NFL Squares: Office Pool Betting Games, Advice And Rules 2015 Playoff Games

Only six NFL franchises have won back-to-back Super Bowl titles and the Seattle Seahawks look to join that rare company as the 2015 NFL playoffs begin next weekend. The Seahawks are currently neck-and-neck 5/2 favorites with the New England Patriots (the last team to claim consecutive Super Bowls in 2005) to win this year’s crown. Both are powered by top quarterbacks in Russell Wilson and Tom Brady, respectively, and each has top defenses to rely on late in games.

But who should participants in postseason office pools pick either team to win it all?

To answer that question its important to breakdown the rules associated with office pools, as well as the teams.

The typical pool will split up each playoff game into separate grids. Going back to high school algebra, let’s put one team on the X-axis and another on the Y-axis. Then carve out 100 boxes, with 10 horizontal and 10 vertical columns. From there numbers 0 to 9 are randomly assigned to each column.

Usually players will be required to pay per box, hoping to correctly predict the score for each quarter and the final score of each game in the postseason. For example, if the Patriots and Seahawks reach the Super Bowl and a pool player’s box has No. 1 for New England and No. 7 for Seattle, then they’d hope for a 21-17 New England victory. Or a 27-21 Seattle victory.

With touchdowns and extra points totaling seven points, and field goals three points, many players will try to buy boxes containing a combination of 4s, 1s, 7s, 3s, and 0s. But after that very little strategy goes into the traditional box pool.

If players would prefer to predict the entire postseason in one shot, rather than pray for scores in each game , they can participate in a ranking pool.

All 12 teams in the postseason are ranked from best to worst by each player, and the league administrator assigns a point total for each correct prediction. Based off the example given by RunYourPool.com, the top ranked team would be given a point total of 12 points and the worst 1 point.

So if the pool player has New England ranked as the top team and they win one game and a correct guess in the pool garners double points, then 24 points is awarded.

After deciding which type of pool to run, administrators can head to RunYourPool or even to PrintYourBrackets.com, so as to make the process of setting everything up easier.

Now as for who pool players should pick, there really is very little harm in going with the chalk throughout the playoffs. Only six wild card teams have very won the Super Bowl, perhaps because they didn’t have the same amount of talent as the teams that played so well in the regular season or more because they have to play four games compared to three games for the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in each conference.

Depending on how the rest of Week 17 plays out, New England is the only team in the entire league that’s assured of a bye week. Seattle could slip out of the top seed in the NFC if it loses to St. Louis, while Denver and Detroit can also be forced to play in the opening round should they lose.

Right now the best bets for any pool include the Patriots to win it all, followed by Seattle, Green Bay and Denver. However, a good upset pick could be the Dallas Cowboys, who are 10/1 underdogs, but are one of the hottest teams in the league right now.