11 Picks For 2009 NFL Week 7, Bears at Bengals
Published Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 02:00:00 PM
Each week, I use 11 different methods to predict the outcome of one NFL game. Then, at the end of the season, I rank how all of the different methods performed across the course of the season.
Last week a lot of us got it wrong -- the Saints demolished the Giants. I dropped down to .500 as did my parents' dog. ESPN's Sports Guy has sole possession of first place, with a 5-1 record.
This week's game is the Chicago Bears at the Cincinnati Bengals. The line is the Bengals -1.5 but we're all just picking the game straight up.
This list was published on Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 02:00:00 PM under the category NFL Picks.
It currently has View Comments.
Published Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 02:00:00 PM
Each week, I use 11 different methods to predict the outcome of one NFL game. Then, at the end of the season, I rank how all of the different methods performed across the course of the season.
Last week a lot of us got it wrong -- the Saints demolished the Giants. I dropped down to .500 as did my parents' dog. ESPN's Sports Guy has sole possession of first place, with a 5-1 record.
This week's game is the Chicago Bears at the Cincinnati Bengals. The line is the Bengals -1.5 but we're all just picking the game straight up.
Battle of the mascots. (3-3) The first of three matchups here is a bear versus a bengal tiger, straight up. And that's a GOOD fight. Even though the bear has the size advantage, though, I think the tiger wins with ferociousness.
The second matchup is decidedly less fierce: Legendary football coach Bear Bryant against a Bengali man. Bear Bryant wins this... as a former football player himself, I think he's got the edge over a guy who may or may not have any kind of fighting ability.
So the tiebreaker is gay icon versus gay icon: Two burly bears against the ladies of the Bangles. Which one will eternally flame on? I'm thinking, come game time, the bears overwhelm the ladies, making them wish it WASN'T Monday. So the pick is the Bears.- ESPN's Sports Guy. (5-1) He's going with the Bears on the road, "unless Lovie Smith blows it." It's scary to me that I'm starting to see eye-to-eye with the Sports Guy more and more often. (Although I disagree with his NBA preview -- Shaq is a riskier addition for the Cavs than Rasheed Wallace for the Celtics? Really?)
- Fair-weatherness of fans. (2-4) For this measure, I look at how the teams' popularity has ranked over the past 11 years in an annual Harris NFL poll. My thought: Whichever team's rank has stayed more consistent has the less fair-weather fans... and, therefore, that 12th man advantage that pushes them to the win.
The Bengals have had a pretty rough decade... but the fans that have been there from the beginning have stayed there. Unfortunately for the Bengals, their brief and failed flirtation with relevance a few years back kinda messed things up. They've ranked as low as 30th most popular (in 2005)... and as high as 18th most popular two years later. Their total statistical variance is 16.94, good enough for 9th place in the NFL.
The Bears, though, are popular and have stayed popular, even through some rough, rexy times. They've never dipped lower than 11th most popular and never risen higher than 5th most popular, for a statistical variance of 4.03, third place in the NFL. So the pick is the Bears.
Madden 10 simulation. (2-4) I use Madden 10, with its up-to-the-second rosters, to simulate the game ever week. This one was extremely close -- the game went to overtime and the Bengals had a chance to win (and overcome Palmer's four INTs)... but chose to punt from the Bears' 35 in overtime instead of try a field goal. (Hey, that DOES sound just like NFL coaching.)
The Bears drove for the winning field goal drive and won it in overtime, 38-35.
Tecmo Super Bowl simulation. (4-2) For this method, I simulate the game with Tecmo Super Bowl... seeing it its 18-year-old rosters can produce more accurate predictions than Madden 10's up-to-the-minute ones.
The Bengals didn't hammer the ball with Ickey Woods like I would've... but managed to get one touchdown, two field goals and a rarely-seen safety. The Bears with Jim Harbaugh looked absolutely inept, only managing to put together two field goals. In a fairly ugly game, the Bengals took it with the weird score of 15-6.- More intelligent quarterback. (2-4) Before the NFL draft, every player takes an intelligence test called the Wonderlic. I look at the Wonderlic scores of the starting quarterbacks in the game, and predict the winner based on who scored better.
Carson Palmer on the Bengals scored a decent 26 out of 50 when he came out of USC. Jay Cutler on the Bears also scored a 26 when he came out of Vanderbilt.
So who's smarter? I sit in sports bars with USC fans on many, many college football weekends. The pick is the Bears. - My parents' dog. (3-3) It's good to see my parents' dog, Laska, is batting .500. It makes sense. Anyway, this week, she ate the biscuit that represented the Bengals first, so that's her pick.
Accuscore. (4-2) Pretty big pick for the road team here. Accuscore runs thousands of simulations and, after all that, determined that the Bears are pretty heavy favorites, 55 percent to 44 percent. (With the standard one percent missing.)
- Internet commenter debate winner. (2-4) For this method, I find comments from people on ESPN's SportsNation... arrange them as a debate... and pick a winner based on whomever makes the stronger case. Let's see how this one goes...
zwh2305: im gonna say the bengals get back to where they left off before the let down game last week and pull out a solid win 27-17. cutler throws a pick or two which is the cause for the bears losing this game..
This was going OK until he picked Cedric Benson to be a top 10 MVP candidate. And misued there. The argument is still pretty decent, although I think he focused more on ripping the Bears for getting rid of Orton and Benson than on why the Bengals will win.
BTW bears fans, how does it feel to have your organization blamed for not getting the full potential out of benson and orton? there both in the top 10 for mvp so far this year.. thats gotta sting a little bit to know that your coaching staff and front office are that horrid..
personally i called it when you guys gave the entire state of illinois plus orton for cutler, i said from this season on orton will have the better career and so far he is proving me right. hes looked unbelievable good so far..lkn_4_hos: If the bears continue to stop the run as they have all season, and make the plays they need to or should on defense, then this is a no contest game. last week manning had a chance at a pick and dropped it, turner fumbled and ryan recovered. small things like that add up just as much as turning the ball over in red zone.
Yikes. Not a strong vote of confidence (I see the game going either way)... and spouting the cliche that whomever wins the turnover battle will win? Ouch.
i would guess that jay and matt both have made the proper adjustments. i see the game going either way(as a bears fan). what ever defense shows up, and who wins the turnover battle will win!!! hopefully its bears 24-20blair771999: I hope the Bengals run all over the Cubs & show their not playoff material.
Wrong sport, wrong "their." We're in trouble here.wann66: benson is popping off at the mouth he will be lucky to get 30 yards rushing, and will the bronco fans stop comming to the bears blogs and talking about cutler you guys are like an ex-girlfriend who just want let go.
I think he means "won't" let go, but I like where he's going with this. Still... not so much a game prediction. Overall on the message board, the ratio of pro-Bengals arguments to pro-Bears arguments is about 15 to one... so I'm going to go with the Bengals. - Sports Illustrated's Peter King. (3-3) King sees the Bengals winning a close one, although he admits he's not wholly confident in the pick. His final score prediction: 24-23.
- My pick. (3-3) Maybe it's because I'm in Chicago right now... maybe it's because, as a Browns fan, I never really believe in the Bengals... or maybe it's because I have a surprisingly high amount of confidence in Jay Culter... but I'm going with the Bears.
This list was published on Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 02:00:00 PM under the category NFL Picks.
It currently has View Comments.
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It's all written by Sam Greenspan, a Midwest-born, classically-trained journalist who now tries to make a dollar out of 15 cents in Los Angeles. (It's hard to be legit and still pay the rent.)
Read more about 11 Points and Sam here.
For information about reprinting 11 Points content, or for quotes/interviews for your newspaper, magazine, website, TV program, or radio show, contact Sam via e-mail at