Nemmers Scrum

Hi Footballers,

I am so late in writing this week’s results, that I am having trouble remembering much about last weekend’s games.  I remember that the Steelers won – yay!  I remember that the Cowboys looked horrible – which didn’t matter for last week, but will for this week. I also remember that there was a bit of complaining about how hard the picks were.  Well, the Sunday night game this week is rolling in to do you a favor.

I do know that Dana, Gerri, Mary, Margie, and Paul all got perfect scores, and that was pretty awesome.  Well done to the 5 of you.   In the overall standings, Paul still has the lead, but Margie is hot on his heels.  I keep trying to adjust my set, but it does seem true that somehow Bill is in 4th place. Bill?  Clearly, the weird mojo of 2020 is in play.

This week, we’ve got 3 games to pick, and I’m late, so that doesn’t give you much time to think about it. These were the 2 closest games in the lot, as well as the Sunday game. I promise that next week I’ll be back on schedule.

Week 8 Picks:

Raiders v. Browns
Colts v. Lions
Cowboys v. Eagles (this is the Sunday game or I NEVER would have picked it.)

I hope everyone has a great halloween…send pics if you put on a costume for anything!  In the meantime, here’s a picture of me in my halloween sweater from last year with some of my favorite people.

Go VOTE!!!!

Hello Footballers,

This week there was a bit of grumbling about how tough the picks were.  But as I explained to Margie, if the picks were too obvious, everyone would pick the same teams.  The good news is this week is that ALL SIX teams in our competition have been selected as a Power Team. Anything could happen!  And that, I think, is pretty fun.

A programming note for those of you keeping score at home: the Tampa Bay / Las Vegas  game was supposed to be the Sunday night game, but due to some weird covid-related precautions they have moved that game to a 4:30 EST start.  If for some freak reason it gets cancelled, then we will remove that game from the picks, and NO ONE will get any power picks. Again, if the TB/LV  game gets cancelled, the most points available this weekend will be 2.

And…here’s our shout out to John and Margie Sherburne, celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary this weekend. I think about how much fun we had in San Antonio a few years back for Charlie and Judy’s 50th, (a lot of which was with Margie’s help), and wish John and Margie a fantastic celebration. Hooray for 25 years! We are all sending our love to you! (Special thanks to their daughter Madison for sneaking me a copy of this super-cute wedding photo!).

Have a great week.  And this week more than ever – GO STEELERS!

Emily

Hello Footballers,

Well it happened again – the favorites just couldn’t get the job done and almost all of us paid the price with heavy losses.  On the flip side, Paul proved his genius with picking Tampa Bay…scoring a massive 4 points this weekend and putting himself in the lead, not only for the week but for the whole pool.  Way to go, Paul!

Week 7 isn’t going to get any easier:

SF v NE
PIT v TEN (postponed make up game, both 5-0)
TB v. LV  (Sunday Night Game)

Good luck with your picks.  Please get them in by the end of the day on Friday.  Also…if you haven’t already – go vote!  I went to the American Airlines Center so that I could get a cool little Mavericks “I voted” pin.  I was disappointed that Dirk Nowitzki wasn’t there to high five me when I was done.

Have a great week!

Emily

Hello Footballers,

I hope you are having a good week. I thought these were tough picks, and so far I’m not convinced that I’m wrong. We do have at least 1 pick for all six teams in this week’s competition. But shockingly for a game with a 1 point favorite, only 2 people picked Tampa Bay, but lots of people made this their power pick, making it the game to watch.

Thanks to everyone who sent pictures. I got a few of people’s cats, so below we have a cat show: Adam’s cat Kona, Heidi’s cats (paws under the door), the Sherburne’s adorable new kitten Nugget, and Dianne with her neighbor’s cat (tail). I’m not sure if having a cat gives you any extra skill in this tourney, but it does seem like a trend above the high scorers.

Nugget Sherburne

Kona Nemmers

Lillegard Cat

Dianne and Cat Tail

Hello Footballers,

It was a bumpy week. With only a few moments to go in the Seattle / Vikings game, I thought it was going to be the second week in a row where the team in our scrum with a 7 point spread was going to lose….but then Minnesota went for it on 4th down rather than kicking a field goal.  What the what? You ALWAYS put points on the board. Anyway, with that crazy finish, we had a strong week of people scoring the maximum 5 points.

The most important part about all that winning is that Margie won more than the rest of us.  With her perfect score in week 5, Margie managed to pull herself in front of the other leaders of the pack to stand alone at the top of the Scrum. Way to go Margie! But you better look out, Adam and Jim are on your tail. And way to go to everyone else who managed to move up with their awesome (or maybe lucky) picks.

This week is gonna be a hard one. We’ve got the battle of the bays, Brady v. Rodgers, we’ve got the Sunday night Rams and 49ers, who are both uneven, and then you’ve got the Monday night Cardinals v. Cowboys.  Good luck to all the pickers.

Week 6 Picks:

Buccaneers v. Packers
Rams v. 49ers
Cardinals v Cowboys

Y’all need to send me some photos so I have something fun to post.

Have a great week!

Emily

Hello Footballers,

Sorry to be so late getting the picks out. The good news is that all of the teams have made it to game day.

Everyone picked Seattle (we are the 12th man today), so the biggest excitement of the week will be if they lose and the few brave souls who used other games for their power picks get to celebrate.

Best of luck to everyone and GO STEELERS!!!!

Hello Footballers,

I hope you are enjoying some nice fall weather – it’s beautiful here in Dallas. Because we for sure aren’t really enjoying a lot of football…no Steelers this past weekend, and then both my choices lost – BOTH?!!?  Who is picking these games?

In what was a very tough week, we should all give a hearty congratulations to Jim and Molly, who defied the odds and came away with perfect scores in week 4.  For Jim is particular, that puts him back in shooting distance of the front runners, here are the standings as of week 4:

Up until this point, I have been trying to pick games that would be fun to watch either because it is good team v. good team, or some kind of rivalry.  But this week the point spreads were just too big for that, so we’re going with some ugly matches.

The Week 5 Games are:

Panthers v Falcons (will Matty Ice find a win?)
Colts v. Browns (Will Baker Mayfield be in a new insurance commercial?)
Vikings v. Seattle (Sunday night game – last week the big spread didn’t mean a thing.)

Good luck to all the pickers.

In family news, here’s a link to an article that was published in yesterday’s paper about my latest volunteer work  – a virtual pie auction – and below is a picture collage of Stephanie after winning in a local 5K.  Way to get after it, Stephanie – glad you didn’t get lost on that windy route – hah!

Everybody have a great week! Cheers,

Emily

Hello Footballers,

Like so much of the past months, this weekend’s poll isn’t shaping up the way we’d hoped.  At first, there was much debate at the Mantooth house about which games to even pick.  I was pulling for the Steelers / Titans game, but Kevin talked me out of it.  So, when that game got delayed, we thought we dodged a bullet.

When news today came that NE’s Newton had COVID and the game was put off, I was bummed that we had it on our schedule.  Lots more back and forth about do we pull the game from the week’s picks if they do indeed end up playing it later in the week.

Here’s what has been decided:  We are not going to count the KC/NE game this week.  Per the rules we laid out in the pre-season, because this game had been selected as more than one scrum participants power pick, ALL power picks for the week will be removed. The most points anyone can get this week is 2.

On happier notes….Happy Birthday to Adam and Dana!  I hope you have lots of cake and presents and fun. My birthday was also pretty great this week.  Vi made me a chocolate cake, we ate tacos, and I got so many nice cards and birthday wishes.  So yay!

We are all sending our “Get well soon” wishes to 2018 season Champion Gerri Lefton as she recovers from a fall and leg injury. You are in our thoughts and we are sending lots of virtual hugs.

This week’s pick of the week is from our guest bathroom.  For my birthday, I asked for “Violets for the window box.”  Kevin and Violet gave me this photo….