I noticed a few things in the comments section of last week’s Nailed It! that needed to be brought to light. The first was this spectacular comment from Donny33: “Imma laugh so hard when blaine gabbert beats the falcons.” Well, Donny, I sure hope that you got your laughs in, and are still laughing now.
The second thing that I noticed seemed to be a big issue with some of the commenters. They felt that I did not award them with an Against the Grain pick when they thought they deserved it. Let me clear this one up for you. For a game to qualify as an Against the Grain game, there must be only 10% or less of our prognosticators that correctly picked the winner. Margin of victory does not come into play, only that so few people picked that team. One game that came into question often last week was the Denver – Green Bay one. Eight of the 23 prognosticators picked Denver to win, so that obviously did not qualify as an Against the Grain game. I hope that this cleared things up a bit.
Now, with all that said, we had a fantastic week this week. There was yet another correct Final Score prediction, as well as five Against the Grain picks. All told, we scored 22 points this week, finally eclipsing our week 1 mark. Well done!
Anyway, enough of my rambling, bring on the games!
The Games
As always, here is the slate for next week’s games. Simply copy and paste it to the comments, and add your predicted scores after the team names. (Substitute scores for the XX and YY.)
- Carolina Panthers XX @ Tennessee Titans YY
- Chicago Bears XX @ St. Louis Rams YY
- Dallas Cowboys XX @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers YY
- Detroit Lions XX @ Green Bay Packers YY
- New Orleans Saints XX @ Washington Redskins YY
- Minnesota Vikings XX @ Oakland Raiders YY
Once you have called your shots down below, please update the spreadsheet. Here is the link. (Only update the cells in your own column.)
With all of that out of the way, read on to find exactly who Nailed It!
Final score
These are the people who have (somehow) correctly predicted the final outcome of a game. The only shot that was called that could be considered more famous than these belongs to Babe Ruth. Bow down before their wisdom! (And make sure you ask them for next week’s lotto numbers.)
- Atlanta @ San Francisco – Staffords_Glove correctly predicted that the 49ers would defeat the Falcons with a score of 17-16!
Scoring differential
These are the ones who correctly predicted the margin by which the victors would best their competition. These are also the ones to consult if you want to bet the spread.
- St. Louis @ Minnesota – MIB, MKE, and niemerg1 all correctly predicted that the Vikings would win by three points.
- New York Giants @ Tampa Bay – DanOnWis correctly predicted that the Giants would win by 14 points.
Total combined score
These are those who somehow managed to pick the correct total score but did not have any clue in how the teams would actually get there. Still, if you want to bet an over/under, you could do worse than consulting with them.
- St. Louis @ Minnesota – Donny Donowitz III Esquire correctly predicted that the teams would combine to score 39 points.
- Tennessee @ New Orleans – DanOnWis correctly predicted that the teams would combine to score 62 points.
- New York Giants @ Tampa Bay – Maized and Confused, MKE, Raji, and sgunderson17 all correctly predicted that the teams would combine to score 50 points.
- Atlanta @ San Francisco – Maized and Confused, MKE, Raji, and sgunderson17 all correctly predicted that the teams would combine to score 33 points.
Winning team’s score
- None this week.
Against the grain
Oftentimes, our picks will be unanimous. However, there are those who will sometimes walk their own path.
- Green Bay @ Carolina – Natradamus and Reggie were the only two (out of 23!) that predicted the Panthers would defeat the Packers.
- Tennessee @ New Orleans – ALLSAINTSROW was the only one (out of 23!) that predicted the Titans would defeat the Saints.
- Chicago @ San Diego – C-Jammin and MIB were the only two (out of 23!) that predicted the Bears would defeat the Chargers.
Week 9 Leaderboard
Now on to the leaderboard!
There was quite a bit of movement, and reorganization on the leaderboard this week. By scoring three points this week, MKE vaulted from being tied for fourth place into sole possession of second place with nine points. Right behind him sits ALLSAINTSROW with eight points after scoring a point this week with his Against the Grain pick. And then there is a new name up on the leaderboard. By scoring two points this week, DanOnWis jumped up over four other people to find himself tied for fourth place with seven points. This is all well and good, but there are more and more people lining up just off the board. I believe that soon that we will see some of the four people with six points, or the five people with five points up on the leaderboard soon.
With that said, here is the leaderboard after Week 9 (in the case of a tie, the names are arranged alphabetically):
- Gabes222 – 10 points
- MKE – 9 points
- ALLSAINTSROW – 8 points
- DanOnWis – 7 points
- Jmac34 – 7 points
Again, I just wanted to give one last big shoutout to Staffords_Glove for his correct final score prediction! That is now the sixth this season in only nine weeks! And this makes it three weeks in-a-row with a correct final score! Amazing! I sure hope that we can get more throughout the year, and I want to see if we can keep the streak going.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s give a little congratulatory clap to all the people who are listed in this article. Or not. Your choice.
If you would like to have your name forever enshrined in the vast expanse that is the internet, simply call your shot in the comment section below for the games of the NFC North and NFC South. Once you have done that, please update the spreadsheet using the link provided. I will be reviewing the spreadsheet and keeping track as the season goes on. And who knows? Maybe you’ll even see your name in the leaderboard!
If you cannot call your shots on Thursday, as is custom, it is still possible to participate. As long as your called shots are posted to the spreadsheet before it gets locked at the start of the games, I will include them.