Staff Confidence Pool (No Spread) Week 5

Photo: Kirby Lee, USA Today Sports

Looking to dominate your office pool this season? Eighteen Footballguys.com staff members are here to help you out. Each week they will pick the winners of every NFL game, and rank their selections based on how confident they are that the team will win. The most-confident pick gets 16 points, and the least-confident gets just 1. We'll even total up everyone's picks so you can get an overall consensus on who our staff think will be the most likely winners. Each week we'll announce the weekly winners, and track the overall record for the entire season. A couple of things to note before we get to the picks:

• Picks for this pool are straight up (no point spread considered).
• Picks are due on Wednesday nights, and will not reflect any late-breaking news. If your league allows for last-minute changes, please make adjustments to your office pool accordingly.
• Our staffers also play in weekly picks Against The Spread, and Survivor Style 'Pick one Winner each week' formats as well. Check out the other weekly articles for more help with those types of games.

RESULTS FROM LAST WEEK

This week was rough - between the lower amount of games and a couple of big upsets, most of the staff finished with less than 50% of the total possible confidence points. But Andy Hicks made the most of it, finishing with the highest score of the week - 72 confidence points. Interestingly though, he did it with managing risk. Hicks had only 7 correct picks this week, but he beat out overall leader Dave Larkin who had 8 and Sean Settle who had 9. It was Hicks's big 14 point win on Monday Night that gave him the overall win.

The big losses started early last week and kept going throughout the weekend. Philadelphia's loss to Green Bay on Thursday took down all but 2 of the staff, and losses by Baltimore, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Houston were all big hits to a majority of the staff. Over 800 confidence points were lost on those games last week, contributing to the low scoring week.

OVERALL RANKINGS

Dave Larkin extended his lead to five points with his second-place finish this week. Brimacombe is just behind him and both are more than 14 points ahead of the rest of the field.

THIS WEEK'S PICKS

Here are the picks for this week.

HEAVY FAVORITES

This looks to be one of the toughest weeks to pick this season, with lots of questions marks for some of the more popular picks. But there are a few teams that still received a large majority of the staff's support. New England, Philadelphia and Kansas City are the top picks, with all three receiving more than 230 confidence points each. Minnesota, Chicago, Houston, and the Chargers also received strong support in their respective contests.

DUAL SUPPORT

Tonight's game between the Rams and the Seahawks had over 100 total confidence points, but the visiting Rams still managed to receive 40 points despite Seattle's home-field advantage. Arizona at Cincinnati is the weakest game of the mix, with just 72 total confidence points and the home Bengals receiving less than 50 of them. Other close games include Jacksonville at Carolina, Buffalo at Tennessee, Baltimore at Pittsburgh and Monday Night's game with the Browns visiting San Francisco.

ODDS AND ENDS

Another week with two NFL teams on a bye - so 120 is the maximum possible score this week.

Good luck this weekend!

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