Eliminator Pool: Week 7

Photo: Jake Roth, USA Today Sports

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, both Dave Larkin and I have written the “For The Win” column where Dave attempts to pick each and every NFL game against the Las Vegas spread. This has been a very popular feature, so this year Footballguys once again is presenting 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 previously with a preseason strategy article, which describes this kind of contest along with some advice on how to pick a team each week:

Survivor Pool Strategy

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

Once again, most of the staff survived last week, as many went with the Dolphins (or was it against the Jets?) to a one-sided victory for Miami. A few unique picks also won for the group (Falcons, Giants, Colts) including two winless teams in Atlanta and the other New York franchise, so those were pretty wise contrarian selections. Only the Patriots failed for the staff, costing both Darin Tietgen and James Brimacombe their perfect start on the year. That leaves 11 of the 22 - exactly half - of the staff with a flawless 6-0 record. As we get deeper into October, bye weeks come up every week for the next several weeks, which will only compound the challenge for the group. Once again the level of difficulty will increase, so let's take a look and see what NFL Week 7 will have in store for the staff.

THIS WEEK'S PICK SUMMARY

Here are the picks for this week.