Back to Football: Week Five Early

This week, when telling a Texans-fan co-worker that I predicted a Dallas win this weekend, he looked up 'NFL spreads' on Google to see what the internets had to say. The source he found corroborated my thought, but also indicated that Dallas has not won 4 games in a row in either a long long time, or ever. I'm more inclined to believe the former. ANYWAY, that makes a possible case for Houston, but I'm still picking Dallas.

The more important thing for me in that interaction was seeing how easy it was to find out which team was the actual favorite. When I got home, I started Googling and found some incomprehensible Vegas Odds site, tried to read the Wikipedia articles about sports betting and understand things, and then decided that I liked the site Foot Bullocks Football Locks as a determination of which team is the real 'Favorite'. It seems that my 'Gut' picks align pretty well with that real Favorite so far.

I made updates to my spreadsheet for the first 5 weeks, then realized that I should preserve my 'Ranks' picking. It is still interesting to see if having more wins in a season is a good predictor of winning that week, and when it is better. I'm also adding columns to the spreadsheet to accommodate other people's picks, if anyone wants to try their luck on any given week.

The Favorite certainly prevailed last night, to the chagrin of Minnesota fans. My favorite post on this thread had to be 'punt on the first down' as a possible strategy for Minnesota to come back from 28-0, Packers.

Not to mention, the memes.

I have to say, however, I worry that the Packers only won because the Vikings were just so bad. Had Minnesota been playing with their first string QB, or maybe even second string, I'm not sure they would have won. Perhaps I'm just displaying the normal Packer-fan pessimism we all have though.

Here's to Sunday. For the record, here are my picks: 

Early Games

Late & Monday

CHI: The favorite is Carolina, but I've got this feeling, you see.   TEN: Tennessee, Cleveland, Tennessee, Cleveland. I don't care and they both suck. I settled on the Favorite. PHI: St. Louis isn't that good.  NYG: Knowing how bad Atlanta was last year.... NO: Yeah, The Bucs beat the Steelers in some random freak of nature, but really now.  DAL: It's Dallas at home, and they clobbered New Orleans last week. I'll be happy if this pick is wrong, and yeah, Dallas and four-in-a-row, blah blah, but I have a feeling.  DET: Lions at home, and they're on top of the NFC North.  BAL:  The Vashda Nerada of the NFL will strike again. PIT: Losing to a $h*t team two weeks in a row only happens to other $h*t teams.  ARI: Everyone says Denver, and I know that Arizona flashes and burns out frequently, but I've got another feeling.

KC: #*(< the 49ers, seriously. Seriously. And the 49ers are actually my second favorite team. Now, it would be one thing if this team beat the Packers in the playoffs every effing year and then went on to win the Super Bowl, but they don't. They choke like losers. I also like the idea of my boyfriend playing his old team and beating them.  SD: It's the Jets. CIN: New England sucked something awful on Monday. I don't think they have it in them anymore.  SEA: Young, hungry killers against Washington?