Prophecies, part one...

Just for convenience of publishing, here are the predictions for the professionals first...college football will come out later in the day:

Here are our predictions for All Hallow’s Eve weekend of football!

RUGBY) We think the New Zealand All-Blacks will continue their dominance and rout Australia by more than a try (five points). The finals are on NBC this Saturday – check your listings; we don’t remember what time. (And if you’ve never seen the Haka, tune in early just for that!)

NFL) For some reason, we think it’s a boring weekend in the National!....Football!...LEAGUE! Out of the fourteen games on the slate for week eight, we see twelve of them as the favorite beating the spread:

New England (-8) over the Jets; Kansas City (-4.5) over the Lions; Atlanta (-7.5) over Tampa; Baltimore (-3) over the Chargers; Minnesota (-1) over Da Bears; Arizona (-5) over the Browns; Houston (-4) over the Titans [this one makes us uncomfortable, though, because of both teams’ QB situations]; New Orleans (-3.5) over the Giants [this one also took a long time…]; the New York Jets (-2) over the Raiders; Seattle (-6) over the QB-less (and rudderless) Cowboys; Green Bay (-3) over Denver [wanted to take Denver, and all our metrics say to…but Aaron Rogers, man…]; and Carolina (-7) over the listing Colts.

The only two underdogs we’re going with this weekend are San Francisco (+8.5) against the Rams [it’s just too high a spread], and we like Pittsburgh (+1.5) to beat Cincinnati outright at home this weekend, as much as we like the Bengals. Call it the 6-0 jinx – we don’t see any of the others losing (except Denver or Green Bay to each other, which is required), and it’s hard to see four 7-0 teams moving forward. Pittsburgh with Landry Jones has a functional offense, and the Bengals have a down game coming…

CFL) Two weeks left! Playoff spots and positions are on the line! Here are the standings as we speak…

CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE 2015						Week 18			FF Elo-style
Western Team	W	L	PpG	PF	PA	Avg PF	Avg PA	P +/-	RATING	FF rank
Edmonton	13	4	1.53	426	319	25.1	18.8	107	36.4	2
Calgary	12	4	1.50	408	320	25.5	20.0	88	38.4	1 (-2)
BC Lions	6	10	0.75	403	433	25.2	27.1	-30	32.7	4 (-1)
Winnipeg	5	12	0.59	342	481	20.1	28.3	-139	23.6	8
Saskatchewan	2	14	0.25	381	497	23.8	31.1	-116	23.1	9
Eastern Team	W	L	PpG	PF	PA	APF	APA	P +/-	RATING	FF rank
Hamilton	10	6	1.25	496	335	31.0	20.9	161	35.0	3 (+2)
Ottawa	10	6	1.25	408	420	25.5	26.3	-12	27.4	6
Toronto	9	7	1.13	392	461	24.5	28.8	-69	24.3	7 (+3)
Montreal	6	10	0.75	342	332	21.4	20.8	10	29.9	5 (-2)

Hamilton and Ottawa happen to have their two remaining games with each other on back to back weeks, starting this Sunday in Hamilton and concluding in Ottawa on Saturday the 7^th. Meanwhile, Toronto gets two home games to end the year, against BC this Friday and Winnipeg next Friday, but to place first they have to depend on Ottawa and Hamilton tying both of their games! (The CFL computers give them a one-in-ten-thousand chance. Not sure how they figure it.) For the Ti-Cats and RedBlacks, it comes down to the head-to-head; Hamilton owns the tie breaker in a three-way tie; if Toronto falls by the wayside, it becomes a soccer playoff scoring – point differential in two games.

Meanwhile, Edmonton plays its last game of the season on Sunday, and if they win against 6-10 Montreal, they clinch the division. If they lose, Calgary’s got to win both this Saturday at home against poor Saskatchewan, and next Saturday in Vancouver.

There are three playoff spots in each division – the first place gets a bye, which is all-important, and hosts the winner of the third-at-second place game the week before. So, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Toronto are in for the East, while in the West it’ll be Edmonton, Calgary, and either BC or Montreal, who would get in using what they call the “crossover” rule – if a fourth place team is better than the other third place team, they steal that playoff spot! MY FAVORITE PLAYOFF RULE! Last year, it worked the other way: BC stole a spot in the East. So why not root for Montreal to steal the West spot this time? Basically, though, BC owns the tiebreaker, so Montreal must win more of their two remaining games (@ Edmonton and home v Saskatchewan) than British Columbia does (@ Toronto and v Calgary). Very possible. It’s also conceivable that Winnipeg steals the spot, but they’d have to win at Toronto next Friday and have Montreal and BC lose both games. Good luck, Blue Bombers.

Our Picks This Week) Toronto over BC, 28-20…Calgary routs the RoughRiders, 41-19… Hamilton edges Ottawa at home, 33-27…Edmonton clinches by beating Montreal, 31-13.

Weekend Wesults (a day late - switched with UAD this week!)

Thanks for your patience with us flip-flopping these articles this week - with all the coaching changes (and more coming! Amazing!), we wanted to get our two cents - or rather, our two senses - in as quickly as we could! Besides, both the NFL and CFL had thrilling Monday night games to wait for the conclusion of... Anyway - on to our results!

So, our Canadian Football League predictions: Toronto over Ottawa (28-23) from last Tuesday; Hamilton over Saskatchewan (34-20)…Calgary holds off Edmonton (holding our breath on this one – 30-27)…BC to defeat Winnipeg (in Vancouver, not a stretch: 20-14)…and Montreal catches Toronto on six days rest (28-27, despite the Argos being favored otherwise). OOPS!

Results? 2-3 straight up (got the first two right), 4-1 against the spread (missed the last one). OVERALL, 37-28 straight up, 37-26-3 ATS.

Next, our National Football League predictions: Houston (+0.5) upsets Indianapolis Thursday night…on Sunday, Atlanta (-8) covers against Washington…Cincinnati (-3) covers against Seattle…Green Bay (-9.5) covers against the Rams…Philadelphia (-4.5) covers against New Orleans…and Buffalo (-2.5) covers at Tennessee. On the flip side of that coin, Cleveland (+6.5) beats the spread against the Ravens…Chicago (+9.5) stays close to the Chiefs…and Jacksonville (+2.5) at least covers against Tampa. In the late games Sunday, Arizona (-3), New England (-9.5), Denver (-5.5), and the Giants (-7) all win by more than those spreads against Detroit, Dallas, Oakland, and San Francisco, respectively. Finally, on Monday night, Pittsburgh (+3) upsets San Diego.

Results? Nailed 8 out of 14 completely (Green Bay, Philly, Cleveland, Chicago, Arizona, New England, Denver, and Pittsburgh, thanks to the wildcat Deveon Bell!); also picked winners Atlanta, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and the Giants; only missed two games completely – Houston lost to Indy, and Tampa covered against Jacksonville. So, 8-6 against the spread, 12-2 winners. OVERALL, we’re 52-24; against the spread we’re 49-27.

With our college picks, there are so MANY that it’s too time consuming to list all the wins and losses we went through, but let’s give you the overall breakdown…

There was a large group of games where we felt that the favorite would not only win but cover the Vegas spread… Of those 38 games, we went 19-19 regarding that particular call against the spread, and seven of those 38 actually lost their games (so we were 31-7 with those straight up).

Then, we had a list of 17 games where we thought the underdog would at least beat the spread and (in some cases) win outright:

Within that group, we correctly called four upsets (out of five predictions – VERY nice!) – Wisconsin over Nebraska, U Conn over UCF, Rice over Florida Atlantic, and San Diego St over Hawaii. Overall in this group, we nailed 16 out of 17 winners (16-1!) and went 9-8 against the spread.

Finally, we predicted margins of victory for all 54 FCS games last weekend, and nailed a couple right on the number: Bethune-Cookman Thursday night over SC State, 17-14, and Western Carolina over Mercer by three as well.  Overall, we got 38 winners (don’t know how pleased we are with a 38-16 record on this…), and there were 20 of those games in which we got within ten points of the actual score, which actually is pretty good! Some of the games, though, really caught us by surprise – Rhode Island shutting someone out? (20-0 over Delaware!) UC Davis winning and Montana losing? Maine and Richmond beating Albany and Elon surprised us, Central Connecticut beating ANYONE surprised us (35-33 over Bryant), and the Big South (where we PROMISED no upsets!) saw lowly Gardner-Webb upset a Liberty team we had picked by 19!

So, on the whole, our college football predictions looked like this for Week 5: Straight up, we went 85-24 all across the board this weekend (47-8 in the FBS alone), and against the Vegas spread, which is just for FBS games, we went a pedestrian 28-27. For the season, we are 448-117 overall and 240-215 ATS, with 2 pushes. That’s down to 79% straight up and still at 53% against the spread. Not as impressive as the rest of our body of work this year!

As for our competition success, in our NFL “Pigskin Pick’em”, we are in the top 10% out of 500,000 entries in the straight up competition, and in the top 1% (in fact, the top thousand entries) in the competition against the spread!

For the college pick’em game, as you might expect from our struggles above, we’re not nearly as high, although we ARE in the top third of the 250,000 entries at 68+%! So, room to improve!

(And don’t forget that we ended the AFL season in the top 1% for finals and 5% for the season!)

Finally, for the Canadian Football League “Pick’em” prediction contest, we’re still in the top fifth, continuing to sit right around #2000-#2500 out of 14,000 (somewhere between 80-85%, depending on how we do that week)!

So, we may not be perfect, but we’re WAY better than average on all fronts!

QUICK! Before Sunday's games start!

It occurs that we told you the consensus choices other pundits as far as the upcoming NFL season goes, but you've not gotten the benefit of the wisdom of the proven leader in prognostication - Following Football!

So, here are our division projections: 

AFC)

EAST: 1) New England. 2) Miami. Close 3) Buffalo. Distant 4) New York Jets.
NORTH: 1) Baltimore by two full games. 2) Pittsburgh. 3) Cincinnati. 4) Vacant. 5) Cleveland.
SOUTH: 1) Indianapolis. 2, closer than you think) Houston. 3, farther than they'd like) Jax. 4) Tennessee.
WEST: All four teams will have at least six wins AND losses... 1) Denver. 2) San Diego. 3) Kansas City. 4) Oakland, all within four games.

NFC)

EAST: 1) Philadelphia IF Sam Bradford is one of the 10-12 best QBs in the league; otherwise Dallas. 2) figure it out... 3) New York Giants. 4 with a stone) Washington.
NORTH: 1) Green Bay. 2) Minnesota. 3) Detroit.
SOUTH: 1) Vacant. 2) Carolina, reluctantly. 3) New Orleans and Atlanta (tie). 4) Tampa Bay.
WEST: 1) Seattle. 2) Arizona. 3) St. Louis. 4) San Francisco.

4) Chicago. (Not a typo.)

PLAYOFFS: AFC seed 3 Baltimore def. seed 6 Houston...seed 5 Pittsburgh def. seed 4 Denver. NFC seed 3 Philadelphia def. seed 6 Arizona...seed 5 Dallas def. seed 4 Carolina.

AFC seed 1 New England def. seed 5 Pittsburgh...seed 3 Baltimore def. seed 2 Indianapolis. NFC seed 1 Green Bay def. seed 5 Dallas...seed 2 Seattle def. seed 3 Philadelphia.

AFC Championship: New England def. Baltimore...NFC Championship: Green Bay def. Seattle.

SUPER BOWL: Green Bay and Cal Berkeley grad Aaron Rodgers def. New England and Bay Area product Tom Brady in Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, CA.

Why is the NFL schedule release such a big deal?

The answer, or at least the obvious answer, is that everything about the NFL is a big deal. Well covered by Peter King of MMQB and SI.com, the release of the 2015 schedule this morning was presented like the Camp David accords - a document of great import and interest, fundamentally altering the landscape of the universe - when it's just a flipp'n schedule! We already knew who was playing who and where: that's set the moment the previous season ends, by formula. So when teams play each other isn't really all that important... is it? Regardless of its importance, here's the full schedule, starting with Pittsburgh at New England on Thursday evening, September 10th.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Football League schedule has been released as well, and it's chock full of repeated games in a league with nine teams and twenty rounds. The opener of the regular season hits on Thursday, June 25th, where the Ottawa RedBlacks are given a chance to (temporarily) lead the entire league if they can win at the Montreal Alouettes. The championship game, the Grey Cup, will be played on Sunday, November 29th.

Remember yesterday, when I said that Character Counts?

So, yeah, I forgot I was talking about the National Football League. 

This is the league that sent Ben Roethlisberger back into the fourth quarter of a playoff game last Sunday after being hit and getting (to a 98% degree of probability) a concussion which under the league's own newly-enacted concussion rules should have kept him out of the rest of the game - if not from the concussion itself, then from the examination protocol which by definition would have taken longer than they had left in the game.

Except...no, wait! There's Big Ben coming back into the game, three flipping plays later, dropping back to throw...perhaps the WORST pass of his professional life, right into the arms of the waiting Ravens and ending the Steelers' season. Explain again how that was helpful to anyone involved?

This is the league that calls penalties, walks them off...and then reneges on them. If someone can offer a better explanation, be my guest. I pray that this one was incompetence. The "mixed all-star crew" makes that more plausible, although why a professional referee marks off a penalty and THEN gets all the relevant points of view is beyond explanation. 

Because if it's NOT incompetence, then that means they realized a Detroit first down with five minutes to go and a 20-17 lead past midfield probably made the game Detroit's to lose, a dangerous proposition if the league's flagship team, playing in its flagship stadium, were to lose to a no-public-perception team when the chance for an Ice Bowl rematch looms, Romo v Rodgers, and all that entails. Better to make it fourth down and pray that the corpse they installed as Lions coach actually punted on 4th and 1 at midfield. Which he did,  and it went ten yards, and Romo had a man's drive, and Garrett made a man's call to go for it on 4th and 6, and from THAT standpoint the Cowboys absolutely deserved to win... But outcome does not justify poor choices, or idiocy; the end never justifies the means.

And now, this is the league which paid for its own "independent" investigation to investigate ITSELF with regards to what it knew about the Ray Rice elevator video when it issued the insanely inadequate two game punishment for a criminal act heinous enough that no one will even HIRE Rice again.

The Mueller Report, paid for by two league owners, found that (surprise!) the League office ISN'T comprised of liars: just incompetents! (Hooray!) Of course, since all of their original explanations involved them lying about being incompetent, you can draw your own conclusions. Certainly, since they claimed in September that they asked EVERYONE for a copy of the elevator video back in February that the Mueller Report says the proof shows they didn't know existed...well, either the NFL blatantly lied about that in order to - to what, make themselves look inept? - or the report itself is completely farcical, in which case they've succeeded in making us forget about the Warren Commission Report. 

(If your history is as faulty as Roger Goodell's memory, the Warren Report proved that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. The problem is, no one at the time believed a word of it, although time has proven that that was indeed the most likely scenario.)

The credibility of bureaucrats is often dicey to begin with, but when your best case scenario was that you were an idiot? Are you sure that's who you want in charge of your favorite sport?

Going into the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs,...

...the tiers have been updated below. For obvious reasons, Carolina has made a significant jump upwards, although we resisted shoehorning them into the top eight - they really aren't a top eight team, although given their body of work they're probably not a top twelve team, either. (Seriously...their five game win streak includes three NFC South teams, and games against Cleveland with Manziel at QB and Arizona with the Lord knows who at QB. Don't get too impressed just yet.)

Curiously, all eight divisions are represented in the round of eight! The only division winner to lose (Pittsburgh) lost to a team within its own division. 

Here are the rankings at the eighth pole, as they say on the horse track...

FOLLOWING FOOTBALL - weekly rankings
	NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE						(including playoffs)
FF rank	Team	Div	week 17	ConfRc	DvRec	Home	Season	WC rnd
A1	Seattle Seahawks	N-W	A1	10-2	5-1	7-1	12-4	A1
A2	New England Patriots	A-E	A2	9-3	4-2	7-1	12-4	A2
A3	Green Bay Packers	N-N	A3	9-3	5-1	8-0	12-4	A3
A4	Denver Broncos	A-W	A4	10-2	6-0	8-0	12-4	A4
A5	Dallas Cowboys	N-E	A5	8-4	4-2	4-4	13-4	A5
B6	Indianapolis Colts	A-S	B8	9-3	6-0	6-2	12-5	B6
B7	Baltimore Ravens	A-N	C10	6-6	3-3	6-2	11-6	B7
B8	Detroit Lions	N-N	B6	9-3	5-1	7-1	11-6	B8
C09	Pittsburgh Steelers	A-N	B7	9-3	4-2	6-2	11-6	C09
C10	Cincinnati Bengals	A-N	C11	7-5	3-3	5-2-1	10-6-1	C10
C11	Carolina Panthers	N-S	D19	6-6	4-2	4-4	8-8-1	C11
C12	Arizona Cardinals	N-W	B9	8-4	3-3	7-1	11-6	C12
D13	Philadelphia Eagles	N-E	C12	6-6	4-2	6-2	10-6	D13
D14	San Diego Chargers	A-W	D13	6-6	2-4	5-3	9-7	D14
D15	Buffalo Bills	A-E	D14	5-7	4-2	5-3	9-7	D15
D16	Kansas City Chiefs	A-W	D15	6-6	3-3	6-2	9-7	D16
D17	Miami Dolphins	A-E	D16	7-5	3-3	4-4	8-8	D17
D18	San Francisco 49ers	N-W	D17	7-5	2-4	4-4	8-8	D18
D19	Houston Texans	A-S	D18	8-4	4-2	5-3	9-7	D19
E20	St. Louis Rams	N-W	E20	4-8	2-4	3-5	6-10	E20
E21	Cleveland Browns	A-N	E21	4-8	2-4	4-4	7-9	E21
E22	New Orleans Saints	N-S	E22	6-6	3-3	3-5	7-9	E22
E23	New York Giants	N-E	E23	4-8	2-4	3-5	6-10	E23
E24	Minnesota Vikings	N-N	E24	6-6	1-5	5-3	7-9	E24
F25	Atlanta Falcons	N-S	F25	6-6	5-1	3-5	6-10	F25
G26	Chicago Bears	N-N	G26	4-8	1-5	2-6	5-11	G26
G27	Washington Redskins	N-E	G27	2-10	2-4	3-5	4-12	G27
G28	New York Jets	A-E	G28	4-8	1-5	2-6	4-12	G28
G29	Oakland Raiders	A-W	G29	2-10	1-5	3-5	3-13	G29
H30	Jacksonville Jaguars	A-S	H30	2-10	1-5	3-5	3-13	H30
H31	Tampa Buccaneers	N-S	H31	1-11	0-6	0-8	2-14	H31
H32	Tennessee Titans	A-S	H32	2-10	1-5	1-7	2-14	H32

...as with the colleges, a few thoughts:

...The two conferences "homogenized" somewhat as the end of the season arrived - at one point, there was a huge clump of AFC teams in the middle of the rankings, with all of the NFC teams either above (six or seven of them) or below (...yeah...). But as you can probably see, while there is still a block of NFC teams (from #22-27), that clump of AFC in the middle was broken up by the Rams moving up to #20 and the 49ers dropping to #18 in particular.

...the NFC South spread out some as well, with Carolina's advancement and Tampa's continued fall: their "final" rankings were #11*, #22, #25, and #31.

...in fact, the overall total ranking of the AFC South (teams are ranked as #6, 19, 30, and 32) is just about as bad - they total 87, while the NFC South totals 89 (both subject to change as the playoffs advance). 

...at one point, the defending champion Seahawks were ranked below 14th (week 10), only to finish the season as the #1 team going into the knockout round. Good luck to Carolina and whoever else has to go into Seattle...

...conversely, Arizona was ranked #1 as recently as week 11, and Philadelphia and San Diego each spent time in the A tier during the middle of the season. Both of the latter missed the playoffs entirely, and the Cardinals might as well have.

...Again, like the colleges, we will start with this set of tiers when the 2015 season kicks off (modified with the results of the last seven playoff games still to come, of course!). We won't bother with numbers until enough new evidence is in, but there's no point adjusting for free agency and draft picks and "good offseasons" until we see them in actual game action (and rarely does pre-season help that - the teams who go 4-0 in preseason and 4-12 in the regular season are legion.)