Nemmers Scrum

Greetings football nerds!

It is that time of year again to prepare for the Nemmers Family Scrum. Are you in?

I hope you enjoyed your long summer, but Fall is creeping up on us. The NFL season kicks off next week, so it’s time to get organized.  This season we will keep the core format of the previous few seasons.  The format is designed to be quick without requiring a lot of sports knowledge. Here’s the highlights of that system: 

• Pick winners in 3 designated games each week, where one game is marked as your Super-Pick.  
• 1 point for wins, 3 points for super-pick wins (zero points for a tie). 
• Person with most points at the end of the regular season wins the pot and a shiny trophy. 
• $10 to play the season. 
• Selections are due each Friday before midnight.  
• I’ll send reminders if your picks are missing, but if I don’t reach you in time and you have no picks for a given week, that is on you, and not me.
  • There will be new penalties this year for late entries. Details to come

If you think you may want to play, here’s what you need to do now: 

1. Wrestle with your conscious and determine that you do want to participate
2. Send me a notification that you are going to play – either via email or via text.  
3. If you did anything fun this summer, send me a photo or two
4. Pay up. I strive to make it easy for people to send me money, so I am flexible. $10 checks can be mailed to Dallas, or beamed via PayPal, or Venmo, or Zelle. If you have a fat stack of crisp dollar bills you’d like to slip me under the table… that works too.

I tried my best to reach everyone. If I’ve accidentally left off a name or you notice I am using a bad email address, please let me know.

Please respond back whether you are interested or not. We’d love to have you!

cheers!

Kevin

Drop the confetti – we have our winner!

But first let’s talk about week 18. We had 7 players end the season on a high with a perfect week. Congrats to Margie, Emily, Cecilia, Bishop, Molly, John and myself for finishing strong.

Our three leaders all ended up with 4 points, leaving a little bit of opportunity on the table for others. Interestingly, Gerri’s 4-point week was almost a 1-point week as she changed her power pick from the Steelers to the Ravens in a panic. But a few minutes later in another panic, she thought better of it and decided to stick with her original gut and go back to the Steelers. Had she given in to the second-guesses, the pool would have been blown open.

Alas, since all three of our leaders all tied in week 18 that means the standings did not shift and Gerri has been crowned Queen of the Scrum! She already has three trophies for her previous two wins (there’s a math problem there we may never solve). Now she will add yet another for her third victory. She stands alone with the most season victories. She has titles from 2018, 2021 and 2023. Congratulations!

An interesting piece of parting trivia. Last year, Dan won with a total of 54 points. This year Gerri needed 66 to win. That 54 would have landed in 12th place, right in the middle of the pack. The average scores went way up for many players this year. Does that mean players are finding their groove and parity is prevailing? Or does that mean the commissioner did a poor job picking games and made it too easy to get 4’s and 5’s? We’ll have to wait until next season to see if there’s a pattern.

Thanks to everyone for playing. There’s a fat check and another trophy on the way to Cincinnati.

See you next season. Cheers!

Kevin

Here it is! The final pick list of the season. Gerri is out front with a 1-point lead over Cassie and a 2-point lead over Whoosie. Gerri and Whoosie have the same teams, but different power picks. Should Whoosie cheer against one of her own picks to sabotage Gerri? Cassie has a couple of different teams. I could get another coffee and figure out the matrix of possibilities here, but instead I will just watch the games and check the standings when the smoke clears.

We have two of our games this afternoon and the final on Sunday night. It should be a fun weekend to follow football.

Good luck to our final three. And best of luck to everyone who is hunting the person ahead of them in the standings or defending their current rank.

cheers!
Kevin

How about those games this past weekend? I picked three games with close spreads but they somehow all became blowouts. At least they were easy to pick, right? Apparently not. Heidi was the lone standout to earn a perfect score. Great job!

Gerri left the door open with a 3-point week, but neither Cassie nor Whoosie could take advantage.

Now we approach the final week of the season. Bad news – most of us are are long eliminated. But there is still hope for the lucky few. For the rest of us, we have pride on the line to finish strong and move up the rankings – or at least avoid being overtaken.

This should be the final weekend, unless we end up with a tie at the top. In that case, we’ll execute a short playoff to determine the lone victor.

Here are your week 18 games:

Steelers@Ravens ; Texans@Colts ; Bills@Dolphins

Get those picks in early! We have a couple of Saturday games in our mix this weekend, so I will be pushing to get this closed out on time – Friday night.

cheers

Kevin

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has something fun planned for Sunday night. The scrum is close to wrapping up with our final two weeks. Here are your week 17 selections sorted by power picks so you can easily identify your friends and foes.

cheers
Kevin

This was a rough week for the scrum. 17 of the 26 contestants ended with two points or less. Only three people shot par with a 3 and six people with high scores. Out of all of that, one contestant declared the weekend to be easy peasy – Emily stands alone with a perfect five. Congratulations to our commish! To celebrate, I’ll eat of piece of her homemade cherry pie for breakfast.

To celebrate our week winner, here is Emily reading Christmas bedtime stories. The kids have declared a while ago that they’re too old to participate. Our dog Noobie was the only willing participant.

Our scrum leaders struggled this weekend as Cassie and Whoosie only extracted two points and Gabe only one. Gerri took advantage of the open window and stormed to the top of the leaderboard. She now holds a one-point leader on Cassie and Whoosie with two weeks to go. It’s going to be a nail biter!

Week 17 selections are tough again. Even though the Cowboys are playing yet another playoff contender, we’ve had enough of them. So here we go…

Saints@Buccaneers; Dolphins@Ravens ; Packers@Vikings

Get those picks in early.

cheers!

Kevin

Feliz Navidad! I hope you all are ready for Christmas and have reached your travel destinations. Here are the week 16 picks. Five of the teams earned a power pick this week in your selections. Several people picked Dallas to win the game, but nobody had the confidence in them to burn a power pick. The 49ers were the trendy pick this week, but when two playoff teams collide who knows what will happen. Hopefully these are some fun games to watch.

The games are spread out over the next couple days. So if you need a break from the cheer or your crazy brother-in-law is mounting a deep dive analytics explanation of putting your DH in the 3-spot rather than batting cleanup… the TV will be waiting for you.  ?

Merry Christmas!

Kevin

Welcome back after a topsy-turvy week 15. It’s great to see so many great football minds at work. The savvy noted that Houston’s QB star CJ Stroud would miss the game and quickly jumped on the Titans bandwagon. After a quick 13-0 lead, I toasted our scrum leaders and patted myself on the back. Then something happened and we ended up in an overtime full of stalled offenses. I thought we surely headed to a tie. Then suddenly, Houston lined up for a field goal with 2s to go in overtime and won. So much for analysis.

Despite any of that, we had two ladies who ignored all that noise and coasted to an easy five-point week. Congratulations to Molly and Violet! They showed us how easy this should be.

Whoosie led the pack the last few weeks and left the door wide open after a disappointing 2-point week. She had the same picks as me – – which is never a promising sign. The other leaders were only able to make small strides, however. Cassie moved back up to a first place tie with Whoosie. Gerri used her 4-point week to pull into a comfortable third place, just one point behind the leaders.

I find myself teatering at the middle of the standings. I enjoyed my brief tour of the upper-half neighborhood, but the HOA and the current residents are trying to keep me from moving in. I am planting my party flamingos in the front lawn and committed to staying. We’ll have to see how this epic drama unfolds.

It’s getting harder every week to find close games between relevant teams with healthy QBs. We are all sick of the Cowboys, but they are in the meat of their schedule playing other playoff teams. So here we are again. However, I did manage to find games featuring all playoff contenders so I am hoping these are also televised and watchable contests.

Jaguars@Buccaneers ; Dallas@Miami ; Ravens@49ers

Your picks are due Friday night. Please.

cheers!
Kevin

Greetings scrumpions. Thanks to everyone for getting their picks in. When I sent out the game list, I had lost track of the first game being on a Saturday.

There were some bigger spreads on these games, but we still have a good split of picks. The Houston-Tennessee game was pretty balanced and had a handful of split power picks. The Dallas-Buffalo game was also split fairly evenly, but the power pick edge went to the visiting Cowboys. The most lopsided picks were on the Denver-Detroit game with the majority picking the Lions. There was a split among power picks as well, but the lion share went to Detroit (see what I did there?)

Good luck to everyone, but especially to Whoosie who mirrored my own picks.

cheers
Kevin

The scrum is heating up as we get closer to the end. Four people achieved perfection this week – congratulations to Cassie, Dianne, Fletcher and John!

A lot of people took the Vikings as their power pick this week. I’d say they dodged a bullet with that late field goal to get a big 3-0 win. I was cheering hard for a 0-0 overtime tie, but apparently there are actual limits to how bad teams can play. The Cowboys and Eagles split the picks this week, but Dallas ran away with the actual game.

The standings tightened up some more this week. Whoosie and Gabe had an impressive 4 points to stay among the top, but Cassie is charging hard with another perfect week. First and second place are once again decided by a single point. It’s a nail biter!

The games are getting harder to select each week with all the QB injuries, but we push forward. There are some overly familiar teams here, but choice of games is slim pickings. Here are the week 15 selections:

Texans@Titans ; Broncos@Lions ; Cowboys@Bills

Picks are due Friday night. It’s naughty to ignore the rules, so don’t be late. Santa is watching!

cheers

Kevin