Greg Krell survives tricky week to take Week 11 Armchair QB win

The eleventh week of the Tri-City Record’s annual Armchair Quarterback competition has been contested, as our pigskin diehards attempted to pick the winner of two local high school games, five collegiate games and three professional games that occurred during week eleven.

In terms of final records, our panelists always strive to put on a winning performance, which they hope will lead to more green checkmarks (wins) than red crosses (losses) on their weekly examinations. When all was said and done, most of our expert pickers finished with records they wished to forget, as four finished either with a losing skid or right at .500. The contest remains a grind-it-out slugfest, with everyone still having a chance for glory! Crazy, huh?

Let’s start by recapping the games from week eleven of our competition. In our local high school football games, the teams local to our paper, Coloma and Watervliet, have concluded their seasons. However, six teams from Berrien and Van Buren counties entered the week still in the playoffs. That number was cut to just one after the district finals, with the Niles Vikings the only team left from the two counties with a chance to be a state champion.

In collegiate action, Michigan, Michigan State and Notre Dame continued their seasons last week, while Western Michigan had their “bye” week. When the games were final, the results were mixed, with two of our local teams earning victories. In terms of final scores, #3 (CFP) Michigan (9-0) returned to action by hosting the Purdue Boilermakers at the “Big House” and came away with a thorough victory, 41-13. Michigan State (3-6) played host to a solid Nebraska squad at Spartan Stadium, and took home a 20-17 victory, earning their first win after six straight losses. Meanwhile, #15 (CFP) Notre Dame (7-3) made the trek to struggling Clemson, and you’d have thought the Fighting Irish would be a favorite; instead, they returned to South Bend with a 31-23 loss, their second in the past four games.

Finally, in professional action, only one of our local teams, the Chicago Bears, were in action, while the Detroit Lions had their lone “bye” week of the campaign. The Bears (2-7) put up quite the fight in the “Big Easy,” as they matched the Saints in scoring for the first three quarters. However, the fourth quarter doomed our friends from the “Windy City,” as New Orleans put up the lone score of the stanza to take the 24-17 win in this NFC North / South matchup.

When the final whistle blew and all the scores were verified, the best mark of the week stood at 7-3. A winning record was hard to come by during the stretch, but Greg Krell will walk away with top honors and the gold medal this week. He was able to stave off the bad luck several others had, and managed a perfect record in his high school and professional picks. He’s right in the fight for overall top honors and his confidence is growing each week!

In a stretch where a lack of winning records stood out, our neighborhood-friendly fire chief, Bill Whitney was able to squeeze out a record of 6-4, which was good enough for a runner-up finish and our weekly silver medal honors. While he will be disappointed being one game away from a possible weekly victory, he will take solace in knowing that he won two games at every level. Also, he was able to make up valuable ground in the overall race.

If you read this column like gospel, we often report that we have a tie somewhere in our ranks. This will not be the exception! Two of our Armchair Quarterbacks, Mike Banic and Rodney Lynch, took home records of 5-5, which can be considered a success or a failure, depending on how you look at it. When you look at their pick-by-pick breakdown, they picked the same winners and losers, so it begs the question – did great minds think alike?

Because we have a tie in the weekly standings, that means we had to go to the dreaded tiebreaker scenario to determine our weekly third and fourth-place finishers. Our tiebreaker matchup, which featured the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, finished with a total of 42 points. Based on their highly educated guesses, it was determined that Rodney, based on his prediction of 47 total points, won the duel to take home the weekly bronze medal in third place, while Mike (who predicted 58 total points) will have to settle for a fourth-place finish.

In what could be considered somewhat of a shocking development, our overall leader entering the week, RoxAnn Rodney-Isbrecht, limped to a fifth-place finish, with her record of 4-6 just enough to keep her from the bottom of the weekly standings. She started strong with her two high school picks winning their games but went a dismal 2-6 over the weekend in her collegiate and professional picks. She’ll still lead overall – but her lead has shrunk!

Unfortunately, everybody knows that each week we must have a “cellar dweller,” who will take home a sixth-place finish. That “badge of honor” this week belongs to Maureen Ovington, who found herself at the bottom of the standings by going 3-7 in our ten-game slate. She started with two wins in high school games but hit “bankrupt” over the weekend, as she went 1-7 in the collegiate and professional matchups. Talk about hitting a rough patch!

In case you are new to our newspaper or need a refresher on how this competition works, let’s take a moment to bring you up-to-speed. Each fall, our newspaper enlists the assistance of six local football fanatics, who should be deemed “superfans” really. Each week, the six-person panel is given a list of pre-selected games from the local high school, collegiate and professional ranks, and is given the daunting task of selecting the winners of each game.

Weekly records are kept from the beginning of the high school season through Super Bowl Sunday, with each week’s edition of the paper reporting on the progress of each participant. At the conclusion of the football season, the panelist who has the best overall record will earn the right to wear the 2023-24 Tri-City Record Armchair Quarterback hat and claim bragging rights until the next season begins.

In the event there are multiple AQBs that have the same weekly or season-long record, their place in the weekly or overall standings will be determined by a weekly “tiebreaker” game. In addition to trying to pick the winners of each week’s slew of games, they will also predict a total score from a specially selected game, one that usually stands out on a local or national level. The quarterback that predicts closest to the actual number of points scored by both teams will receive the higher position in the standings.

In the season-long race for the hat, there have been weekly changes in overall positioning virtually every week that this competition has been contested. After a week of just some “subtle” changes, we returned to our regularly scheduled shuffling in the rankings, with a tie-for-second place being the most notable change from our last update.

In terms of the overall classification, RoxAnn continues to keep a tight hold on the lead in the race for top honors, with her overall record sitting at 74-36 through our first 110 games. The margin between first and second place melted downward by one game, with Greg joining Rodney in the joint runner-up spot, with their overall record standing at 72-38. The final three positions in our race feature Bill in fourth place, with an overall record of 68-42, followed by Mike in fifth place, with an overall record of 65-45 and Maureen brings up the rear of the caboose in sixth place, with an overall record of 63-47. Despite the margin between the top and bottom of the standings sitting at eleven games, the race is still within reason, and we still expect twists and turns along the way that come with implications!

The season continues this week, with the regional round of the playoffs in high school football being contested across the state, along with week eleven of the college football season and week ten of the professional football season. Be sure to check back each week as our panel of ardent, loyal pigskin pickers weave their way through the football season, in pursuit of their own “one shining moment.” Now, here are your week twelve games that our qualified panelists were tasked with picking:

Portland at Niles (Fri)

Central MI at Western MI (Tue)

Miami (FL) at Florida State (Sat)

Michigan at Penn State (Sat)

Michigan State at Ohio State (Sat)*

Ole Miss at Georgia (Sat)

Carolina Panthers at

Chicago Bears (Thu)

Cleveland Browns at

Baltimore Ravens (Sun)

Detroit Lions at

Los Angeles Chargers (Sun)

San Francisco 49ers at

Jacksonville Jaguars (Sun)

* tiebreaker