I think there were 56 people in my pool when it started, and we're down to 5 (I had Pittsburgh, touted them here too actually), I'm also going New England this week and not thinking twice.
I also took New Orleans in my other "triple elimination" pool, with over 800 people (about 100 left without a loss, and about 100 with two losses) and will be taking New England there as well.
Future value means absolutely nothing to me in these things. I've been doing them for many, many, many years, and I've yet to make it far enough where I said to myself "Self, I really wish I had saved that team because now I'm fucked and there is nobody else I like," so the idea of saving a team for later is not only strange, but a wee bit arrogant in a sense.
I think the person that posted the results of the top three picks the past three years all being like 9-4 or 10-3 (winning 9 or 10 out of 13 weeks) brings up a great point. If you extrapolate that out, basically one of the top three picks every single week is going to lose, and the top pick is probably going to be wrong once every few weeks. There are no givens, and the spreads don't offer nearly as much predictive power as folks want to ascribe to them. I've come to the conclusion that the only way to win these things is to watch a shit load of football, pay attention to everything (injuries, previous head too head matchups, splits, coaches, etc.) and come up with the most educated guess you can....and then pick the other team.
