12/23/25
Eight teams clinched a playoff spot this week in the NFL and two more spots were locked up in Professor DW’s Football Pick ’em Challenge. It was an incredibly wild week of NFL football with two primetime games having an argument for the Game of the Year with a multitude of other games coming down to the final drives. There were also some costly injuries but the majority of contestants dominated this week but a handful stood out from the rest.
Going into Monday night football, quite a few contestants sat with 11 points with some picking San Francisco and a few picking Indianapolis to pull of an upset. Josh Kaiser and William Pecson entered Monday night with 12 points and they both chose the Niners to get the win so anyone who had 11 and picked San Francisco could not win. It was either going to be a six-way tie for first or a tie between Josh and William so the tiebreaker would be needed regardless.
San Francisco predictably dominated Indianapolis on Monday night with a relentless offensive attack that the 44-year old Phillip Rivers couldn’t keep up with, sending the Colts from 7-1 to being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Josh and William cashed in and moved up to 13 points with each just missing three games. Josh misses Tennessee defeating what is left of Kansas City, Jacksonville beating Denver in a battle of AFC titans, and Pittsburgh dealing a massive blow to Detroit’s playoff hopes. William missed Minnesota over New York, Carolina beating Tampa Bay, and also missed the Jaguars big win.
We went to the total field goal yardage tiebreaker and once again Josh overshot with his guess of 2,860 while William’s low guess of 1,069 was good enough to get him the win as the actual total yardage was 2,302. That meant William got the win and sent Josh to a second place finish.
Both William and Josh already qualified for the Postseason Tournament so they block out two spots to keep the total number of entrants at 24 with only four spots remaining. William earned a second-place finish back in week 2 while Josh put together a perfect week in week 11 to earn his lone win of the season. The winner of the Postseason Tournament takes home the Ticket Bonanza, which includes two tickets to the Mariners, Seahawks, Kraken, Sounders, Storm, Tacoma Rainiers, and Emerald Downs. William and Josh can continue to enter to try to up their chances of winning the grand prize, but every qualified entrant only gets ONE entry in the Postseason Tournament.
History was almost made as DW was so close to earning his title of Professor back. DW finished with 12 points and while he missed some tough games like Tennessee over Kansas City, Jacksonville over Denver, and Pittsburgh upsetting Detroit, it was his awful pick of Indianapolis over San Francisco that cost him in the end. If DW would have used his brain and picked the 49ers, he would have finished with 13 and his total yardage guess of 1,500 would have got him the win and ended the long losing streak. But he did what losers do best and that is find a way to lose.
There weren’t any gigantic upsets this week but two did stand out from the rest. Only 13% of the contestants chose Jacksonville to defeat Denver and 17% correctly called the Steelers taking down the Lions. Detroit’s loss has sent the NFL one step closer to an almost completely new playoff picture as 8 of the 14 teams in the playoffs last year have playoff aspirations this season.
Week 17’s contest is up. There are three games on Christmas Day on Thursday so it is another early deadline. The deadline to get in for this week is 10am on Thursday morning so get signed up quickly. Congratulations William and Josh and best of luck to everyone this week.
Grand Prize Package
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