The NFL season kicks off tonight when the defending champion New Orleans Saints take on the Minnesota Vikings down in the bayou.
New Orleans comes into the season riding a wave of optimism. Although a lot of experts (yours truly included) don't think the Saints will repeat as Super Bowl champions, there is no reason to believe they won't go deep into the postseason before their title defense falls short. The Saints enter the season healthy, confident and with the complete support of the beleagured New Orleans community. The only blot on their offseason has been the discussions surrounding Reggie Bush's break-up with Kim Kardashian and the possibility of the Heisman committee stripping him of his trophy. Maybe his play will improve once he no longer has the dead-weight of being known as a Heisman trophy winner hanging around his neck.
By contrast, Minnesota, the team destined to lose on a Brett Favre interception in 2009, comes into the 2010 season reeling. As a resident of Minnesota, I can tell you the local fans here are anything but confident for the 2010 campaign. While the Saints come into this game healthy, confident and supported, the Vikings come in injured, uncertain and lacking the support of all but the most die-hard homer fans.
The Favre drama sapped this team and its fan base of cohesiveness going forward. Injuries, particularly to the wide receiving corps, will keep the Vikings' passing game hit-or-miss until Favre gets comfortable with his receivers. The defense should be solid again this year, but is currently deciding how best to use three cornerbacks to defend against teams like New Orleans that tend to throw out a lot of four wide receiver sets.
Coach Childress remains stubborn as ever. By trading away Sage Rosenfels to the New York Giants last week, he has yoked his cart to the future success or failure of Tarvaris Jackson. If Jackson was the answer, why were the Vikings so concerned Favre might actually stay retired? Local sports radio hosts question Jackson's abilities on a daily basis and his preseason showing has done little to change people's opinion of him. When Favre finally does retire next year (here's hoping), Jackson better be the unequivocal starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. I wonder if Childress will really be willing to stand by his man once Favre is no longer an option?
Enough chit chat. On with the predictions! For every NFL game this season I will do my best to predict the game winner. But what fun would it be to just pick games by myself in a vaccum without having other prediction systems to compare against? To that end, all games will be predicted by the following systems:
First, the human systems -
Creative Misfortune's Pick – My pick of who I think will win and my predicted score.
Scottie V’s Pick – My friend, Scottie V, chimes in with his predicted winners and scores.
Vegas Lines Pick – These picks will be determined by looking at the favorite and the over/under for the game. Basically, if Team A is a 5 point favorite and the Over/Under for the game is 46, the Vegas Lines prediction will be based on Team A winning the game by 6 (beating the spread) with the total points scored equal to or 1 point more than the Over/Under value. In this example (Team A by 5, Over/Under 46), the Vegas Lines pick would be Team A 26, Opponent 20 (thus predicting Team A beats the spread by 1 and equals the Over/Under number). Since the lines offered by Vegas tend to be fairly close to actual results, we'll see how accurate this method is for picking games "straight up" over the course of the season. No Vegas Lines picks will results in obscure scores, such as 22-19.
Next, the computer systems -
Accuscore Pick – The Accuscore pick is based on the computer simulations run by Accuscore, a company affiliated with ESPN. Accuscore computers simulate the games 10,000 times to determine who will be the winner of the game. If Team A wins 64% of the 10,000 simulations, they are picked by Accuscore to win with 64% confidence. Since Accuscore only provides their percent chance winner for free (you must pay for their spread numbers and final score projections), I will use their percentage chance of victory to determine a predicted score for the game, based on my own custom formula. Basically, if a team is predicted to win 53%-55% of the simulations, I will predict them to win their game 20-17. A 65% win percentage would result in a predicted score of 24-13. The biggest predicted margin of victory possible would be an Accuscore win % of 100% and a final score prediction of 37-0. In case of a 50%-50% tie, the Home Team will be predicted to win the game 14-13.
What If Sports SimMatchups – The What If Sports website allows you to simulate upcoming games as many times as you would like with different “offensive playbooks”. To get this computer system's predicted results, I will run 5 simulations for each game (2 with Balanced Offense, 1 with Run Heavy, 1 with Pass Heavy and 1 with West Coast style) then take the average score for each team in those 5 comparisons to get the What If Sports predicted winner and final score projection. Note: Running the What If Sports SimMatchups multiple times will result in a different result almost every time. By comparing 5 different runs, though a mere fraction of a fraction of Accuscore's 10,000+ simulations, we'll see which computer system is more accurate over the course of the season.
And finally, the "blind" control systems -
The blind control predictions are exactly that - blind to the teams involved in the game. They only care where the game is played and the record of the teams involved. No fancy stats. No gut feelings. Just blind picks, even if it means picking Detroit or St. Louis to beat New Orleans.
Best Record Wins, Else Home Team Wins – This is the so-called "Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate", proposed by ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) readers Eric Isaacson of Indiana University and Catey Tarbell of Kirkland, Washington. You can view a discussion of this system in TMQ's archived column for February 9, 2010 under the heading "Weekly Game Predictions". This system basically predicts that the team with the best record will win the game. In case both teams have identical records, the Home Team will be predicted to win. Because all the predictions on The Art of Creative Misfortune will have scores associated with them, the NFL’s default score of 20-17 will be used for any Best Record Wins predictions.
Home Team Wins - ***The True Control Value*** - Let’s face it. Any prediction system that loses out to blindly predicting that the Home Team will win, regardless of the matchup, is not a good prediction system. As such, this will be used as a control value to blindly pick all games. Typically, NFL teams win at home about 57% of the time. All the other predictions systems featured on The Art of Creative Misfortune should be able to beat the Home Team Wins system. As with the Best Record Wins system, all Home Team Wins predictions will predict the NFL's default score of 20-17.
Now, let's pick tonight's matchup...
Thursday Night Football Score Prediction:
Minnesota Vikings at New Orleans Saints
Creative Misfortune's Pick: New Orleans, 27-23. New Orleans dominates the game, but Minnesota scores late to make it interesting.
Scottie V's Pick: New Orleans, 45-23. The game is close for the first half, but the Vikes fade down the stretch
Vegas Lines Pick: New Orleans, 27-21. New Orleans by 5, Over/Under 48.
Accuscore Pick: New Orleans, 24-13. New Orleans 67% win confidence
What If Sports Pick: New Orleans, 27-23. New Orleans won 3 of 5 simulations.
Best Record Wins Pick: New Orleans, 20-17. Both records at 0-0, advantage home.
Home Team Wins Pick: New Orleans, 20-17
Thursday Night Football - Starting Creative Misfortune Fantasy Lineups
| Minnesota Vikings | pts | pts | New Orleans Saints | |||
| Brett Favre | 0 | QB | 0 | Drew Brees | ||
| Adrian Peterson | 0 | RB1 | 0 | Pierre Thomas | ||
| Toby Gerhart | 0 | RB2 | 0 | Reggie Bush | ||
| Bernard Berrian | 0 | WR1 | 0 | Marques Colston | ||
| Percy Harvin | 0 | WR2 | 0 | Robert Meachem | ||
| Greg Camarillo | 0 | WR3 | 0 | Devery Henderson | ||
| Visanthe Shiancoe | 0 | TE | 0 | Jeremy Shockey | ||
| Ryan Longwell | 0 | K | 0 | Garrett Hartley | ||
| Minnesota Vikings | 0 | DEF | 0 | New Orleans Saints | ||
| Total | 0 | ^^^ | 0 | Total |
Tomorrow, recapping the Saints-Vikings game plus predictions and fantasy football starting lineups for the remaining slate of Week 1 NFL games...
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