NFL 2010 Season Week 11 Picks

Bye Week Article. It turns out that there really much of an advantage to playing after the bye week. Since 1990, teams have a .528 winning percentage after a bye week. That's equivalent to an 8 win season. That's pretty close to the .500 winning percentage that teams have not coming off a bye.

Home field advantage is about .550. .528 is a plenty big advantage.

Week 11 is about when the real season starts for Lions fans. With a loss to Buffalo we are now in 5th place but only a game out of first!!!!

NFL 2011 DRAFT ORDER
Buffalo (1-8)
Carolina (1-8)
Cincinnati (2-7)
Dallas (2-7)
Detroit (2-7)
Arizona (3-6)
San Francisco (3-6)
Cleveland (3-6)
Minnesota (3-6)
Denver (3-6)
St. Louis (4-5)
San Diego (4-5)
Houston (4-5)
Washington (4-5)
Kansas City (5-4)
Jacksonville (5-4)
Miami (5-4)
Tennessee (5-4)
Chicago (6-3)
Tampa Bay (6-3)
Seattle* (5-4)
New England - from Oakland* (5-4)
New York Giants* (6-3)
Baltimore* (6-3)
New Orleans* (6-3)
Indianapolis* (6-3)
Pittsburgh* (6-3)
Atlanta* (7-2)
Green Bay* (6-3)
New York Jets* (7-2)
New England* (7-2)
Philadelphia* (6-3)

It was a valiant effort to let Buffalo win last week and get the tiebreaker in Detroit's favor, but my money would be on Carolina at this point.

Not sure that the straight winning percentage matters too much, although with a large enough sample size maybe you would expect it to be at .500 But maybe it's possible that those teams were favored to win 52.8% (or even more) of the time just because they were the better team, regardless of the bye week.

And the Vikings used their bye week to face one of their toughest opponents, the Jets. The Packers had to face the Jets after the Jets bye. Waaaaah

I assume you're trying to make some sort of point there.

Yes, the Vikings got one of their toughest match ups on the "best" week for them. The Packers have an easier opponent coming off their bye, so it's really less of an overall advantage for the Packers. Although that's assuming a greedy type method where you would prefer to apply the "bye week advantage" to your toughest match up. Which is probably not optimal, you would want to apply the advantage to the hardest match up that would be swung in your favor with the bye week advantage. Otherwise you end up losing anyway, like the Vikings did.

Thanks for nothing Purdue. Now I have to root for Ohio State. Gross.

Ok, I'll break the ice. First of all, muuuhaaaha! Secondly, Favre should retire now. There's really no upside to staying with the team at this point. Thirdly, Chilly is a horrible nickname. How about this, Childress gets fired and Favre takes over as head coach?

The whole world could agree it makes sense, he'd still be branded a quitter as soon as it happened. He doesn't have to actually retire to not play, though he should play next week, both so his last game isn't against the Packers, and so his streak ends at home.

Childress should have been fired 4 years ago. Until this season the Vikings have been winning despite his best efforts otherwise.

Keep Childress in there. He's got 4 years left on his contract. I say take a chance on him. They might be bad enough every year to get a bunch of good draft picks.

aka, The Matt Millen Strategy


Sure he would be, but he's already been labeled a flip-flopper and a traitor and a sexter, so adding in quitter won't really matter in 10 years anyway and he doesn't have to risk further injury. Also he could be branded as classy for retiring and not forcing his new coach to bench him, which they should do at some point, at the latest when they are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, which may not be too far from now. And it seems fitting that his last game would be against the Packers.

Childress is fired
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5838652

Well, again, he can be "classy" and step aside for T-Jack and ultra-raw-but-scary-athlete Webb, but not retire halfway into the season.

Thank god Childress is finally gone.

What's the point of him being there if he's going to step aside? He's never shown any interest in being a mentor, or a sideline asset. He came to win, he failed, he should go home.

The last three weeks for the Packers:
Outscored opponents 85-10
Fired two opposing coaches

Is the new measure of success in Green Bay going to be championships AND number of opposing coaches to be fired directly after playing the Packers? I wonder when the last time was when one team played two consecutive games that resulted in the respective coaches being fired afterwards.

Don't flatter yourselves for happening to be the team to play two teams well overdue for a change giving both teams their 7th (essentially eliminating) loss. It could have been a 1 point loss on the road against the Steelers, Childress was going.

Maybe Zygi is like Caesar and figured he had to wait to hear from the mob. When the mob started chanting, he knew what to do.

He was well aware of what the mob wanted, he was just reportedly holding out hope they could make a run, and switching coaches isn't generally the way to win now.

People can point to the Cowboys having 2 wins in a row as an example, but ultimately we have no way of knowing if that's a coincidence or not.

I wonder if Mike Singletary will be the Packers next victim. Doubtful, but now the Packers have a reputation, so the question at least has to be asked. Also, I've heard that Wilf comes from a long history of family owned business where he's basically only worked with and managed family members. He hasn't had a history of dealing with making some of the tough decisions involving firing people, because the people around him have been family. Obviously there's a lot more to it than just that, but with a family owned business, you sometimes don't treat people the same as if they were just co-workers/subordiantes. That could account for why he kept Childress for so long.

Well, I think he was looking at the improvement of the team and giving credit to the man in charge without realizing that he should take most of the credit. The Vikings went from a giant tightwad to a guy who essentially gave them a blank check to bring players in. How could Wlif have not expected improvement?

That said, it's been known for years from ex players that Childress is a jackass who thinks he knows what's best.

Outside of Favre last year, and even then it was only because he had enough clout to get away with some adlibbing, every QB has sucked in Childress' system, and openly complained how unimaginative and rigid it is. He doesn't react to situations, or really game plan at all. He also plugs the player into the system, instead of tailoring the system to what the player is good at.

For all we know Jackson, who showed flashes in a system almost designed to hide them, will be gone before we find out he's been a good qb in a shitty system.

Back when both teams were looking for coaches Childress and McCarthy were both in the running to be coach of the Packers, I was actually hoping Childress would sign with the Packers. Boy was I wrong, and boy did the Packers get the better end of the bargain. Now the Vikings are in total disarry, and the Packers are still built to be successful for years to come.

I think generally speaking, firing your coach midseason is done almost symbolically more than anything. It's sort of to show the fans and maybe the players that you are going to make a change. I don't think anyone ever expects a team to turn it on just because the coach is gone.