Week 12 Picks: After the fact

I had the best Thanksgiving holiday I've had in quite some time EVER. No, it had nothing to do with football, of course. But I'll elaborate more on that once I catch up on this NFL stuff. God forbid we have the regular schedule of predictions be offset by posts containing genuine emotion.

As usual, the actual holiday games were pretty much mismatches, leaving me concerned more with the weekend's slate of games. As the Power Rankings summary will show, most everybody had the same picks for relatively high amounts for Thursday's three games and it was indeed the Sunday contests that made the difference—with the otherwise forgettable Monday night game determining a winner or two. Like I said, I'll get to those pool summaries in the upcoming Power Rankings post for Week 12, but in the meantime, there were picks to be made the morning of Turkey Day. So for the sake of posterity, this is how the predictions lined up for Week 12.

Seeing as the "rolling deadline" finally kicked in for the PoolHost league, it seems appropriate that Wunderdog once again is showing remarkably different picks than what I last saw posted for them Thursday afternoon. Of course, since I didn't write down what they had up on Thanksgiving, here's what's posted now and how all five of the usual sheets fared:

PFW Spread	Yahoo Users	Wunderdog	Brian Burke	My Numbers
16 (10 ½)	15.5 (96%)	16 (23-13)	15.5 (.84)	16 (125)
14.5 (9 ½)	15.5 (96%)	15 (26-17)	15.5 (.84)	15 (106)
14.5 (9 ½)	13.5 (95%)	14 (27-19)	14 (.76)	14 (103)
13 (8)	13.5 (95%)	13 (25-17)	12  (.75)	13 (79)
12 (7)	12 (91%)	12 (25-18)	12 (.75)	12 (71)
11 (6 ½)	11 (90%)	11 (28-22)	12 (.75)	11 (43)
10 (4)	10 (83%)	10 (24-19)	10 (.72)	10 (42)
9 (3)	9 (81%)	9 (20-15)	9 (.71)	9 (40)
6 (3)	8 (80%)	8 (26-23)	8 (.69)	8 (32)
6 (3)	7 (78%)	7 (23-20)	7 (.68)	7 (27)
6 (3)	5 (74%)	6 (25-23)	6 (.65)	6 (26)
6 (3)	5 (74%)	5 (22-20)	5 (.62)	5 (23)
6 (3)	5 (74%)	4 (22-21)	4  (.60)	4 (13)
3 (2 ½)	3 (60%)	3 (24-23)	3 (.59)	3 (7)
1.5 (2)	2 (56%)	2 (21-21)	1.5 (.51)	2 (6)
1.5 (2)	1 (52%)	1 (25-25)	1.5 (.51)	1 (1)
102 points (11-5)	107 points (10-6)	114 points (12-4)	107 points (10-6)	108 points (11-5)

So I guess Wunderdog did pretty well—after switching from Tennessee to Houston some time between Thursday and today. I can't wait to make my own "rolling deadline" moves, but here's what I went with on Thursday for the week:

16 points

New York Jets (8-2) over Cincinnati Bengals (2-8)

+44/-2 : +90/103/-13 : -11/+46

15 points

Pittsburgh Steelers (7-3) over Buffalo Bills (2-8)

+24/-9 : +97/106/-9 : 0/+73

14 points

Cleveland Browns (3-7) over Carolina Panthers (1-9)

-6/+19 : +82/71/+11 : -8/+88

13 points

New York Giants (6-4) over Jacksonville Jaguars (6-4)

+19/+4 : +32/27/+5 : +1/+13

12 points

New England Patriots (8-2) over Detroit Lions (2-8)

+36/-12 : +114/125/-11 : +1/+78

11 points
Baltimore Ravens (7-3) over Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7-3)
+59/-4 : +55/40/+15 : +19/-4



10 points
New Orleans Saints (7-3) over Dallas Cowboys (3-7)

+39/-8 : +38/79/-41 : -33/-1

9 points
Kansas City Chiefs (6-4) over Seattle Seahawks (5-5)

+29/-4 : +23/23/0 : +4/-6

8 points
Denver Broncos (3-7) over St. Louis Rams (4-6)
-11/+32 : -2/42/+40 : +8/+9



7 points
Philadelphia Eagles (7-3) over Chicago Bears (7-3)

+31/+9 : +12/7/+19 : +10/-19

6 points
Green Bay Packers (7-3) over Atlanta Falcons (8-2)
+45/-7 : +44/1/+43 : +50/-1

5 points

Washington Redskins (5-5) over Minnesota Vikings (3-7)

-19/-18 : +25/32/-7 : +11/+44

4 points

Miami Dolphins (5-5) over Oakland Raiders (5-5)

+8/-14 : +22/13/+9 : +23/+14

3 points
San Francisco 49ers (3-7) over Arizona Cardinals (3-7)

-5/+24 : +34/6/+40 : +16/+39

2 points 

Tennessee Titans (5-5) over Houston Texans (4-6)

+4/-7 : +20/26/-6 : +1/+16

1 point

Indianapolis Colts (6-4) over San Diego Chargers (5-5)

+40/+5 : +42/43/-1 : -6/+2