A bad week in picks and survivor for yours truly means that Dan is tightening his grip on both competitions and with me fighting through physical injury (badly sprained ankle) and dodgy internet I feel in no shape to catch him up.

I suspect that the blog will be turning teal and orange much to Dan’s delight, and if that is the case then I will have to see if I can find the website resources I created when I dreamt up the idea of blog colours being the prize, or if I will have to recreate from scratch.

Looking back over my week fourteen picking mistakes, they are a mixture of things I did not see coming that I am not convinced could be predicted from the information I was working with, and things I am really annoyed about. If you had enough information on the injury situation of Kyler Murray then perhaps you could have predicted the Cardinals would beat the Giants with Murray once more scrambling effectively, but there were signs that Lamar Jackson was looking better running the ball against the Cowboys so I should have accounted for that in their game against the Browns. I’ve been a step slow to see changes in teams this season and part of dealing with the volatility of a matchup driven week to week sport like the NFL is to not hold on to recent results to tightly and be wary of reading too much into the last couple of weeks. I will definitely be digging into my picking history this off-season and re-assessing my plan for next week.

Gee:	Week 14:  6 – 10	Overall:  99 – 110
Dan:	Week 14:  10 – 6	Overall:  110 – 99

Chargers @ Raiders (-3.5)

Our Thursday Night game for week fifteen is a divisional matchup that sees the Las Vegas Raiders hosting the LA Chargers in a battle of recently moved franchises, which is immediately throwing me into a quandary. The Raiders have lost three out of their last four games and needed a helping hand from a zero-blitz Jets defence to win their one game in that stretch. With their chances of making the play-offs badly damaged by this run Raider’s head coach Jon Gruden fired defensive coordinator Paul Guenther and promoted Rod Marinelli, who will need all of his experience to make a difference to this unit on a short week. The LA Chargers have a promising young quarterback but despite having what on paper should be a competitive roster have not managed to turn that potential into wins. The Chargers may have beaten the Falcons last week but neither team is exactly engendering a lot of trust in me at the moment so the extra half point I’m getting compared to the consensus line is seeing me take the Chargers, but I’m not exactly excited about it.

Gee’s Pick:     Chargers
Dan’s Pick:     Raiders

Survivor Competition

My ability to jinx good NFC teams struck again in week fourteen when having lost earlier in the season with the Packers, I lost with the Saints going against the Eagles. To put that in perspective, both teams are 10-3 and I managed to pick them in one of their six losses. Dan of course had the advantage of not adjusting his pick to me and sailed through with the Titans but there was nothing stopping me from picking them last week so I should have just done that. As it happens, the Titans are my best shot this week so I am going with them against the Lions whilst Dan is opting to go against the Jaguars with the Ravens.

Current Score

Gee: 9
Dan: 11

Week 15 Selection:

Gee:    Titans
Dan:    Ravens

Bold Prediction of the Week

This week my bold prediction is that Jalen Hurts with have more rushing yards against the Cardinals than Lamar Jackson will have against the Jaguars. Now I think this might be madness, and it is a sign of the disruption to my week that I can’t remember my original thinking on why this would be the case when preparing for podcast, but it is at least bold.