A Quick Football Break

I'm actually progressing rather well on whatever it is I'm doing, so I'm taking a quick break to provide a quick update which nobody except maybe the missing Ze'ev cares about: My NFL picks. Here were my picks... now you can see how I did.

Survivor:

Arizona (vs. San Francisco)

The Cardinals are opening their brand-new, ridiculously cool stadium to a sold-out crowd, and picked up Edgerrin James this off-season. And they get to host one of the worst teams in the league, too. Sweet.

Survived: As close as this game ended up being, thanks to Arizona's poor D, they were leading the entire game. I wasn't worried, even while watching it... though I did stop watching before the onside kick, not thinking SF would actually get it.

Survivors with friend:

Arizona (vs. San Francisco)
Tennessee (vs. NY Jets)

The Titans host the worst team in the NFL. That's pretty much it.

Survived/Lost: Stupid Titans. They should have kept Vince Young, whose throw that was picked was actually a smart (albeit underthrown) one, in the game, and not used Kerry Collins, who still hadn't really played with the receivers he was throwing to. Ugh.

Pool:

Home teams in CAPS; my picks in bold
Mia 2 PIT W
W Phi 11 HOU
Buf 8 NE W
Den 1 STL W
Bal 9 TB L
Nyj 15 TEN L
W Sea 10 DET
No 13 CLE L
Cin 5 KC L
Atl 12 CAR L
Dal 4 JAX W
W Chi 3 GB
Sf 16 ARZ W
W Ind 6 NYG
Min 14 WAS L
W SD 7 Oak

Ouch. I finished with just 68 points, 40 back from the first-place guy, and in 24th place (of 26). After winning Week 1 three or four times over the past decade, it was quite a wake-up call. Interestingly, I had more wins than almost everyone (10-6), I just did terrible on the numbers (losing 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15), which is usually my strength.

Our roster this week:

QB E. Manning (vs. Ind)
RB M. Bell (@ StL)
RB S. Jackson (vs. Den)
WR R. Wayne (@ NyG)
WR D. Mason (vs. TB) [not B. Edwards in the end]
TE A. Crumpler (@ Car)
K A. Viniateri (@ NyG)
DEF Cleveland (vs. NO)

Bigger ouch: We actually had a good week, with 85 points - but played a better team who had 88. We would have beaten 7 out of the other 10 teams, but we got a bad draw. It didn't help any that he had LaDanian Tomlinson score 20 points on Monday night to give him the win... and that the Browns' D - who actually played well but were hurt by the poor offense - scored 4 less points than the Jaguars' D, which was our other option. My brother-in-law gets to rub it in the rest of the year. In better news, we dropped our backup TE for QB Chad Pennington, and are now offering QB Vick and WR Mason for WR Marvin Harrison, which would give us Wayne, Harrison, Deion Branch, and Braylon Edwards at WR - awesome. We're also trying to claim the recently traded Samkon Gado, which would make our team a bit ridiculous all the way around.

Finally, in yet another pool, I picked Arizona as the survivor (check) and won 7 games against the spread (good for 95th of 225 or so in a rough week). Not bad, especially when it's been a while since I picked against the spread.