Last week the Falcons were able to breeze by the Cardinals, but the Jaguars weren’t able to stop (checks notes) Josh Johnson as he drove the Redskins down the field for a game-winning field goal.
It turns out that the Jaguars had a plan to “try out” some of their younger players, which included giving Leonard Fournette only one touch in the second half.
I know some of you took the Jaguars last week and were eliminated. It would be nice to have all the pertinent information available to us each week, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
For those that survived and are wondering how the final two weeks of the season are shaping up, here are the projected win percentages for the 32 remaining games.
Here are the top teams in Week 16 given their expected win percentage. I also included their projected win percentage in Week 17.
The first thing to notice is there is no overwhelming favorite among survivors this week. This makes sense as players have fewer options and have all taken various paths to get here.
The Colts, Rams and Patriots are the most popular picks this week but they are all in the 15%-20% range. I don’t think you need to value being contrarian in either of the final two weeks if you are in a big pool. At best it could be used as a tiebreaker.
In smaller pools, you should be figuring out which options your opponents have left and use that to help make your decisions. You want to have the best chance to win while also trying to gain an edge if you think a large portion (or all) of your remaining opponents will go with one team.
I am not going to give out a pick this week because it would not apply to a lot of you reading this. My advice is to maximize your chances to win these next two weeks using the percentages in the chart.
To save you some of the work, I made another chart for that as well. Here are the chances using each combination for the next two weeks. The vertical axis is the Week 16 team and the horizontal axis is the Week 17 team.
For example, if you take the Rams in Week 16 and the Seahawks in Week 17, then your projected chance to win both games is 78.2%, which is the best possible combination in the chart.
Just pick the combination with the highest percentage and put it on cruise control, right? Well, of course it is not that easy because we have uncertainty looming with Week 17.
There are a few teams that look like good options now that could sour if they get locked into a playoff spot. The most likely teams are the Saints and Cowboys.
The Saints could grab the 1-seed with a win over the Steelers, while the Cowboys are likely to be locked into the 4-seed with a win over the Buccaneers.
The Chiefs could rest players if they beat Seattle and the Chargers lose to the Ravens.
If Kansas City falters, Seattle would then be locked into the 5-seed and could rest some of its key players against Arizona. (Although Seattle might still be an option anyway because Arizona is horrendous.)
So to recap, I would still look for the highest percentage out there to get past these final two weeks. If you pencil in one of the teams that could rest, make sure you have a decent fallback option.
As always if you have any questions, hit me up on twitter @BetLabsTravis and I’ll be happy to help you try to cross the finish line.
