NFL Week 8 Fan Picks: Picking The Favorites Is For Wimps

Pick 256 is a season-long contest in which BTB members and readers get to pick the straight-up winners for all games each week.

Last week, only 24 of our 301 Week 7 participants picked the Vegas favorites for each game, and rode that strategy to 11 correct picks. Only seven participants managed a better score and picked 12 games correctly.

You'd think that would have been a lesson for the 253 participants (84% of all participants) who finished with less than 11 correct picks last week. But noooooo, that's not how this thing works.

Out of the 365 bloggers who took part in out Pick 256 Challenge this week (the most since Week 1), only seven stuck with the Vegas favorites in all 15 games. That's a little under 2%.

Even our consensus pick doesn't think too much about the Vegas lines, picking Green Bay, Baltimore and Buffalo even though all three are (slight) underdogs in their games. The consensus ended up with a five-vote advantage for Tampa over Minnesota, thereby narrowly avoiding picking four games against Vegas.

Clearly, our panelists think picking the favorites is for wimps. We'll see how that works out for all involved.

Here's a link to the Excel file with all the picks for Week 8, for those who are interested in tracking the results themselves.

Pick 256 Tracker Week 8 V2

Once you open the file, you'll see a blue title bar into which you can enter the winning teams to see where you end up among the 362 participants. The title bar is currently populated with the winner of the Thursday game, as well as the consensus picks for the remaining games.

If you want to see how you fared after the weekend games, simply input your own picks into the title bar and see how many correct picks you had. You can also live-update the spreadsheet on Sunday during the games to see how you're doing as the games are going on.

In any case, have fun with the file and good luck with your picks.