There’s one thing about the NFL season that separates itself from the other major professional leagues, the season goes by fast. As much as I love baseball and basketball, their seasons seem to drag on. And with that, week 2 of the NFL season is now in session.

There was some fun banter between the week 1 opponent (Winning is my Forte) and myself. He did a little trash talking prior to the games – even before the draft – and then after he lost. I put him in his place… or so I think. There’s no such talk with my next opponent though, the Cincinnati Stingers, who had a miserable first week scoring just 75.3 points. Where I may have overachieved a bit during the first week, scoring 155.65 points, he definitely underachieved. This week Yahoo! has the Konmen as a 20+ point favorite. However, I have a feeling certain players aren’t going to put up the points Yahoo! projects, specifically Matt Ryan, Kevin Smith, and LeSean McCoy, all of which are playing a top defensive team (using last year and week 1 results as a guide). The Cincinnati Stingers, on the other hand, don’t have any players playing a top defense. This could make for an interestingly close win or potential loss.

Football Pick ‘em is difficult each and every week. It’s tough to just pick the winners each week, but to also attach the right amount of confidence points to each game is where strategy comes into play. Since there’s only one person in this league (I think) that actually reads the blog, and he has his own strategy (I assume), I’ll let you all into my strategy. The first step is picking winners based on points spreads, giving the highest confidence to home teams with large point spreads. I usually lump the teams into buckets. For example, I lump teams favored to win by 10+ points in one bucket, 7-10 points in a second bucket, and so on. Then, within each bucket, I give the home team the highest confidence points. Picking all the favorites provides a starting point for the week. The second step is to run down the list and guess at a few upsets. I usually go with between 2 and 4 upsets each week. These upsets are given the lowest confidence points. In other words, as a favorite, the team may have had a confidence point of 6. However, as an upset I drop the game down to a 2. The third step is strictly for the Jets. If the Jets are a favorite, I allow them to stay wherever there were as part of the first step. However, if the Jets are the underdog and I think they have the slightest chance of winning, the pick is changed to Jets and a confidence point of 1 is given to the game.

The Survival Football pick this week is a bit more cut and dry as opposed to last week. A coworker, who is in another survival football league, asked about picking Dallas over Seattle (in Seattle) or San Francisco over Detroit (in San Francisco). I noted San Francisco is the better pick due to Dallas being the away team. However, I also asked why he was overlooking New England. He said his strategy was to stay away from a team the majority of other players are picking. My strategy is the total opposite. I don’t care which team the other players are picking, I just want to make sure I make it to next week. In other words, my pick has nothing to do with other players picks. And with that, I’m picking New England to win this week.