Week 7 NFL Recap: Perspective on the Art of Picking

Courtesy of Indy's thorough 29-7 thumping of the Jags, dp salvaged a mediocre round of picks in Week 7, going 3-3 in his bid to select six road winners. Not quite the donkey prognosticator, dp merely broke even in picking the week's toughest games.

But that's the nature of this prediction business. dp's priorities for making five or six picks each week are plain and simple:

1) Remember that dp only picks outright winners; he doesn't mess around with the point spread because he's philosophically opposed to what it represents. True competitors only care if they won or lost. For example, Green Bay is a 3-point underdog at Denver in Week 8. Suppose the Pack, trailing 28-20 with a minute left, drives down the field for a touchdown, but then fails to score the game-tying two-point conversion and loses 28-26. Well, Green Bay may have covered the spread and pleased a few heartless gamblers, but no one in the Packer locker room or any self-respecting cheesehead is happy with the loss. (By the way, as the astute reader has no doubt surmised, Green Bay over Denver will be dp's first upset special for Week 8.)

2) dp scours each week's schedule for upset specials, going against the grain to select underdogs. If he can't find five upsets, he then picks the games with the lowest point spreads and hence the most uncertainty. In fact, other than Indy's Monday night blowout, the games dp picked this week were decided by one score or less: Baltimore lost 19-14 at Buffalo (incorrect), Tampa lost 23-16 at Detroit (incorrect), Tennessee escaped with a 38-36 win at Houston (correct), Kansas City won a 12-10 squeaker at Oakland (correct), and Philly lost 31-28 at Denver (incorrect) on a last-second field goal. All of these games went down to the wire. dp could have just as easily gone 1-5 or 5-1 with a few (un)lucky breaks.

In short, dp's choices are risky business. It's easy to only back the big favorites and rack up a superficially impressive record. Actually, while dp is 15-12 (55.6% accurate) in his documented upset special and coin flip games, he's 52-24 (68.4% accurate) in all other games in 2007. But I don't bother writing about these ones because the relatively big favorites generally win.

To put dp's performance in perspective, compare his 67-36 (65% accurate) overall season record to some other benchmarks. In ESPN's weekly SportsNation poll, voters have chosen the winner 59% of the time, compiling a 61-42 record. Meanwhile, ESPN's AccuScore computer projection has picked 64 winners for 62% accuracy. Finally, of ESPN's panel of 9 NFL experts, only Mark Schlereth (69 winners picked) tops dp. With the season not yet halfway completed, we'll see where it all ends up, but dp, like original Flicksters Johnny Cash and Tom Petty, won't back down.




Week 7: 3-3 (10-4 overall)
Season: 15-12 (67-36 overall)