Cameron Ford sent Commish an email last week. "Hey Commish, awesome pool. Do you know what you can do with data from 10,000 picks? BOOM." It took Commish a good five minutes to recover from the awesomeness of Cameron's data visualizations. Get at us, FiveThirtyEight! Read Cameron's full bio

Alright, fellow football fans - let's dive into some data. Consider this first post your introduction to what we can do with BFIG's picking data. The longer the season runs, the more data we'll have, and the more interesting questions we'll get to ask. If you have ideas or things you want to know, let me and The SZN guys know!

Full data below, followed by my insights. These are live visualizations, so hover over things to find out more information, follow instructions for interactivity, and enjoy!

(Commish's note: Make sure to click through the tabs; there's some fascinating stuff here!)

THE DATA (BEST VIEWED ON A LAPTOP)

INSIGHTS AND PREDICTIONS

• ~Half the league sticks with the obvious choices each week. This week, half are on the Dolphins. Or, more accurately, half are picking against the Browns, essentially banking on a blind squirrel not finding an acorn.
• Occasionally, the blind squirrel DOES find the acorn, and do you really want to be part of the Titanic when the iceberg (aka the Browns) strikes? "It couldn't sink, they said."
• Important insight: The Lions are terrible and ruined my season along with 366 other poor souls. That sucked.
• I appreciate that nobody believes Belichick will keep winning with QBs so obscure their own mothers aren't aware they're QBs. I'm excited for the inevitable "everyone flocks to the Patriots when Brady returns, and they lose." It's going to be ironic and brilliant and you heard it here first.
• Given it appears half of the league has no Moxie, let's look at the other half. I used FiveThirtyEight data to get win probabilities for each game based on a team's history. This doesn't take into account player absences (e.g. the Browns' RG3, Josh McCown, Coleman, Gordon all missing this Sunday), but nonetheless, it gives us a starting point. As you can see in the "Who's got the Most Moxie?" tab, @bhawks13's first three picks work out to just a 10 percent chance of making it to Week 4.
• It appears this username is a nod to the Seahawks amazing 2013 season, so, cheers. @bhawks13 chose Seattle in Week 1, then abandoned ship this week by selecting the 49ers (playing at Seattle). This is either a very bitter fan who now has serious cynicism about a bunch of high schoolers trying to masquerade as an NFL offensive line, or a die-hard sacrificing himself to the survival gods in an attempt to reverse-jinx the Seahawks back into dominant form. I choose to believe the latter. Seahawks fans everywhere thank you, @bhawks13.
• The "Where did people go" and "Where are we headed" tabs, named Sankey Charts, give a fun visual for how people are transitioning between picks. You can see that 846 people went from Seattle in Week 1 to Carolina in Week 2, then 822 people went from Carolina in Week 2 to Miami in Week 3. I dub thee bandwagon pickers, and I'm putting you on notice. I'm watching. Make some weird picks, let's get crazy.

Until next time! Go Browns!