Hello, Good Morning, Guten Tag etc. It's time to get the only expert picking blog back under away for another season. I've been hard at work (ie: I have spent almost two full afternoons) working on new systems and statistical analysis (ie: I've made a really big spreadsheet) that will give us a few more in-depth stats this season to help you work out whose opinions are worth their weight in gold, and which are worth their weight in JaMarcus Russell.

Some men, tossing. Never Google that.

The main changes are listed below, but first a word from our sponsor, Chaos. Hilariously, the hardest part of starting Pickwatch for the second season is that I still, 2 days before kick-off, have no idea who will be picking, when they'll be doing it, or where they'll be giving that information. As usual, I'll manage to get there in the end, but it's fair to say that expert picks seem to be pretty low on the list of priorities for most broadcasters and web-sports-analyser-thingies. Note to you all: Be more helpful.

As such, I'm pretty much left with the unholy task of putting together provisional databases prior to week one, which will no doubt be redundant by Sunday. On the plus side, I'm hoping that Thursday will weed out any of the half-assed non-pickers from last year. As for NFL writers, well they seem to have as much job security as a Raiders quarterback and therefore they flock to where the money is - and quite right too. Sadly, this yet again makes many of my existing databases completely useless.

Mike Silver has joined NFL Network (presumably avec sunglasses), Mike Freeman has joined Bl*****r Re***t, a place I ordinarily can't be bothered with. This presents a quandary for me in that I like Freeman's work, but I refuse to click through a 21-part slideshow in order to view it. Is this a sign B/R is going mainstream? I hope so, because plenty of decent writers have gone over to them lately and my mouse is going to break soon. In other news, almost every beat writer going has joined ESPN's NFL Nation blog, dealing yet another hammer blow to traditional local news sources. I'll cover that some more in a future post, but I digress...

ON WITH THE NEW FEATURES!
I was tempted to do this as a slideshow in homage to B/R but I decided against it as I'm trying to be friendly, rather than give you Repetitive Strain Injury

  • Hot Streaks - Track which experts have the best record over the last few weeks
  • Individual Team Records - Which analysts pick best by franchise
  • Home and Road Records - Which experts are best home and away for all 32 teams?
  • Beat Writer Competition - 32 teams, 32 local experts - Find out who has the inside scoop. SCOOP!
  • Network Competition - NFL.com or Yahoo? FOX or CBS? Team scores and win percentages
  • Coin Flip - Every week I will flip a coin for each game. Let's see who is better than blind luck shall we?
  • PREDICTIONWATCH and PRESSWATCH - In which I fiendishly call out complete rubbish spouted by the 'experts'
  • New presentation (ie: I've managed to embed excel into the blog)

I'm hoping that our new stats will help people pick games even more reliably than in the past, while also showing just who is talking complete balls on a weekly basis. I hope experts understand it is just for fun and continue the (mainly) friendly Twitter Banter, but I'm not going to lose sleep if they don't. This is a blog about the truth, win or lose, we all have to accept the result.

Yes, even if you're worse at picking than someone tossing a coin...