Eliminator Pool: Week 3

Photo: Imagn Images

Over the past few years, we have given the subscribers of Footballguys.com some help in playing office pools, one of the most popular methods to follow the NFL aside from fantasy football leagues.  For the past few seasons, the staff members have done the Staff Confidence Pool Challenge, where numerous staffers try and pick the winners each week with a confidence ranking, and Jeff Pasquino’s “For The Win” column where Jeff attempts to pick each and every NFL game against the Las Vegas spread.  Both of these have been very popular features, so this year Footballguys is adding a combination of the two called the “Against the Spread” Challenge and also the Eliminator Challenge, where staffers have to pick a team to win each week.  Just one?  That sounds easy, but here is the catch – you can only pick the team you choose in a given week once all season long.  Many contests and pools out there get pretty big, so an Eliminator (or Survivor) Pool can go 16 or 17 weeks. 

Note that the links above are for 2012 articles.  Please see the Week 3 2013 Page at Footballguys.com for the 2013 Week 3 updates.

Jeff Pasquino has provided some insight into this kind of contest with two pre-season articles, first one that describes this kind of contest along with some advice on how to pick a team each week:

Survivor Pool Strategy

The second article is rather interesting, which describes Jeff’s pre-season plan to get all the way through 17 weeks.  Will it work?  We are about to find out.

I Will Survive

This pool will run all season long, but to keep participation up, the pool will crown the staffer with the best W-L record for the season (which means that everyone in the pool will continue to make picks every week).

THIS WEEK'S PICK SUMMARY

Here are the picks for this week.

DISCUSSION

Two weeks down, and look at the plethora of mistakes so far.  Hard to believe that only seven of the 15 staffers could go 2-0, and two have tripped up in both weeks.  Jeff Pasquino (yours truly) decided to get a little cute and buy a win by taking the Eagles, and he, along with several others, fell victim to San Diego’s upset in Week 2.  Week 3 could be much quieter with two heavy favorites on the docket (Seattle, Denver), but who knows what will happen in any given week?

With entries in, most of the staff did indeed go with a heavy favorite, as 11 picks went towards the massively favored Seahawks who host the Jaguars this week.  A handful of picks went towards Minnesota, a solid choice given that the 0-2 Browns travel without their normal starting quarterback and now have traded their best offensive weapon (Trent Richardson) away to Indianapolis.

Only Jeff Haseley went in a third direction, choosing to take the Saints at home against Arizona, which is a very interesting choice considering how competitive the Cardinals have been in their first two games. 

COMMENTARY

Each week, contestants are invited to submit any comments that they might have about their picks. If they submit them early enough, we post them with the article. If not, the comments will be within the section below.

Jeff Pasquino – Well, that clearly backfired.  Instead of taking the Patriots (who also barely skated by, but at least they won), I went with the Eagles last week to try and steal an early win.  That didn’t work at all, as San Diego upended Philadelphia at home.  As it turns out, Matt was the smartest of them all last week with the best time of the year to take Oakland.  Well done, Matt.  As for my Week 3 pick, I will go with the heavy, HEAVY favorite and take Seattle to trounce Jacksonville.

Good luck this weekend!