The title pool is down to less than 10 percent of its original size. Who's gonna bring the Moxie? Who's gonna send Commish a drunke celebration YouTube video following a Week 15 overtime win? Who's gonna wear the Belt?
Commish has been relatively light on stats and analysis compared to previous seasons. Consider today the day that changes.
Yes, I love penning football poems and epic emails, but I also love me some MATH. Let's do this thing.
BFIG HEALTH CHECK: CARDINAL-TINGED CATASTROPHE AVERTED
Damage done: 410 started the week; seven picked teams lost but just 39 people dropped out. 371 of us are moving on to Week 11. (Second Chance lost 125 people in its first week of picking two teams; it's down to 215.)
Who did the damage? Mainly the Chargers, who Chargersed in typical Chargers fashion. Philip Rivers threw FOUR fourth quarter picks, including one in the end zone, leading to a yet another come-from-ahead collapse. Still, just six percent of the pool was riding San Diego, so the overall damage was small.
Could it have been worse? Much worse. We made Arizona our biggest pick of the year, percentage-wise, and the 14-point home favorites responded by nearly losing to the Chippernicks. Arizona outgained San Francisco 443-281, but also turned the ball over four times. The game was tied until the Cards kicked a game-winning field goal.
Team SZN record: 0-0. Commish is still alive in NBA Survivor, though!
THE GOLDEN SURVIVAL SPREADSHEET IS BACK
We're entering serious strategy territory now. Some are happily holding the Patriots in their back pocket, others are looking at a top-heavy pick slate and hoping some mediocre teams get hot, and a fortunate few have made it this far using almost none of the NFL's top teams.
This data is for only the 371 people remaining in the title pool. "538 Elo rank" is the team quality ranking system used by FiveThirtyEight. The numbers, followed by some analysis:
- Arizona has been busy this year. Despite being the most picked team among survivors (meaning the Cards won that game), Arizona has still knocked out the most people in BFIG.
- The top five teams, per 538's Elo rating, are clumped together - sitting at fifth- through ninth-most picked.
- Pretty wild that our top four most-picked teams all have at least four losses.
- Only 13 of the 371 remaining title poolers have picked Oakland. The Raiders, at 7-2, are one game off the NFL's best record. Clearly, we're not buying them yet (and, to a certain extent, neither is 538's algorithm).
- Only two people have picked the Lions, because almost everyone who has put their survivor life on Detroit thus far is no longer in the pool.
- Houston and Dallas are tied for BFIG's best record so far - they're both 6-1 when picked.
- Cleveland has lost so many games, the number didn't fit in the cell. (It's 10, for those counting.) I promise I didn't do that on purpose.
Commish will continue updating this as the season goes. If you have other stats you'd like to see, let me know, or better yet, do the calculations and analysis yourself, and we'll post it on the website.
The next post - coming today or tomorrow - will be a killer analysis by fellow SZNer, Haiming Chu. He calculated the probability of every remaining survivor going 17-0, and ranked everyone by likelihood to win the belt.