NFL WEEK 18 2021 PRISONER'S DILEMMA EDITION

UPDATE: Your first repeat champion in the world famous REGJB Fantasy Football League is none other than....drum roll please....RUMPOLE! Another stellar performance by WR Cooper Kupp (26.60) and TE Tyler Higbee (23.50) allowed us to survive De La Fins Brady (36 to our Josh Allen's 29 at QB).  Our late-season pickup at RB Rashad Penny (28, mostly in the fourth quarter) allowed us to prevail and become a two-time champion 138-104 at the time of this writing. Congrats to regular season best record Born Tua Be Wild (13-2), and championship runner-up De La Fins. We were lucky, pure and simple. It's good to be good. It's better to be lucky and we will take the luck and the win. 

Welcome to the very first NFL regular season week 18! The NFL expanded the season this year. The Dolphins are O..U...T out of the playoffs. They play a mostly meaningless game today against the NE Cheaters to close out the season. In our opinion, this will be their last meaningless end-of-season game for a while. This is a team headed in the right direction. 

Another team playing a totally meaningless game is the Tampa Bay Bradys. They are headed to playoffs and with a fifty-something QB, we are calling on coach Bruce Arians to SIT BRADY! 

Our Opponent today in the REGJB Fantasy Football championship game, De La Fins is grimacing, as his hopes rest on the arms of the aging and aching QB12. If he sits or takes it easy, we win. This has been our most challenging and satisfying FF season. We blew the draft, picking in the first round at six Giants Running Back Barkley who has done nada. We backed into the playoffs with a losing record, and yet here we are. Win or lose, it's been fun. 

PRISONER'S DILEMMA is a game theory analysis we have written about before. It applies not just to the work all of us do in criminal law, but to many decisions made in the real world. The setup for the dilemma is - imagine two people arrested for a crime and in separate interview rooms.  One is being beaten by the City of Miami/Hialeah detective, the other is being crammed with coffee and McDonalds and cake and cookies by the Miami Dade Detective. Woops! Wrong scenario. We will get to that one another time. 

Both prisoners A & B are in separate rooms; they cannot communicate what they have decided to do. 

1) If both remain loyal and don't speak, they will each get two years on a lesser charge; 

2) If A speaks but B is loyal, A goes free, B gets eight years- and vice-a-versa. 

3) If both A & B rat each other out, they each get five years. 

Options two and three where the prisoner makes the individual decision to speak are in the best interests of the individual, wherein they can employ the game theory "mini-max" strategy-  by speaking they minimize or in this case exclude the worst possibility (8 years). However, by speaking they exclude their chance for the best cooperative strategy- two years, but they maximize their chance to obtain the best non-cooperative outcome- case dismissed. 

Today, the Raiders are playing the LA Chargers in a 4pm game. IF the Steelers (who have a tie this year) win AND the Jags upset the Colts, the the following rules apply to the Raiders/Chargers game: 

1) If they both agree to not try and play for a 0-0 tie, they both make the playoffs; 

2) If one tries for a tie but is ambushed at the last moment by the other team, then the team that scores goes to the playoffs and the other team goes home; 

3) If both try to win, then only one makes the playoffs. 

As Commander Spock would say- "Fascinating". 

We highly recommend game theory as a course of study for many areas of life, not the least of which is investment decisions. Understanding the "Nash Equilibrium" is central to the concept of making Game Theory work for you. 

PICKS

We like the Raiders as a home dog at their new magnificent stadium (where we have seen a game this year) to not tie and to beat the Chargers +2.5.

Steelers/Ravens under 42.5. Big Ben's last game (unless the Colts are upset by the Jags). A great player who probably left at least two super bowl championships on the table, but a sure first ballot hall of famer who never got the credit he was due. At his best, he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries like Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers. He and the Steelers could just never beat Brady and the Cheaters when it mattered. 

Speaking of Colts at Jags, let's have some fun and put fifty on the Jags +15.5. That's a big line. 

J...E..T..S Jets Jets Jets! at Bills. We like Gang Green +16.5. We need Bills QB Allen as much as De La Fins needs Brady,  as Allen is our FF QB today. The Bills need this game to secure a first-round home game. But a ten- or twelve-point win seems a likely outcome here. 

It has been another fun NFL season, providing the kind of distraction that sports often provides, and we so need in these Covid times. For the many of you who play every year in our world-famous survivor pool, thank you for your participation.  We wish our blog friend Judge De La O the best of luck today in our fantasy football showdown. He plays every year, recruits players (not by ordering his young PDs or ASAs to signup) and this year ran the league as co-commissioner and made every decision and set the rules and made the trains run on time as is his wont. Thank you. 

Our Super Bowl Pick? 

A couple of teams could get hot and go on a run. Green Bay is the favourite. But if there is an Arizona Cardinals / Buffalo Bills Super Bowl, you heard it here first.