I like this post, it has nothing to do with you personally trying to handicap a game.

i pick teams that i think will win.. went oak wk 1 jets wk 2 both on road

Going with Atlanta & Denver this week. Took some Cincy as well, because I want a 3rd team for more balance and want to keep Green Bay, Kansas City & New England for later

Went with GB this week 16 out of 82 left

Went 1 ATL as I had nothing left to choose from in that pool

Then 2 Cinci's in a pool you can re-use

I don't care if the team is playing in London, the USA, Antarctica, at home, or on the road. Just look at the damn MLs.

Picks all finalised for my pool, I went with 1x Cin and 1x Den

Surprisingly not including my picks all 5 other entries remaining picked a different team - ended up 2x Cin, 2x Den, 1x KC, 1x Atl and... 1x Baltimore for some reason?

Guess i'm fading KC, Atl and Baltimore this week.

No, it is not a hard and fast rule that I have. But I try to avoid picking teams that fall into one of those categories if I can.

Why not just look at the MLs and pick based on that?

Cincinnati

well you would never win a pool if you did that because the biggest ML favorite has lost at least once the last 15 years. So I suppose you have to use a little more than blindly taking ML's.

So if you're not looking at MLs, does that mean you're personally handicapping the games?

next week

panthers v cards
viks vs bears
ten vs jags

Looks like the absurd Ravens pick busted in my pool so we have 4 through including one my CIN entry (assuming Atlanta hold on from here, otherwise we have two gone) and 2 pending on Denver including my other entry.

I'll check out the Bengals line as well as the rest, but i'm assuming i'll be on 1x Denver and 1x Vikings next week assuming my other entry survives. Vikings disappointed this week, but Chicago are bad and even home field shouldn't help them anywhere near enough there. Week 9 Chiefs + Packers looks good, then after that there are a bunch of possible paths, and if I have both entries left there's a good chance i'll be 3-4 handed by then with 2 entries or if I lose an entry I could easily be heads up depending how big the favourite that gets upset is.

I guess kind of yeah. I've managed to do really well the past 5 years with my dumb strategy.

That's a really lazy way of playing Survivor.

so im assuming you were out last year in week 2 then? The top 4 ML's lost in week 2 last year. I just remember winning a few survivor pools because everything fell right.

atl just lost lol

Next week is going to be a lot of fun. Only 5 teams favored between 4.5 & 6.5 points at the moment

going carolina at home off a bye week... then every team that plays the browns

You're going to pick a 1-5 team hosting a 3-3 team? For reals?

Can't remember what week it was, but yeah, the top 3 faves lost once, and I was on all 3 of them.

3 through, 2 eliminated with the Chargers comeback. Now i'm kinda scared to fade them next week, i'll figure it out once we get there.

Will have 1/3 or 2/5 entries in the pool depending whether Denver hold tomorrow

Moved on with KC. "Saved" DEN for the brutal week 8 but seeing that Charger win, makes me nervous.

Hope we see some positive things tonight in the DEN-HOU game.

The best Week 8 play (if you have balls) is Tampa -1 vs Oakland. About 15% of the public will be on Tampa. The line screams trap. You need to use handicapping to win these and this line reeks and is begging for Raiders money.

Putting 'saved' in quotes for waiting to use a team in the following week is tilting me