HERE’S WHY THE COLTS / BROWNS SHOWDOWN IS A “HARD PASS”

Predicting winners at the beginning of any sports season is tough even in the best of circumstances. The NFL, however, presents a unique set of obstacles that raise the bar on difficulty. No sport turns over rosters and players as fast as pro football does; injuries and age can create steep performance cliffs season over season for players at all positions. And so at the start of the year, predicting football games typically involves looking at systems and coaches as much as anything.

So far, the swarm’s recommended picks are an excellent 14-5 picking winners as we head into a volatile week 3. Keeping those “recommended” picks in mind is just as important in football as it is in MLB, where the Swarm has been posting some unbelievable returns recently.

Even though each successive week should help our NFL Swarm participants answer questions, this season’s raised new questions each week also. Which Rams team is the real deal, the one that destroyed the Colts in week one or the one that looked like the same old Rams in week two against Washington? Are the Chiefs for real and scary as they’ve looked? And Baltimore—who didn’t necessarily look like a big threat to the Steelers—are sitting at an easy 2-0 as they head to London to play Jacksonville this week. Here’s how the swarm sees things.

This week, we’ll be focusing on the difference between picks the NFL Swarm recommends, and picks the swarm recommends you avoid. One of the things that’s important to pay attention to is the swarm confidence. When we list a pick as a high risk, we really mean it; those are picks where it was fairly apparent to Unanimous A. I. researchers that the swarm was so divided that the answer provided is inconclusive or may have conflicting information involved that makes the result one that’s difficult to feel too certain of. Here’s what that looks like in practice. First, take a look at this replay for the Steelers against Chicago.

As you can see, there’s almost no opposition in the magnets to taking Pittsburgh at high confidence. Sure, we’ve got one or two of Bill Swerski’s Super Fans initially pulling to Da Bears, but it’s an absolute rip current of magnets taking the puck to a high confidence straight up Steeler pick, with only some “steering” magnets moving opposite late in the swarm to land the puck on the light properly. Compare that to this next replay.

What the heck is going on here? The puck first edges towards Cleveland at high confidence, then quickly corrects as the swarm realizes that this is the Browns after all. For a second it looks to be headed to a low confidence Cleveland selection…and then we see how conviction comes into play. There’s not enough of a consensus for either the Browns or Colts in this swarm early on, so it becomes a battle of which outcome has the most conviction and confidence. In this case, that’s Indianapolis. Just enough magnets pulling for Cleveland “defect” to the other side and we get our pick of the Colts in this game. Needless to say, if you’re forecasting games in your office pool, this matchup between 0-2 squads should be a hard pass.

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