NFL 2015 Season Week 17 Picks

Where's the picks?

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14459464/carolina-panthers-coach-ron-rivera-says-wishes-team-game-moved-back-later

Basically, what Ron Rivera is saying is "I wish we had some arbitrarially assigned advantage that would determine our gameday strategy."

Picks are back. They were set to 1/3/15, so the site considered the games over.

I'm not sure what to say about the whole "they'd be better off losing" argument regarding the Packers-Vikings game. If you're main objective is simply to make it out of the first round then I guess maybe there's some validity to that. The argument goes that the winner will likely be playing a home game vs the Seahawks and the loser likely will be playing on the road against the currently 8-7 Redskins. However, this is assuming that the Seahawks lose to the Cardinals. So let's go through a couple of scenarios:

Scenario 1
Packers win, Seahawks win: GB hosts Minnesota; Redskins host Seahawks --> If Packers win, they play in Arizona. If Packers somehow make it out of Arizona, they would be playing the winner of Seahawks-Panthers. If it's Seahawks, they could end up playing a home game in the NFC champsionship game.

Scenario 2
Packers Win, Seahawks lose: GB hosts Seattle --> If packers get past Seattle, they likely will play 2 road games against teams that beat them handily in the regular season.

Scenario 3
Packers Lose: Packers (5 seed) play Redskins; Seattle is 6 seed --> Scenario is essentially the same as Scenario 2, but 2nd round would likely go through Carolina. Packers still have possibility of hosting Seattle in NFCC game.


I wouldn't put it past the Seahawks to beat the Cardinals, in which case, a Packers win would have them playing the Vikings. All things considered, I'd rather be the 3 seed and have the chance of hosting of the NFC Championship game should the opportunity present itself.

Then again, the Packers beat the Seahawks already this year, and the Seahawks got swept by the Rams, who the Packers also beat this year. Are the Seahawks really that scary if they are playing in Lambeau?

Furthermore, in all reality it should be the Vikings hoping that they lose. If they do win, they host the Seahawks regardless, and the Seahawks pretty much dominated them in Minnesota just a few weeks ago. If I were a Vikings fan, I'd take a loss this week as a welcome consolation.

The way I see it the Vikings are at least one year ahead of schedule and already playing with house money. I'll take the division, because at least that's something.

Getting to go to DC would be a nice consolation prize though.