NFL Picks, 2012 Season Week 2

When we were talking about ways to make the weekly pick segment more interesting we decided to add a team blogger to the mix. I think we’re going to change the segment up on the fly and try to see if we can make sure that whoever we contact for “celebrity blogger” status is covering a team that had something interesting happen the previous week.

This week we have two: Kevin Ewoldt, managing editor of Hogs Haven, and Steven Mullenax, editor of The Landry Hat. The Landry Hat got to watch its underdog Dallas Cowboys convincingly put it to the New York Giants in the season opener last Wednesday.

Mullenax celebrated his team’s win with a series of A-Team awards, singling out the performances of a number of Cowboys’ players from the win.

One of the most exciting parts of week one was watching the performance of Robert Griffin III, or RGIII, or as Ewoldt calls him, RG!!!. While the Redskins have a way to go, the team appears to finally have a franchise quarterback for the first time in 20 years, much to the delight of Ewoldt, managing editor of Hogs Haven.

He acknowledges the advantages Washington had in preparing for the game, which included distractions from bounty-gate, the absence of head coach Sean Payton and the lack of any ability to game-plan against the Redskins’ rookie quarterback. But Ewoldt also expressed excitement at how Griffin was able to live up to — and perhaps exceed – an almost insurmountable amount of hype leading up to the opener.

“It’ll be very interesting to see how RGIII plays against the Rams,” he says. “He took a lot of hits despite that great performance and how the secret is out on our personnel. If he’s going to play 16 weeks, the Redskins need to protect him better. But it’s clear Washington D.C. finally has a franchise-worthy QB again. … It only took us 20 years and three extra draft picks.”

Last week’s guest, Neal Coolong from Behind the Steel Curtain, beat us both with his Minnesota, NY Jets and Tampa Bay picks. For purposes of keeping score, we’ll use the score from whichever of the two guests gets the most games correct.

Celebrity Bloggers 11-5
Tony 8-8
Andy 8-8

Without further ado, here are all four of our thoughts on who will win in week two:
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NFL Picks, 2012 Season Week 1

Looking back at 2011, both Andy and I had pretty solid seasons picking games straight up–Andy edged me slightly at the end of the year, with an 11-5 record in Week 17 to my 9-7, putting him at 171-85 for the year (67%) to my 167-88 (65.5%). But while we were alright at picking games, we’ve got to keep pushing ourselves–so we’re adding celebrity team blogger to the picks each week. This week Neal Coolong (@NealCoolong), editor with Behind the Steel Curtain, was kind enough to join us.

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NFL Picks, 2011 Season Week 17

As predicted, we split our four games we had different last week—Andy hit on Philadelphia and Oakland, while I hit on Detroit and San Francisco, so we both finished a disappointing 10-6 for the week.

That leaves us one game apart heading into the final week, with Andy at 160-80 and myself at 159-81.  And, of course, we have four games separating us again this week, with Andy believing that the Bears, Lions, Chiefs and Ravens will win, while I think the Vikings will find a way to screw up their season even worse, Green Bay will still pull out a win, the NFL will find a way for Tebowmania to continue, and the Ravens will choke again down the stretch.

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NFL Picks, 2011 Season Week 16

As one would expect in a week where an 0-13 team finally wins, and a 13-0 team finally loses, picks last week were amongst the worst we’ve seen all season—still, when you’re 11-5 (Tony) and 10-6 (Andy) overall, that’s not a terrible week.

That puts us at 150-74 (Andy) and 149-75 (Tony) for the season, which  puts us on par with many national “experts”.

This week, four games are picked differently—about as many as we’ve ever picked separately, and probably enough to give one of us a solid lead heading into Week 17.  Or, if things go as normal, we’ll split and still be just one game apart…

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NFL Picks: 2011 Season, Week 15

Andy gained one more game this week, by hitting the Atlanta/Carolina game in another solid week for both us, going 12-4 (me) and 13-3 (him).  Of course, this didn’t appear to be a difficult week to pick in the long run.

Three games separate us again this week—most likely the sink or swim week for me, with at least two considerable upsets needed for me to gain ground, in Indianapolis and Carolina, with Miami’s firing of Tony Sparano being the main reason for my choice of Buffalo over Miami.

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