Season 2010: Week 16

The best part of the season--the part where you can enjoy football on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and even Tuesday--has arrived. It's also that part of the season where your fantasy wager is on the line. We wish you the very best in your fantasy finale (or consolation, whatever it is) and many happy holidays stuffing yourself with football in front of the tele.

So how's it going to end? On Monday Night's game, the Falcons are playing for home-field advantage, while the Saints are a long shot away from winning the division. But the Saints only need 1 of 2 games to secure a wild-card spot, and if the wild world of predictive sporting is correct, they'll get that win tomorrow night. But if our tXtFL simulator is correct, the Falcons will be taking home-field advantage, and the Saints' wild-card berth awaits another week. Who's it gonna be?

And this week, in lieu of our fancy graphs, we're displaying side-by-side predictions from our new gaming engine, currently under heavily development for tXtFL 3. Some bugs have been worked out since our last run, and we've thrown in a few new tweaks as well. Follow the battle not only of the Saints and the Falcons, but also of tXtFL 2 and 3!

Monday Night Predictions

• tXtFL 2: Saints 13, Falcons 22
• tXtFL 3 (early development)*: Saints 10, Falcons 26
• Final score: Saints 17, Falcons 14
• Analysis: Drew Brees can beat a computer any day.

* tXtFL sports a much more efficient gaming engine that allows us to routinely crank out 3000 simulations rather than the 300 we typically use for tXtFL 2-based predictions.