12/2/25
Thanksgiving week is always a fun week for the NFL and with the addition of the Black Friday game, it is a wild stretch of five days without any teams on a bye week. While the first four games of the week were wild with close games and upsets, everything else went the way everyone anticipated…with a couple of exceptions. That opened the door for the risk takers in Professor DW’s Football Pick ’em Challenge to try to earn a top two finish this week.
Three contestants separated themselves from the rest of the pack as Wes Swick, Shannon Brazell, and Kim King all agreed on the final two games of the week with Denver surviving Washington in overtime and New England blowing out the New York Giants. Those three contestants all finished with 12 points as Wes and Shannon dominated Sunday with Houston and the New York Jets helping them get to a dozen as they picked the same teams in every game. Kim went a different route but went perfect on the Thursday and Friday games while her Sunday upset pick of New Orleans fell flat.
Since we finished with a three-way tie, we once again went to the field goal yardage tiebreaker to determine both first and second place this week. No teams were on a bye which should have meant a higher total yardage, but the total yardage of made field goals came out to 1,771, another palindrome! History would be made as all three contestants guessed over with Shannon guessing 2,849, Wes guessing 1,943, and Kim guessing 1,911. For the first time, we had to drop the “Price is Right rule” which gave Kim the victory and gave Wes second place while Shannon was unfortunately the odd one out.
Wes Swick won back in week 5 so he just blocks out another one of the open spots to the Postseason Tournament. For Kim King however, it would be her first finish in the top two and she now solidifies her spot in the Postseason Tournament, bringing the total number of contestants up to 21 with just 10 opportunities left to try to qualify and your chance at the Ticket Bonanza! That includes two tickets to the Mariners, Seahawks, Kraken, Sounders, Storm, Tacoma Rainiers, and Emerald Downs. Remember, even if you have already qualified you can block other people out of those spots by continuing to enter. However, you only get one submission into the Postseason Tournament regardless of how many times you finish in the top two.
It was a respectable week for DW who finished above the average of nine points with his own double-digit performance of 10. The difference was DW went 0-4 on the Thanksgiving and Black Friday games before getting 10 of the final 12 games correct. It was another bounce back performance for DW but he will need a few strong performances in a row to get his title of “Professor” back and upgrade from being the Raiders of this contest.
Two major upsets rocked the NFL this week but the least picked upset was Carolina stunning the Los Angeles Rams thanks to three turnovers by MVP candidate Matthew Stafford. The only two to call that upset were Tyler Hergert and Darin Arthur who must have had some vision of the future to call that one. The other big upset was Chicago defeating Philadelphia on the road on Black Friday in which just four contestants (Kim King, Lori Mohney, William Pecson, and Todd Sayre) correctly predicted.
Week 14’s contest is up. We are back to a normal schedule this week which means the deadline to get your entry in is back to 4pm on Thursday with four teams on a bye. Congratulations Kim and Wes and best of luck to everyone this week.
Grand Prize Package
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