Week 17 Picks: Put a little more thought into it

I have watched my weekly scores decline each and every week for the past five going back to Week 11. While I've somehow been able to maintain a second place standing in the Yahoo pool, I've now slipped into fourth in the PoolHost league. And with one last weekend of the regular season, I had to strongly consider how I wanted to approach this final week.

Was it worth it to pick a few upsets in hope of moving all the way up to first? Or would it be smarter to play it safe and hope that, in the spirit of the pool, just my lowest ranked games ended up being the upsets?

At the conclusion of the season, I'll divulge more about my methodology this year—a formula I devised last season and pretty much maintained all throughout this 2010 regular season, give or take a few weeks. But for Week 17, ™ was in town and I couldn't spend too much time scribbling out numbers from the Power Rankings or such, so I quickly checked how the other four sheets would look, took those into account, and decided how to place my bets completely on my own with teams still playing for something usually given the most favor.

Here's how those five regular hypothetical sheets would have looked:

PFW Spread	Yahoo Users	Wunderdog	Brian Burke	My Numbers
16 (11 ½)	16 (98%)	16 (27-13)	16 (.85)	16 (241)
15 (10 ½)	15 (96%)	15 (27-17)	15 (.81)	15 (181)
14 (9)	14 (95%)	14 (27-18)	14 (.77)	14 (155)
13 (7 ½)	13 (92%)	13 (28-20)	12 (.76)	13 (90)
11.5 (7)	12 (91%)	12 (27-20)	12 (.76)	12 (89)
11.5 (7)	11 (89%)	11 (25-18)	12 (.76)	11 (83)
9.5 (6)	10 (87%)	10 (23-17)	10 (.75)	10 (71)
9.5 (6)	9 (85%)	9 (28-21)	9 (.73)	9 (70)
7.5 (5)	8 (80%)	8 (26-20)	8 (.72)	8 (58)
7.5 (5)	6.5 (77%)	7 (23-18)	7 (.70)	7 (49)
6 (4)	6.5 (77%)	6 (25-20)	6 (.67)	6 (43)
5 (3 ½)	4.5 (74%)	5 (21-16)	5 (.66)	5 (39)
3.5 (3)	4.5 (74%)	4 (25-23)	4 (.64)	4 (37)
3.5 (3)	3 (72%)	3 (23-21)	3 (.62)	3 (14)
1.5 (2 ½)	2 (60%)	2 (22-20)	2 (.60)	2 (9)
1.5 (2 ½)	1 (57%)	1 (21-20)	1 (.54)	1 (1)
99.5 points (11-5)	106 points (12-4)	111 points (12-4)	108 points (12-4)	92 points (8-8)

And without putting together those Power Rankings statistics, here's how I submitted my Week 17 sheet:

16 points

Atlanta Falcons (12-3) over Carolina Panthers (2-13)

+81/-7 : +227/241/-14 : -7/+146

15 points

Baltimore Ravens (11-4) over Cincinnati Bengals (4-11)

+88/-6 : +168/181/-13 : -7/+80

14 points

Indianapolis Colts (9-6) over Tennessee Titans (6-9)

+45/+5 : +47/43/+4 : -1/+2

13 points

New England Patriots (13-2) over Miami Dolphins (7-8)

+73/-13 : +47/83/-36 : -23/-26

12 points

New Orleans Saints (11-4) over Tampa Bay Buccaneers (9-6)

+78/-11 : +94/89/+5 : +16/+16

11 points
San Diego Chargers (8-7) over Denver Broncos (4-13)
+5/+1 : +45/71/-26 : -27/+50



10 points
Pittsburgh Steelers (11-4) over Cleveland Browns (5-10)

+58/-12 : +84/90/-6 : +6/+26

9 points
Philadelphia Eagles (10-5) over Dallas Cowboys (5-10)

+22/+4 : +28/58/-30 : -34/+6

8 points
New York Giants (9-6) over Washington Redskins (6-9)
+41/+8 : +33/49/-16 : -24/-8



7 points
New York Jets (10-5) over Buffalo Bills (4-11)

+47/-14 : +141/155/-14 : 0/+94

6 points
Green Bay Packers (9-6) over Chicago Bears (11-4)
+41/0 : +20/14/+34 : +34/-21

5 points

San Francisco 49ers (5-10) over Arizona Cardinals (5-10)

+2/+53 : +32/37/+69 : +16/+30

4 points

Kansas City Chiefs (10-5) over Oakland Raiders (7-8)

+63/+7 : +102/70/+32 : +25/+39

3 points
St. Louis Rams (7-8) over Seattle Seahawks (6-9)

+15/+22 : +41/1/+40 : +18/+26

2 points 

Houston Texans (5-10) over Jacksonville Jaguars (8-7)

-8/+31 : +22/9/+31 : 0/+30

1 point

Detroit Lions (5-10) over Minnesota Vikings (6-9)

+1/+68 : +40/39/+79 : +21/+39