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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 15 2013 Page at Footballguys.com for the 2013 Week 15 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

Going into Monday Night Football, the staff had a perfect record for the week despite picking five different teams to win on Sunday.  Only Dallas’ loss in Chicago prevented a clean sweep, which unfortunately gave Jason Wood another loss on the year.  The standings overall did not change since last week, with three staff members suffering only two losses on the season – James Brimacombe, Matt Bitonti and Steve Holloway.  Five others are just one game behind with a 11-3 record on the year.  Selections only get tougher as the season progresses, so this could play out in many different ways.  There are not many clear favorites this week aside from Denver and Carolina, both teams that have been used quite a bit already, so this could be another week full of different picks.

With entries in, I was correct that the picks are all over the place this week once again.  The group only had six chances left overall to use Carolina, while four selections remain for the staff to use on Denver. Those numbers now drop to three for Carolina as they were the top pick with Jeff Pasquino, Adam Harstad and Ryan Hester all using their Panthers pick this week.  Only one staff member used Denver this time around, Jeff Haseley, which leaves three staffers the chance to use the Broncos this season.   Overall there were seven different teams selected for Week 15, led by Philadelphia (4 picks), Carolina and Kansas City (three each).  The Eagles and Chiefs picks are interesting selections as road favorites by 4.5 points according to Las Vegas.  Two staff members chose to go with Atlanta, a clear choice against Washington and their turmoil right now, but still a risky pick to take a 3-10 team.  Three other staff members were off on their own with their Week 15 selections:  James Brimacombe takes his shot with Detroit at home on Monday Night Football against the Ravens, Jeff Haseley took his chance to use Denver and Mark Wimer selected the Colts at home to beat Houston.   Without question the standings could change quite a bit by late Monday night. 

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 – This week I took a clear favorite with Carolina at home against the Jets.  The Panthers are an 11.5 point favorite and I fully expect Carolina to regroup at home after their first loss in two months last week in a tough game at New Orleans.  The Panthers have to win here to stay close to the Saints and in the hunt for the playoffs, especially with a rematch against New Orleans in Carolina next week. 

Good luck this weekend!