By The Numbers: Week 4, 2017

I was unable to watch football this past Sunday due to a prior engagement (I went to that Ixalan pre-release I recently wrote about) but despite that fact I was still following the game on the Packers app on my phone. I remember looking at the score from time to time and thinking that we were going to lose the game, particularly when I saw it was the 2 minute warning and we were still down. The next time I looked, it seemed we had won in overtime. I watched the highlights later that evening and though it was a rough start, that was a hell of a comeback and a hard fought win. I loved it, and wished I could have watched. Goes to show that it really isn’t over until it’s over. This week we host the Bears on Thursday night, so I’ll be getting to watch that game once I get home from work. It’s an important divisional matchup, but the all time series between the two teams is tied at 94 wins a piece, so it will be interesting to see if the Packers can take the all-time lead after this week. I’m betting they’ll do it. The Bears have only beaten the Pack with Rodgers under center four times, and one of those times was after they broke his collar bone and he missed most of the game. Here’s hoping something like that doesn’t happen again!

It was brought to my attention that I should probably go over the picks I made the week before in each week’s column, and actually that’s something I used to do. I think I ended up getting lazy about tabulating the results, and that’s why it’s just been picks for the last year or however long it’s been since I was doing that on the regular. I’m not going to worry about scores, just whether or not I picked the correct team to win. So let’s go over my picks from last week and see how I did:

Rams 24, 49ers 20 – Correct
Ravens 21, Jags 17 
Broncos 27, Bills 14
Panthers 30, Saints 27
Steelers 24, Bears 7
Lions 27, Falcons 23
Colts 31, Browns 20 – Correct
Buccs 27, Vikings 20
Patriots 28, Texans 21 – Correct
Dolphins 23, Jets 13
Eagles 24, Giants 7 – Correct
Titans 20, Seahawks 9 – Correct
Packers 30, Bengals 14 – Correct
Chiefs 28, Chargers 17 – Correct
Raiders 35, Redskins 20
Cardinals 27, Cowboys 19

So as you can see, I correctly predicted 7 games, and was wrong about 9. Not great, but not terrible. At least I got my game correct, and that’s what counts! So for week 4, here are my picks:

Packers 30, Bears 20
Saints 27, Dolphins 20
Titans 24, Texans 10
Jags 24, Jets 10
Patriots 30, Panthers 24
Lions 21, Vikings 13
Bills 27, Falcons 23
Steelers 24, Ravens 17
Bengals 20, Browns 6
Cowboys 28, Rams 21
Eagles 31, Chargers 17
Buccs 27, Giants 21
Cardinals 24, 49ers 14
Raiders 26, Broncos 24
Seahawks 19, Colts 13
Chiefs 32, Redskins 17

We’ll see how good I do next week. I’ll try to keep this up for the rest of the season and see how much of a sage I really am at the end of it all.