2016 NFL Pick'em League

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Yeah, good point: both AFC teams are coming off wins where they didn't play great and the game was closer than it should have been.

Early line is 6. Hmm. If I had to guess I think that comes down a bit, but I dunno.



I am not as high on the Pat's as some other people this year. They played what was set up as a #1 schedule, but the way it turned out was very much in their favor. It'll be tough for anyone to beat them, but I give all 3 of the other teams a decent chance.



Fiscal is a Falcons fan. I don't think he posts anymore though.

That Packer game almost gave me a heart attack. Glad we are in the championship game.
Fiscal will do, thought i was going to have to take up the role of the Falcons fan haha. Congrats Yoda. Hope it's a Steelers-Packers Superbowl. Not because i have anything against the Patriots but because they always win or reach the SB and i like things to get changed up.



Some random thoughts I couldn't easily type on a tablet last night:

I've been saying all year that I'm not sure how good this Steeler team is, and that's still where I am. But the last two weeks have certainly given me cause to wonder if they're (somewhat secretly) very, very good. Part of the problem is that the Offensive Death Star has not been "fully armed and operational" for long, hence that eye-popping fact from earlier about how Ben, Brown, and Bell had never played in a playoff game together. So there's a chance that weird injury timing and a gradually jelling offensive line (which was horrendous just a few years ago) has obscured how good the offense is. The fact that Ben was out for the earlier New England game only makes that tougher to gauge.

There's also a chance--and if you're a Steeler fan, this is probably the thing to hang your helmet on right now--that Le'Veon Bell is going to just rampage through these playoffs and carry the team with him. He's only had fewer than 100 yards from scrimmage in one game all year, and he's got 334 yards rushing in two playoff games.

I can't quibble with the Pats being favored by 6, particularly at home. I might go a little lower simply because of the unknowns, and while I think this is another very good Patriots team, I think the 14-2 record and low PPG allowed are both misleading.

It does seem like, sometimes, a team just does one thing better than anyone else and they win the Super Bowl because nobody can stop it. That was Denver last year, with their defense. I'm wondering if Pittsburgh and its offense can be the same thing this year. Wouldn't mind seeing how insane the over-under on a PIT-ATL Super Bowl gets, either.




As for ATL-GB, it feels weird to try to judge Atlanta, because they've been good-not-great for what seems like awhile now, and it's always a little odd when a team like that, particularly with a good-not-great QB to match, suddenly makes The Leap. Any good team or player can do that for awhile, so there are going to be a lot of, pardon the pun, false starts. But the win over Seattle is a pretty solid data point in favor of the idea that they've legitimately figured something out.

But there might be a similar thing going on with the Packers as there is with the Steelers, where their strengths have been hidden behind a midseason rough patch and a handful of other factors.

It's pretty fun that none of the four possible matchups at this point would shock me at all.



The Pat's defense is very fundamentally sound, but they don't have the high impact guys you sometimes need to make big plays in the playoffs. I assume they will play the bend but don't break defense against Pitt, while obviously trying to limit Bell. Big Ben could have a field day with the intermediate game if he stays patient. The Pat's offense is still tough to stop, but they could still miss Gronk in a tough game in crunch time. Throw out the earlier game completely; with Ben being out, both teams played the game differently than they will this time.

I favor Atlanta slightly in the other game. Both offenses are playing at a high level, but I trust Atlanta's defense at home just a little more to make some big plays.



I have another friend who's a Pats fans, and he was more scared of Kansas City than Pittsburgh. He actually saw them as being a lot like the Pats: bend-don't-break, not too reliant on any one guy, etc. Similar reasoning to your own.

He said he was less worried about the Steelers because he thought Belichick was good at taking away the opponent's strength, IE: they'd shut down Bell. I told him they very well might, but that being able to do that probably had less value against a team that has, perhaps, the best RB and the best WR in football. Pick your poison.

That said, I do think they'd be smart to focus on Bell, insofar as they have to choose. I can imagine lots of ways the Pats win even if the Steelers are allowed to throw, but far fewer where they win if Bell's doing his usual thing.



KC is more like the Pat's, but they're not as good. With no dominating defenses, I've been afraid of the best offenses, and it turns out that's all that's left.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
I know that KC has a good defense, but that was the first time a team didn't score a touchdown while the other scored two and won in over 200 games I think. Patriots might be a lesser defense, but they are substantially more potent.

Then throw that whole Antonio Brown thing in the mix...

As good as the Falcos have been, I couldn't bet against Rodgers. I think Ryan's stats have been over-inflated by the talent he was surrounded with. Put Rodgers on the Falcos and what would you have?



Not much movement on the lines. I guess I'm slightly surprised the AFC one didn't dip a point, but that's about it.

I gotta say, I'm genuinely curious about both games, particularly PIT-NE. Most of the time you've got pretty straightforward questions or expectations and the only thing you're really going to find out is "who happened to play better the day of the game?"

But this time, I'm genuinely interested to find out how this all shakes out. I genuinely don't know how good PIT's offense is with everyone in there, I genuinely don't know if the Pats have an average defense or a very good one, I genuinely don't know how much Bell can be taken out of the game, or how effectively the Steelers can get others involved to whatever degree he is. I also don't know how good the Steelers' defense is: it looked like a liability last year, then looked like it might be about average, and lately it's almost looked good.

It's going to be fun to have answers--any answers--to some of these questions, because every time I think about how they match up, I can think of some totally plausible counter-argument as to how it might go the other way.

It's a little simpler for GB-ALT: I mostly just want to know if the Packers are flawed, but being carried by Rodgers, or actually an excellent team that just struggled in the middle of the year a bit. And on the other side, I wanna know if the Falcons have genuinely improved relative to recent years, or if they're still just a pretty good team that had a few more things go their way. Not that we'll get definitive answers from just the one game, of course.



All legitimate questions. I guess with 3 points for home field advantage, they have that game as a pick if it's in Pitt. That makes sense, but 6 points still looks like a lot. The Pat's are 15-2 so far this year against the spread, pretty amazing as it is, but even more so considering they haven't played a lot of complete games. It's so hard to say about their defense with the competition they've faced, and this will easily be their biggest challenge to date.

I'm starting to think Atlanta runs away from the Packers. Their offense is so multidimensional with those two running backs. They're like the Steelers but with more precision, and like the Patriots but with more big play ability. Their defense is at least fast, and playing at home makes them even faster. Green Bay has been playing must win games for two months, and the bumps and bruises are starting to take their toll. I think they're about to run out of gas.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
Let's see if my Superbowl pick makes it to 50% this weekend.



Early Super Bowl lines Pat's-3 and Pitt+1 vs either NFC team. Totals range from 53 to 55. They will probably change a little depending on how the teams look today.



No late line movement on the NE-PIT game, that I can see.

Part of me's holding out hope that a couple of those points are just a casual "hey, it's the Pats" sort of thing. But of course, teams win these kinds of games until one day they don't any more. Until that happens, they seem a lot safer. I was actually wondering if that sort of thing explained why that ATL-SEA line was conspicuously low: just a general "hey, it's the Seahawks" bump.

I don't think either upset would shock too many people, since both underdogs are on long winning streaks and may have had their strength obscured by a midseason dip. Smart money's still on the chalk, though, as always.



From what I'm hearing, the public is all over GB while the pro players are hitting Atl. Usually it's the other way around as far as dogs and favorites.

NE is taking more action than Pitt, and there hasn't been any "sharp" action yet. They would probably hit it at the last minute trying to get the best of the line.