who I think (or just feel, in my gut) will win.
• Ideal is determined by the ordering of teams in the 'Master' sheet based on how much I "like" the team.

ROI for Weeks 1-3 on my Gut picks.		13 games were played this week and 47 games played in Weeks 1-3.										This is where I do the betting calculation. The percent is the ROI for this week only.
	$53.00	47	Correct			7		8		9		-$1	$18	$30	$46
	19%	13	Percent			54%		62%		69%		-1%	23%	38%	59%
	V	H	Win	V Ws	H Ws	Ranks		Gut		Ideal		Fav. $	Upset $	Gut $	Ideal $
	NYG	WAS	NYG	1	1	WAS	0	NYG	1	NYG	1	-$6	$10	$10	$10
	CAR	BAL	BAL	2	2	BAL	1	CAR	0	CAR	0	$5	-$6	-$6	-$6
	GB	CHI	GB	1	2	CHI	0	GB	1	GB	1	-$6	$10	$10	$10
	BUF	HOU	HOU	2	2	HOU	1	HOU	1	HOU	1	$5	-$6	$5	$5
	TEN	IND	IND	1	1	IND	1	IND	1	IND	1	$5	-$6	$5	$5
	DET	NYJ	DET	2	1	DET	1	DET	1	DET	1	$5	-$6	$5	$5
	MIA	OAK	MIA	1	0	MIA	1	OAK	0	OAK	0	$5	-$6	-$6	-$6
	TB	PIT	TB	0	2	PIT	0	PIT	0	TB	1	-$6	$10	-$6	$10
	JAX	SD	SD	0	2	SD	1	SD	1	SD	1	$5	-$6	$5	$5
	ATL	MIN	MIN	2	1	ATL	0	ATL	0	MIN	1	-$6	$10	-$6	$10
	PHI	SF	SF	3	1	PHI	0	SF	1	SF	1	-$6	$10	$10	$10
	NO	DAL	DAL	1	2	DAL	1	NO	0	NO	0	$5	-$6	-$6	-$6
	NE	KC	KC	2	1	NE	0	KC	1	NE	0	-$6	$10	$10	-$6
The numbers indicate how many wins the Visitor and Home teams have prior to these games, as logged in the 'Master' sheet. This identifies the favorite, but early in the season, it's not real reliable. The colors identify the team as 'Good', 'Mediocre', or 'Bad'.						If the team identified in these columns matches the team in the Win column, a 1 is marked in the adjacent numbered column. The Correct number is the sum of that numbered column. That is divided by the number of games played this week to get the Percent.

Regardless of whether Kansas City wins tomorrow, I'll be more than 50% correct this week. Here is a detailed break-down of my decisions for Gut picks and my reaction to the results.

• The Giants annihilated that Washington team on Thursday, which put a smile on my face, certainly. Despite their similar record and that Home Field advantage, the Giants are just a better team. 
• I originally picked Baltimore for their game with Carolina, but decided to make what turned out to be the wrong decision for my Gut pick. I'm definitely sure that I was underestimating Baltimore. The Vashda Nerada of the NFL deserves a little more respect. 
• Early in the week, I had a crisis of faith about the Packer game in Chicago, especially after our loss to Detroit. However, I made the decision that regardless of other factors, I'm just going with Green Bay for my pick. I'd rather be completely happy about a Packer win and completely sad about their loss. 
• The Texans got it done in a nailbiter, thank goodness. I believe that Buffalo's early wins were to weaker teams and gave the advantage to Houston. 
• I seem to remember that the Colts blew some other team out of the water last week and the Titans got blown out of the water themselves last week, so IND was an easy and obvious choice. 
• Detroit beat the Packers, who beat the Jets, ergo, Detroit would beat the Jets. This came to pass. 
• So Oakland sucks - everyone knows this - but Miami also sucks these days. I figured that, being at the Coliseum, Oakland had a good chance of pulling through and getting themselves a win. Unfortunately, I had no idea that the game would be in -*--ing London this week, where Miami kicked some Raider ass. 
• Pittsburgh was an obvious choice again, and after four failed attempts to overcome a 4-point deficit with less than 2 minutes to go at the end of the game, I figured that TB would have one more loss. Something happened - I'm in, perhaps, too much shock to really investigate it - and Tampa Bay didn't lose. I still don't get it, but it apparently happened. 
• With Jacksonville at San Diego, I picked the Bolts and the Bolts won. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
• Atlanta is a consistently good team and Minnesota is a mixed bag, so I went with Atlanta (because I had no idea that they went 4-12 last year - oops). However, our Scandinavian friends prevailed in the end, which was far less disappointing than my previous wrong picks. 
• I learned that, despite the difference in current records, SF winning this week was not that much of an upset, but that game was certainly stressful. The 49ers consistently look like shit, but they are also capable of pulling off plays that end up looking like artwork. Some of those plays are half crap - a shit throw from Mr. Arm Tattoo that ends in a brilliant catch for a first down - and some are picture perfect. 
• I also underestimated Dallas this year, but I'm certainly not alone. It could be the Fort Worth magic, it could be that New Orleans isn't as good as it used to be, but I called the game before the half. This was another disappointment, but it wasn't very shocking.
• As it happens, Alex Smith went to the Kansas City Insinuation-that-Native-Americans-only-exist-in-the-past, which won't improve their ranking in my Ideal teams, but will make me more likely to pick them. They are playing New England, but in Kansas City, so I'm going to take a risk and predict a KC win.