Oakland! Why, oh why, do I insist on continuing to pick against the Oakland Raiders this season? Well, because in the grand scheme of things, they suck. They haven’t got a QB or WR worth a damn, and they are horrible stopping the run. They’ve lost by 20 or more points, five times this year.
Ah, but they are becoming upset specialists. As we know, they knocked off the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 6, the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 11 and the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 13. But surely, with playoff hopes on the line for the Denver Broncos, in Denver, the Raiders were not going to pull off yet another upset.
They did. And I wasn’t the only one picking against them, but so did five in our original survivor pool – cneilson, eaglesrule15, gvn2fly, Inkstain, jsimpson – plus fadeleyp picking the Seattle Seahawks to drop the near winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers (nope), cutting the alive entries in that pool in half. We had 11 alive going into Week 15, and now we have just 5 alive for the $1,634.
Over in the second half survivor, bquinless and DrZaius7 got caught in the Raiders web and got the boot from the pool, leaving just 6 alive with two regular season weeks to go. The second half survivor prize is $627.
The way the holidays have played out for me (Merry Christmas, by the way), I won’t be writing my normal top 3 picks for the week. However, a quick scan of the schedule has me predicting the popular picks this week will be Green Bay Packers over Seattle Seahawks, Bengals over Kansas City Chiefs, New Orleans Saints over Buccaneers, Arizona Cardinals over St. Louis Rams and New York Giants over Carolina Panthers.
Still a bunch of valid choices this week. It wouldn’t surprise me if both of our pools go into the playoffs. Remember you don’t have to save teams for the playoffs though. We start with a clean slate if and when the pool gets to that stage.
If you are still alive, then make sure to get your pick in for Week 16 before the 1:00 Eastern deadline on Sunday. Good luck! For those not alive, look forward to the NFL Playoffs pool I hope to roll out this week. Enjoy the games!