NFL 2006-The Road To New Orleans

Listening avidly while checking out your .... hair.

I witnessed the first TD of the season minutes ago.

So we have, in this week #1, 17 players. Awesome! The first year was 6; the second 12.
I have my red, green, blue and yellow highlighters out. Here are some interesting notes.
I have columns with each player's name and rows with each of the weekend's games. What I was looking for was the winner of the Deviant of the Week award.
Here is how that works. I look at each game and see what the thinking was amongst the players, In tonight's game for example, 11 folks had Ptt; 7 had Miami. A difference of 4. So everyone who has Miami is assigned 4 points. I do that for all 16 games. The computer is churning away on that. But Pantalones (who is the lone selector of Detroit) and Osso and Jespah (going for San Fran) could rack up some poiints. More later.

All in all, McGentrix is the most mainstream player. He differs from the majority in only one game. Region. JPinmilw and sublime differ from the majority in only 2 games. At the other extreme, Jespah disagrees with the majority in 9 of 16 games. J-B and Fbaezer are likewise free-thinkers, in the minority in 7 of the games.

High-fives to Jes and Fbaezer! Free-thinkers, indeed!

28-17 Pittsburgh... Yay...

Didn't know you took consideration of how many people chose which teams. That benefits me and other people who don't know much about football.

RJB, do you do all those calculations by hand?

'Cause I just thought that maybe an Excel spreadsheet might simplify everything a lot. I'm willing to help out the cause with the design of the spreadsheet so if you'd like that just send me a PM with the rules of the game.

Dulpepper is easily one or two hairs swifter than Marino ever was.

Most mainstream? I can't tell if that is good or bad!

The Steelers did well. Andy, my employee who is a Pittsburgh fan (as well as being the only Republican Goth in the country) claims that the defense is largely the same as last year's team. He also says, and I didn't check the stats to see if he is right about this, that the QB for the Steelers, whoever that may be, may not need to be the key player to winning the game as the QB on other teams.

As mentioned, McGentrix picked with the majority in all but one of the 16 games. Region, Sublime and JPinmilw differed in only two of the games. Unfortunately for JP, one of the two was last night's game.

Whether to use the the word "mainstream" or "conservative" or "conventional wisdom" or "traditional values" might have been somewhat amusing considering our opinions on other threads. I opted to go for "mainstream."

As noted, Jespah agreed with the majority in only 7 of the 16 games, with J-B and Fbaezer agreeing in 9 out of the 16.

Another way to look at the deviation (and this may turn out to be redundant) is to use the assignation of points that I mentioned above.
For example:
11 of us chose PI; 7 chose MI = a difference of 4. Everybody who chose MI gets stuck with 4 points.
16 of us chose SE; 1 chose DE. That 1 player gets saddled with 15 points.
Where this differs from the "mainstream" method is in which game someone was out of step. If a players differs from the majority in only a few games that might look pretty "mainstream" but if they are in a very significant minority on those few games, they could well be eligible for the Deviant of the Week award.

This week the order of finish is the same under the second method as under the first. McGentrix, Region, Sublime and JPin Milw come in with very low ('good") scores of 3 to 7. At the other extreme are Jespah, Fbaezer and J-B with scores in the 50's or 40's.

All of this is pretty much meaningless drivel, really. But I have learned that, in running a site, regardless of the topic, that (1) the moderator has to try to keep up the chatter, sort of like a carnival barker; and (2) everyone secretly likes to see their name in "print" once in a while.

I would definitely like to take you up on that offer, kind sir. In the first year, we only had about 6 players. Last year was 12. This year there are 18, so far. I see a pattern there.

At the end of last season I suggested that I would be happy to turn this over to someone else---more for "creative" rather than "logistical" reasons. My jokes were getting stale.

Panzade sort of volunteered to participate by offering periodic commentary on a subject I know nothing about: NFL Football. But then he got really busy at work and hasn't been seen for awhile.

We pride ourselves here on being naive about the subject. But it would be nice if some of yall could get into the habit of posting snippets of info.

Hmmm, I'd be interested in how many chose Miami after the usual Steelers quarterback got appendicitis, though that might not affect someone's decision, given the Steelers general capability. I'll check that out for youse. (First I have to remember his name - he was the same guy that was in the motorcycle accident sans, gasp, helmet - and then research when he had the episode.. very recent, I think.)

ben roethlisberger...

Looks like all who picked Miami picked them after the appendix episode last Sunday.. but there were many picks for Pittsburgh after that too. If I didn't screw up, it was 7 & 7.
Relevance? zip.

Just ran across that Miller stepped out in his long run for the Steelers, but the Miami coach didn't flag it in time..
So it goes.

Pretty funny, RJB. If I do well for the week, I'll tell you my secret. If not, I'll flush it and try something else next week.

As I understand it, Osso, Miller is from UVA. A very big guy. Took him a long, long time to get down the field. And he did step out of bounds on the 2 yard line. The Miami coach took too long to throw the red flag indicating a challenge and then he threw it where no ref could see it before the next play was run. Probably of no importance, but the fault lies with the coach for the Dolphins. Miller was out of bounds.

Without that touchdown it probably would have ended 21 or 24 - 17.

Yep. That Nick Saban is a giant puss. Jesus, grow a pair, buddy. You're a goddammed NFL head coach.

The Dolphins' problem is not their coach, but rather their quarterback. Culpepper, in my opinion, might be one of the dumbest people to ever play the position. Easily confused and prone to toss interceptions or fumble the football at the most inopportune time.

The Dolphins should have pursued Drew Brees. He would have been a much better fit.

They are going to rue the day they chose Culpepper.

No skin off my ass. My team's looking real good. I think Willie Parker is going to be a top-tier running back, their defense looks solid, and the offensive line is tough as nails, as always. Ben's the only real question mark. Gotta see how he is after all the **** that's happened to him. All in all though, I'm feeling pretty good about these guys. They will kick much ass this season.

This in NOT required reading. Feel free to skip over this entire post.

Pantalones, thank you for the offer to modernize the tabulation of the scores. I do now do it by hand but I am more than sure that Excel can do it better. This will be my last season doing this (2 and a half seasons will be enough). If the someone else who might be interested in taking it over next season knows that there is a structure that he/she can use, it might be more tempting.

I decided to post this publically rather than via pm in case anyone else has a suggestion.

Again this is NOT IMPORTANT to participating. No hidden tricks here.

I have horizonatal rows with the names of the players (rjb, osso etc). Right now I have 22 names listed (people who played last year + folks who indicated an interest in playing this year + some folks I culled from A2K sports threads who seemed to have an interest in the NFL). Some of those that I pmed never even opened the message. You would want to have the ability to delete names of total non-players, but you would also want to be able to add names, not only for this year but as the player list grows next year. A full page worth of rows, I would think.

I have columns going vertically that might look like this (if I can make it work):

************* WEEK #_ ********************
For The Week: ******* Cumulative:
Win/Loss Rank ******* Win/Loss **%** Rank