Eliminator Pool: Week 10 - Footballguys

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.

Jeff Pasquino has provided some insight into this kind of contest with two preseason articles. The 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 preseason 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).

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

NFL Week 9 was close to a clean week, but both Will Grant and hard-luck Andrew Garda lost their picks with Tennessee's road win at Dallas. Five other teams (aside from Dallas) covered the rest of the picks, and all of the favorites took care of business, led by the Chiefs, Bears, and Panthers along with the 49ers and Texans. With another week behind us and as we are now past the midpoint of the regular season, things will continue to get more and more complicated with fewer high-quality choices each week. Now let us take a look at the picks for Week 10.

THIS WEEK'S PICK SUMMARY

Here are the picks for this week:

DISCUSSION

The picks are in for Week 10, and you can certainly tell that we are more than halfway done with the NFL schedule. A new high has been reached for the staff with nine different teams being selected, including six unique picks. Three teams lead the pack with multiple picks, and all three are large home favorites. Kansas City (4) was the top choice, and only six of the staff still had the chance to use the Chiefs. Green Bay (3) tied with Philadelphia (3) for the staff, but more of the staff had already used the Packers (9 of the 16 staff had already chosen Green Bay). With the Packers favored by more than a touchdown at home over Miami, that also looks like a safe choice. The Eagles were available to 14 of the 16 staff, but Philadelphia appeared to be the clearer third choice with the Eagles home against Dallas and favored by less than a touchdown. The unique picks this week include the Chargers (at Oakland) and New England (at Tennessee), with both Los Angeles and the Patriots road favorites by more than a touchdown. Four other singleton choices round out the week with Atlanta (at Cleveland), New Orleans (at Cincinnati), the New York Jets (vs. Buffalo) and the San Francisco 49ers (hosting the New York Giants) rounding out the group. Once again with so many different selections, this could be a big week for moves in the standings, so check back next week to see how it plays out.

Please note a few things: We will be doing these picks every week, win or lose, to keep it entertaining all season long. Normally a Survivor/Eliminator pool would end once all but one player lost once, but to provide our subscribers with more perspectives, everyone will pick every week even if they lose. That said, we will still try and honor the spirit of an Eliminator / Survivor Pool, trying to win every week and not re-use any teams during the year.

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: Going back to my preseason plan, it was quite clear that the stretch of Weeks 9-11 was the toughest part of the schedule to plan for in 2018. Tons of byes covered these three weeks, and a lot of the weaker teams were off or playing one another across this span. Last week, the plan was to steal a week with the Bears, and it worked to perfection. That afforded me the luxury of saving Kansas City for this week as the Chiefs host Arizona and are massive favorites (-16 to -16.5 points). Week 11 still looks like a mess, but that ugly bridge will be crossed next week. Perhaps by then another team will start to pack it in for the season and a good matchup will bubble up to the surface, but until then the focus is on taking the Chiefs now and hoping the rest of the staff stumble without Kansas City available for most of them. Kansas City has a Money Line of -1000 or higher, implying a 90+% chance of a victory for the Chiefs. Sign me up. .

The Pick: Kansas City Chiefs

Good luck this weekend!

Questions, suggestions, and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com

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