I am stunned!

That's how I opened my comment after the Sunday afternoon games were all in the book. One reason, of course, was the way the Cowboys lost at Seattle. It's been a while since someone other than the Eagles has given them a physical beat-down.

The other reason was how badly we, 10-for-10 pickers, did at picking games. As a consensus, we only got half the games right - eight games were picked correctly by the majority of players, and eight games were missed.

Many of us had or came close to establishing new "personal worsts". I only got four right myself this week. Part of that was my "system" - I always pick the Cowboys to win (that isn't changing), and I always pick division rivals to lose. If the Redskins hadn't blown a late lead against the Rams, that scheme would have had me go 0-for-4 But, the Giants and Eagles were lucky to win and should have lost their games. And, I expected the Cowboys to win. So, I should have been 4-for-4, right?

One more piece of "genius" before beginning the report - I was shaking my head over the love you guys were showing a Bengals team that looked bad in week #1. Almost 75% of us included their game with the Browns as one of their ten. Every single one of you had the Bengals, so I picked the Browns. If the Browns had won, I would have patted myself on the back and told football mensa to move over - there's a new genius in the house.

Maybe I should have instead violated another one of my rules - never pick a western team that has to travel across three time zones and play an early game. That had to be a gimme, right? Arizona at New England. Arizona doesn't do DST, so this time of the year they had the same three time zones to travel as a West Coast team.

I guess football mensa does need to move over for the crowning of a new genius, but it isn't for me. Last week, boyman went 10-for-10 in his first time to play. This week, no one came close. But, boyman is the only genius to pick the Cardinals over the Patriots.

Hop on over to the other side of the jump and I'll report how we did this past week.

Last week set a 10-for-10 record, with 222 participants (old record was 93). This week had a dropoff, but not that many. We had 199 total participants. However, only 197 played ten games. For the second week in a row (one last week, and two this week), players made Thursday Game Only picks and never came back for their other nine games.

We added new players - 21 to be exact - who missed out on week #1 - but we lost 44 others who didn't come back for week #2. So, my spreadsheet now has 243 names. I will be updating that each week in this table:

The first couple of weeks are always hard to predict, because we tend to make our picks based on teams' strength last year. As the season rolls on, and we get a feel for who is strong and who is week this season, we tend to do better.

Your formatting was much better this week, and we didn't have some of the typical issues (forgot to bold some of the picks, forgot to delete the extra picks, forgot to include Cowboys, etc.). I will ask this favor of you, and this is a personal request because of the time it takes to tally this many participants. Please:

• copy/paste KD's entire list to the body of your comment; don't try to type your entries yourself
• keep them in the same order (that's how I set up my sheet each week); if your picks are random, then it takes me longer to enter them than if you keep them in KD's order
• after you complete your ten picks, please delete the extras (three to six each week, depending on byes)
• make sure that your selections are highlighted; the easiest way, especially for mobile posting, is to use asterisks; each line should either say *Winner* at LOSER or Loser at *WINNER* (no spaces between asterisks and city name)
• use the PREVIEW button to make sure that everything formatted correctly
• feel free to offer extraneous commentary with your pick (I usually do with mine), but keep it after your picks, or as a reply to your comment
• if you see a mistake after posting (maybe you couldn't use PREVIEW on your mobile), then immediately make a reply and tell me what was wrong and what you intended

We had twelve games that were played by the vast majority this week. However, our cherry-picking selves only got half of those right. The other four were relatively ignored (played by fewer than 40% of us).

Here's our scorecard for the week:

As I mentioned earlier, no one came close to 10-for-10 this week. With six solid losses by most of us, everyone took a hit at least once there. We did have four who got 8-for-10, Congratulations to One.Cool.Customer, revellyre, shainyc, and The Penguin for making lemonade out of lemons this week.

It was tight to see who would be on top of the overall this week. There were three with a score of 15 and waiting to see who would win the Monday Night game. Two picked Denver, and our new leader picked Atlanta.

Congratulations to revellyre for holding the overall lead alone after the first two weeks. You do have company - lots of it. There is a fourteen-way tie for second (including last year's overall champion - Jebediah Flibberbrush) one back with 15. What's an insurmountable lead after week #2? There are 172 of us with at least 10. I am tied for 135th with 11. I finished in the top twenty last year. Don't give up.

Here's a partial table of how we did individually this week, and of the overall leaderboard. If you played, and you are not on the list, then I hope you do better next week. I'm not on it because I only got four right this week and a total of 11.

Many of you wanted to make Thursday Game Only picks last week before KD got his contest page up. Feel free to make those picks here. I will transfer them later to KD's new Week #3 page when it is up.

Make a comment here that says Thursday Game Only. Copy/Paste one of these lines into your comment, and you should be good for Thursday.

*New York Giants* at CAROLINA

New York Giants at *CAROLINA*

Make the rest of your picks on KD's page. I transferred one this week, but I would like to not have to do that each week.

Cowboys play early on Sunday, and it's another FOX regional-game-only day (no doubleheader). Don't forget to check out the506.com each week to see if the Cowboys will be on in your local viewing market. They start listing upcoming weekends on Wednesday evenings and update the site as markets are switched from one game to another.

See, I told you I would not be as long this week.

[UPDATE - Last year, as I was getting the hang of what I was doing, I mis-entered a couple of entries. When those persons caught the mistakes and pointed them out, I was happy to fix them. These past two weeks, I have had to make more than 4,000 game entries (421 entries the past two weeks, and most entries having ten games), and get off the rust from not doing this since January.

I got an email last night that I missed one. Thanks, k@s! for the catch. I had only posted nine of his ten picks. That's now fixed, and I have updated all my tables to reflect his higher score

Hopefully, that's my one for this season.]