I have to admit that I was very hopeful, after the crowd’s success on Thursday night, that Week 6 would be a swing of the pendulum back to the high side of 50% in terms of prediction success. The pendulum did indeed swing, but sadly it was in same the direction it was heading after Week 5.
This was the first week in which the crowd fared somewhat poorly across the board, only breaking even in its straight-up picks. That the crowd has performed well against the over/under in 5 of 6 weeks is a positive, but we’d really like to see performance against the spread to validate the wisdom of the crowd theory.
I said that Week 3 was the Upside Down, but this week was somehow more unpredictable. Aaron Rodgers gets injured, Jay Cutler stages a 17-point comeback over the defending NFC champions, and the Giants, after losing around 8 or so receivers from their depth chart, beat the AFC’s best pass defense in their building (sure, they only scored one touchdown on offense, but still). I said that we can expect two or three weeks like that every season, but with two of the first six weeks going off script, maybe I should take the over.
Another On the Money Prediction!
Congrats to P.M. who picked the Patriots to beat the Jets 24-17. Awesome job!
P.M. predicted fairly early in the week (her prediction is enlarged in the chart). As we get further along with the product, we’ll try to correlate predictions to news, injury reports, and so on to see how outside information influences the crowd’s perceptions of a game and when key signals occur.
CPR Week 6 Summary
- Straight-up: 7-7 (50%)
- Against the Spread: 5-9 (36%)
- Over/Under: 5-9 (36%)
Overall
- Straight-up: 52-39 (57%, -1%)
- Against the Spread: 41-50 (45%, -2%)
- Over/Under: 48-43 (53%, -3%)
11 predictors this week, up one from last week! Thank you so much everyone. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate your support.
The Cynthia Frelund Experience
For the second straight week, @cfrelund‘s followers only got the winner correct on Monday night. For most of the Monday night game, the Colts looked like they would cover at least, and then the Titans blew the doors open in the last few minutes to give the crowd a pretty tough beat. In the end, as we have said, it’s the long game, so we’re still feeling pretty solid about how things will go over the course of the season.
The WotC Game of the Week
Once again, the crowd performed best with the Thursday night game, picking the underdog Eagles to triumph on the road with the game going over the total.
| PREDICTION | CROWD | ACTUAL |
| Winner | Eagles | Eagles |
| Spread | Eagles +0.43 (spread was Panthers -3) | Eagles +5 |
| Over/Under | 47 (over 45) | 51 |
The Wabby of the Week
The crowd missed on all three predictions for Packers-Vikings, but I’m disregarding that since it’s pretty safe to say that an Aaron Rodgers injury changes, well, everything.
The other choice for Week 6 was a remarkable result: Giants over Broncos. I take four starting receivers from the Giants and give you 12 points with the Denver defense? Yeah, we’d take that in a heartbeat. No one in the crowd predicted a Giants win, though it is interesting that the game total nearly matched the crowd even though the scores were reversed.
The crowd did correctly predict the under, and the crowd got at least one prediction right in every other game in Week 5.
| PREDICTION | CROWD | ACTUAL |
| Winner | Broncos | Giants |
| Spread | Broncos -13.3 (spread was -11.5) | Giants -13 |
| Over/Under | 30.7 (under 39.5) | 33 |
Week 6 Top Performers
There was a lot of clumping together this week as the individuals seemed to reflect the crowd pretty closely.
Congrats everyone and thanks against for your help!
| STRAIGHT-UP | AGAINST THE SPREAD | OVER/UNDER |
| G.A. (8) C.A. (7) M.R. (7) |
G.A. (9) M.R. (7) C.A. (6) |
P.C. (11) N.G. (10) P.M. (9) |
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