It’s here. And it is quite the wild one.
Week 17 is never welcomed with open arms. It is dreaded. It brings both the end of the regular season and nothing but uncertainty. It is far more difficult to project than Opening Day, and it is often what decides both playoff berths and office pools. We must proceed with caution.
We must also take risks.
One of the reasons why it is so important to work through each week of the regular season with small victories is so that we can build up a large enough lead to withstand whatever happens in the finale. Because we will be told lies by head coaches. We will be tricked. And we will be left trying to get inside the minds of multiple athletes and executives. What makes matters worse is that we don’t even have numbers to use as support for many of the games.
The good news is that we’ve been here in the past, and can navigate through this. We just need to pick our spots using everything and anything at our disposal.
*Confidence Picks – 2018 Season: 57-44-4 (Last Week: 5-3)
(2017 Season: 53-48-4) (2016 Season: 53-67-3) (2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2) (4-Year Total: 236-206-11)
All Picks Against Spread – 2018 Season: 121-108-11 (Last Week: 5-9-2)
(2017 Season: 137-119-11) (2016 Season: 123-136-8) (2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4) (4-Year Total: 552-486-30)
NOTE: With no games until Sunday and so many spreads missing until late Wednesday, there is the chance that I will need to update some picks and possibly even make some changes. I don’t foresee this happening for the overall pick, as I have a strict policy against swapping picks, but it is simply too early in the week to be definitive about everything without allowing some leeway. There will almost certainly be some changes to the spreads I use before Sunday. I wanted to have this column posted for anyone who still needs to lock in his or her picks for any pools on Thursday but, if you can wait until Saturday, I will finalize this article by then and update this note accordingly. Good luck and thanks for sticking around through another great season!
UPDATE: As of Saturday night, I updated a bunch of spreads that have since moved, and increased two games to confidence picks. I noted each change where appropriate. There will be no more changes or updates after this point. Good luck everyone!
Detroit Lions at Green Bay Packers
There’s nothing that bothers me more than taking a recent performance and extrapolating it out to see how it would survive in a different setting. The key, therefore, is to determine just how “different” this setting really is.
The Green Bay Packers were impressive, last week. Not by beating the Jets – as that had happened ten times previously, anyway – but by not quitting on a season that has nothing at-stake. It was the manner in which the Packers played, and not that they played well.
Every so often, I write about a quarterback elevating the play of its team just by virtue of being competitive. That’s what we saw from the Packers in Week 16. And it would be downright stunning if we didn’t see more of the same in the season finale.
Think about the narrative that will be told about Green Bay’s 2018 campaign. Most likely, the word that will be used is, “Disappointment.” It’s negative, and it will leave us with questions in the offseason. But, how likely is this to be the case? And, is there another option?
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