2024 NFL Pick-the-Loser Pool

[Westheim]

I watched a Mets-Padres game with the Fox schmocks yesterday, which invariably was all about how the eggball season was upon us, and how everybody was into fantasy eggball, and wouldn’t it be so much better if we could ditch this baseball game for eggball RIGHT NOW??

Which at least reminded me that it is time again for the universally beloved annual “Pick the Loser” bonanza! …where conventional wisdom is scattered into the wind and the Jets are everybody’s favorite team! It’s all about being taken on the shoulders by a losing team and being carried to victory, err, defeat, err…

Please find the rulebook below. Returning participants will find it unchanged from the last couple of seasons.

As you probably all know better than me, the actual season starts in two weeks. The Week 1 schedule shall be attached at the bottom of this recruitment poster.

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Section I - General Rules

1. Picks must be submitted by posting in this thread at least 30 minutes before the start of the respective game as given on the schedule posted in this thread. The reason for this is that start times in US sports as given by networks and homepages are notoriously not true and will include relentless time for pointless babble in the run-up to the main event, and I can never be bothered to find out when actual kickoff took place. If you miss the deadline for the Thursday game, however, you can still pick f.e. a team that plays on Sunday.

2. Submit your picks as early as you want, but if you change it for whatever reason, make a new post with the new pick since I might have drafted your pick into my Excel file already. Your most recent post in this thread will count.

3. The deadline for changing picks is 30 minutes from the start of the respective game as given on the schedule posted to this thread by your very understanding but ultimately can't-be-arsed host.

4. You must not pick a winning team with any pick. If you pick a team that wins its game, you are out. In the case of a tied game, postponement, and other acts of god, the disaster draft rules in Section IX shall be applied.

5. You must make a pick every week. If you miss to make a pick on any team, you are automatically out.

6. You must not pick the same team multiple times.

7. Please consider that your host's knowledge of football is limited to random trivia like the Heidi Game and he doesn't know that one team from that other team. Please state your picks clearly with either team name or team city, or both. No clever word plays, no pseudo nicknames, no fun slang. Your host does not know who the Crew, Blue, and Shoe are. If your most recent pick does not state a team city (or state where applicable) or name, and your host can't make sense of it, you are automatically out.

Section IX - Disaster Draft

8. In case of a tied game in which you made your pick, since tying is for losers, you shall advance to the next week.

8a. In case of nature, invasion by Canada, or other acts of god causing suspension or postponement of a game in which you made your pick *before* the announcement of the suspension or postponement, you shall advance to the next week. Your host *will* make an effort to investigate the time of postponement.

9. In the case that all players in any given round lose (all picked a winner), the game will continue with all players in the most recent round still eligible for the next round, except for those that made no valid pick at all.

Section XIV – Various Inconveniences

11. While your host will usually provide the next week’s slate of games in a post on Monday or Tuesday morning (depending on whether there were picks in the Monday night games) unless he's overslept, you obviously can post your picks for the following week early in case you’re going on vacation in central Montana or wherever else there is no Internet. Please state clearly though which week the pick will be for.

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I hope that no clarities whatsoever remain.

Appeals against these rules or any decisions by your host can only be directed at Jeff, the seriously concussed linebacker that doesn’t know where up and down is currently and thus can’t hand down judgment on your puny complaint!

And here a look at the previous winners:

2003: The Professor outlasted 37 others
2004: delgadodawg outlasted 68 others
2005: remangiii outlasted a record number of entrants while edging out hollis in week 16! Yes, Week 16!
2006: melo outlasted MorseMoose in week 16
[stains on trophy have rendered 2007-2014 illegible]
2015: psd edged Cobra in week 8
2016: Bluenoser beat MorseMoose in week 8
2017: Bobbuttons squeezed past pgjocki in week 14
2018: Cobra Mgr defeats Ragnar
2019: monkeyman576 out-losers rudel.dietrich
2020: Westheim stumbles to a stunning defeat of CONN CHRIS
2021: rudel.dietrich returns the favor by tanking below monkeyman576
2022: Amazin69 sucked his way past damiantheomen3
2023: pilight lost harder than David Watts and even beyond

The fact that I was once carried out of this thread on a stretcher, victorious, should prove that next time it could be you to take the loser trophy to the head for a nice, thick concussion! We’re not taking no for an answer – join the other aspiring losers in the pool to-day!

I also tried my very best to get the times on the schedule to actually show the ET times, but even with a VPN the bloody NFL page gives me German times. All of these are six hours ahead of ET, as usual. (puts out tip jar for a sponsored weekly trip to New York, just to get the hours straight)

[CONN CHRIS]

I love loser season!

[Amazin69]

I'm not going to follow this season at all (those Arenaball kickoffs look ridiculous, IMO), but that doesn't mean we can't have fun.

Ravens to lose Week 1, on the theory that the Chiefs owe me for last season's screw-up. If Andy "my sons aren't the only ones in this family on drugs" Reid goes for it on 4th-and-25 again, so be it.

[Cobra Mgr]

Week 1 is almost always the toughest.

My selection............

[Amazin69]

BTW, with the fake rumor about Taylor Swift possibly appearing at the DNC this season, I checked her concert schedule and discovered she's off the road until mid-October. Which means plenty of time to go to Arrowhead for more (complete-bull****) "romance". Oh, joy.

(Who in the hell would hire a fake "boyfriend" that requires you to make regular visits to Kansas City, FFS? I mean, Aaron Rodgers is in NYC, these days.)

[DamPenguin]

Cardinals

[CONN CHRIS]

Patriots to lose week 1

[dsvitak]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

BTW, with the fake rumor about Taylor Swift possibly appearing at the DNC this season, I checked her concert schedule and discovered she's off the road until mid-October. Which means plenty of time to go to Arrowhead for more (complete-bull****) "romance". Oh, joy.

(Who in the hell would hire a fake "boyfriend" that requires you to make regular visits to Kansas City, FFS? I mean, Aaron Rodgers is in NYC, these days.)

Don't understand your animosity for Taylor Swift. She is extremely generous with her time, and her money, in a variety of good causes. She also takes excellent care of all of the people that support her career.

[dsvitak]

Gotta go with the Patriots week one as well.

We won't know who the decent teams are until after week three. Undefeated teams at the end of week 3 are almost always playoff teams. Almost always.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by dsvitak

Don't understand your animosity for Taylor Swift. She is extremely generous with her time, and her money, in a variety of good causes. She also takes excellent care of all of the people that support her career.

Bro, I adore Queen Swizzle, the most-successful woman in the entire history of music, the troubador of the modern age. Pretty much the only artist I can stand in this corporate auto-tuned nightmare of "modern music". (I mean, Ariana has a lovely voice, but from the top knot to all those songs where she's begging for rough sex, it's not my thing, sorry. And when Dan Reynolds's band of plastic pitchmen, Imagine Jingles, are what passes for "rock" nowadays…well, "yoicks!" is too kind of a word.) I actually made a pilgrimage to Franklin Street in 2017, even though she wasn't there, just so I could say I'd seen it.

But while I don't much care about non-talents like Charlie Puth hiring their fake "girlfriends" because they're too afraid to let the unwashed figure out what anybody with a functioning gaydar can tell at a glance. I do find it a bit demeaning when a talent of Taylor's magnitude feels she has to play these games, especially when this was a bit unnecessary, IMO. She could have easily spent an extra year or so "mourning" her "breakup" with Joey Anonymous.

(Besides, Kelce comes across as a real d-bag, IMO. I'm cringing on her behalf, not because of her. I wish she'd let her amazing talent and enduring fanbase speak for themselves, instead of pulling these stunts. Sorry if I wasn't clear.)

[TC Dale]

None of these games look to be a lock that is for sure. I will join the others picking the Patriots to lose.

And dsvitak is right we won't know much till week three. Hope I get there.

[monkeyman576]

This is a hard one.

I'll go with the Patriots.

[Ragnar]

I hate week 1.

New York Jets

[monkeyman576]

He just wishes he could date Travis Kelce.

[damientheomen3]

I'll take the Colts.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by monkeyman576

He just wishes he could date Travis Kelce.

I'd answer, but I'm too busy throwing up every piece of food I've eaten since the Clinton administration. Will send the carpet-cleaning bills your way.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

I'd answer, but I'm too busy throwing up every piece of food I've eaten since the Clinton administration. Will send the carpet-cleaning bills your way.

Just to clarify, losing your lunch out the wrong end does not qualify you for advancing to Week 2.

[Westheim]

Kind reminder that the opening weekend is upon us.

Also, I will not doubt half the players' wisdom and hitch myself to the losing bandwagon. I pick the Patriots to lose.

[Westheim]

Oh, look. Amazin lost his way to Week 2, two days ago.

Yes, I totally know what I'm doing.

[The Game]

"6. You must not pick the same team multiple times."


1st time I won't pick Da Bears to lose at all. Titans to lose.