Ranger Picksrangerpicks
Ranger Picks Week 4 results
Week 4 results are in, and after a late night and losing an hour the keyboard monkeys employed here at Ranger Picks HQ have crunched the numbers and have the results!
Only 1 person achieved the always important bonus point this week, and I expect we’ll hear about it in a certain news letter in the morning… Congrats Rugby Morning!
8 other pickers managed to get 4 out of 5:
which keeps the top of the table ever moving:
Onwards to Week 5 - the form is open: https://rangerpicks.rugby/week5
Ranger Picks Week 4
Here comes week 4. Late with this update again… yikes, once more and it’ll be a habit!
Apparently, Anthem impressed pickers with their near miss last week - they’re still underdogs, but they have the same number of picks as Houston and Seattle, and more than Miami and LA!
The OG Squad and reigning champ Beaver Paw’s picks (missing Ranger Bunny!!) are reasonably consistent. A couple of looks at Houston and Seattle but otherwise unanimously for Chicago, DC and San Diego:
Some more chaos in the picks from the current leaders though!
Ranger Picks Week 3 results
Week 3 is in the bag! I think we only saw one upset, and that was the final match of the week. The upset I was hoping for did not happen, although Anthem looked really promising for most of their match up against Miami. While that robbed a some rangers from a bonus point, it did open the door to 4 bonus points:
Which has had the knock on effect of some turnover at the top of the leader table:
Week 4 form is live: https://rangerpicks.rugby/week4
This form will close on Thursday!
Ranger Picks Week 3
Sneaking in the update just before the first match of the week, here’s how Ranger Picks for Week 3 shape up!
Unsurprisingly, Miami is a huge favorite over Anthem… spoiler for later but I’m one of the few picking Anthem… this is their best shot at a first win, but I picked before their lineup was released so take that for what it’s worth!
The Legion is also favored over OGDC even with the long travel and the injuries they picked up last week.
Utah impressed Ranger Pickers with their dominance over Chicago last week and are expected to beat NOLA. I’m a little surprised that Seattle is ranked as high as they are against Houston even with Houston’s slower than expected start.
Finally the Free Jacks are expected to continue their march towards a three-peat, traveling to Chicago and picking up a win.
Taking a look at how our leader board picked, they’re all very similar. I see where all the Seattle picks came from though!
Taking a look at the OG squad with the addition of last year’s champ, you’ll see my Anthem pick… we’re split 50/50 on SD vs DC… and that’s not a typo - Rugby Morning picked NEFJ but FreeJackFitzy is taking a swing and picking Chicago!
Ranger Picks Week 2 results
Week 2 results are in!
Another week, another week with no bonus points for Ranger Picks. Despite this being an upset week for many of us, the zigs paid of for Beaver Paw and Ranger Bunny, who joined only a few others in getting 3 out of 4 correct:
This means several players join Rugby Morning and Ranger Abi at the front of the table, with no bonus points for tie breaks:
Week 3 form is open: https://rangerpicks.rugby/week3. Please try to use the same email and Ranger Name each week.
Week 3 form WILL close on Thursday.
Good luck as always!
MLR 2025 Ranger Picks Week 2
Week 2 is just hours away from starting, and of course we have a round up of picks.
Unsurprisingly, the Legion is a massive favorite over Anthem after dominating Seattle last week. 71% of pickers have NOLA triumphing over Miami, only 15% think that Utah can beat Chicago in the windy city’s home opener. The closest to a toss up is 60% favoring Houston over LA.
The OG Squad, last year’s winner Beaver Paw, and current (tied) leader Ranger Abi’s picks are below. Big swings for Bozo6 with Utah over Chicago and LA over Houston - no doubt hoping to recover from only 2 points last week. Beaver Paw and Bunny taking a smaller swerve with Miami over NOLA.
Last and final reminder to get Ranger Picks Week 2 picks in!
Ranger Picks Week 2
First results are in. This is going to be a quick one. Several surprises in the match results - no bonus points to kick off ranger picks 2025 but congratulations to Ranger Abi and Rugby Morning who stand on top with 4 correct picks! Everyone got at least 1 point - no goose eggs this week.
Full results below.
Week 2 form is open and will be closed on Thursday!
MLR 2025 is here!
Week 1 Ranger Picks are in, with a strong showing of 39 respondents.
It seems like the most difficult to pick is OGDC @ Miami - 56% choosing the visitors. Only 25% of pickers chose San Diego to get a home opener win. Is it riding the rivalry history or do we think that there’s been too much change in the Legion to come together in week 1?
Across the other matches, a solid 85% picked NOLA over Anthem, Houston over Chicago and New England over RFC LA.
Checking in with our reigning Champ Beaver Paw, he went against the crowd by picking Miami, otherwise picking the favorites.
This is how the OG squad and Beaver Paw are picking:
Ranger Picks Way Too Early
Ranger Picks way too early form has closed just in time for MLR 2025 to kick off. We asked the rangers to predict the win loss record match by match for the Free Jacks.
The only consensus loss for our New England Free Jacks is the Seattle away match in round 4. Too much travel in the first couple of weeks? I’m not sure - even Matt McCarthy says our Jacks travel well. High expectations for week 1 in LA, but not as high as Anthem and LA at home!
For our bonus pick, the clear winner for dream away trip is Chicago - memories of the 2023 Shield Final? My Anthem pick came in tied for 2nd.
We have 3 rangers picking a 16-0 season - Beaver Paw, Ranger Horkan, and Ranger Lil Payne, 1 definitely-a-secret-ranger picking 0-16 (we see you, RugbyMorning!). Otherwise 14-2 is the most popular prediction followed by 12-4 with 13-3, 11-5 and 10-6 all tied for 3rd place.
Charts below, will give a mid season update if I remember!
MLR 2025 Week 1
Welcome to Week 1 of Ranger Picks MLR 2025 Presented by TJRS!
Week 1 form is OPEN: https://rangerpicks.rugby/week1. Get your picks in… the form will be closing on THURSDAY.
Also closing on Thursday will be the Way Too Early predictions - get those in now too! https://rangerpicks.rugby/early
Good luck to all the rangers and pickers out there!
MLR 2025 Ranger Picks presented by TJRS
Ranger Picks 2025 is (almost) here.
Because no MLR season is complete without additional complexity - this year introducing mid week matches, we’re going to do something slightly different ourselves.
Regardless of what MLR is calling “rounds” or “weeks”, Ranger Picks has our own definition. A week is Friday to Thursday. So all matches Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday (there are no Thursday matches) will comprise that week as far as Ranger Picks are concerned.
This won’t really be an issue until April, so plenty of time to forget about why we’re doing this. I will open the form on MONDAYS the form for the upcoming week will close on THURSDAY before that weekend’s matches. That means there will be weeks where the following week’s form is open before the matches have finished for the current week. After week 1, I will send email reminders to everyone who has participated thus far in Ranger Picks 2025 in addition to the regular blog and social media posts.
So, mark your calendars - Ranger Picks MLR 2025 Presented by TJRS Week 1 form will open on Monday February 10th 2025 and will close Thursday February 11th 2025.
Way Too Early
A big congrats to Phil for the TJRS 24 hour marathon raising $4k (the fundraiser is still open: https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-jacks-preseason-player-fundraiser)) for the incoming Free Jacks players. One of the segments in the show was the annual “Way Too Early” predictions for a Free Jacks win/loss for every regular season match.
For #MLR2025, we’ve decided to do the same! Head over to https://rangerpicks.rugby/early and get your predictions in ahead of the start of the season!
MLR 2024 Championship
Ok, so I’m partly still in denial that the MLR 2024 season is over, partly still hungover from the celebration of the final, and partly went into vacation brain mode. All this to say, apologies for the almost 2 week delay on getting this final update out!
First things first, with 5 points up for grabs in the championship match, 61% picked NEFJ, with only 6.5% picking Seattle. The collapse of Houston in the first round continued to propagate through, diminishing the hopes of 29% of picks.
So congratulations to the Free Jacks and the 19 Rangers who correctly picked them!
Bringing this post season to a close, Sabercat Diehard managed to pull off a task almost as difficult as correctly predicting all matches - missing every single round!
Talking of perfect results… with no need for a tie breaker, picking up the maximum 19 points, Ranger Picks Rookie Ranger Frank wins the 2024 Ranger Picks Post Season presented by TJRS! Congrats Frank!
I’m now going to take a break and recharge ready for MLR 2025! Despite the many requests (all inside my head), I will not be running Ranger Picks for the draft… so see you next year! Thank you all for an amazing MLR 2024 season. I had a lot of fun, and hope we can make it better next year.
MLR 2024 Championship Week!
It’s Championship week! So it’s time to review Ranger Picks for the semi finals (aka Conference championships). With 6 points on offer (3 for each), we already knew most 2/3rds would max out at 3 points due to Houston getting knocked out early. So congratulations to Freejack fitzy, Beaver Paw, Ranger Frank, Ranger Tim, and Ranger Kathy for beating the odds!
Full results for the semi finals:
Current standings:
Rather than risk potential spoilers, I’ll share the predictions for the championship alongside the results ;)
MLR 2024 Post Season Week 2
It’s MLR 2024 Post Season Week 2! The Conference Finals - or Championship Semi Finals. Before we go there tho, we have to address the pickocalypse. Houston had a 93% pick rate last week, meaning only 2 pickers predicted a Dallas upset. And 2/3rds of those picking Houston also picked NOLA… yikes!
Amazingly(?) the 2 Dallas picks also picked Chicago, so we have Ranger Frank and Ranger Lil Payne with a Quarter Final clean sweep! 6 more players got 3 picks right (all failed by Houston). So our table has a fresh look.
All is not lost! The first round was 2 points per correct pick. We now move to round 2 which has 3 points per correct pick which means a possible 6 points. Unfortunately for 71% of the pickers, their WCF prediction is already blown (64.5% for Houston, 6.5% for San Diego), as well as 16% of ECF picks (13% for NOLA and 3% for OGDC). Will this mean a strategy shift for next years picks?
The regular season leaders picked the following for the semi finals, all but Beaver Paw losing out on a chance at maximum points:
Beaver Paw: NEFJ, SEA
Ranger Horkan: NEFJ, SD
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU
Dingo: NEFJ, HOU
MLR Stats: NEFJ, HOU
The 2023 OG pickers fell victim to the QFs in different ways, leaving only Freejack fitzy with a shot at 6 points. Ranger Bunny losing out with NOLA falling to Chicago and Rugby Morning let down by OGDC:
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU
Freejack fitzy: NEFJ, SEA
Ranger John: NEFJ, HOU
Ranger Bunny: NOLA, SEA
Rugby Morning: OGDC, SEA
Ranger Payne: NEFJ, HOU
How about our new leaders? We should see some separation this week - Ranger Frank has Seattle winning at home, where as Lil Payne sees Dallas continuing to upset in the West.
Ranger Frank: NEFJ, SEA
Ranger Lil Payne: NEFJ, DAL
MLR 2024 Post Season Week 1
Its post season week people! Pretty psyched for this weekend. Ranger Picks continue to have a strong showing. Although we collected all the post season picks, I’m only going to cover the conference semi finals (or quarter finals as we call them here at ranger picks HQ). There’s definately some similarity in both 1v4 matches and both 2v3 matches. Roughly 90% of rangers picked the number 1 seed in both conferences to be successful in their quarter finals, compared to about 60% for the number 2 seed.
How did our regular season top pickers pick? There’s a pattern for sure with the 2 number 1 seeds being picked. Some disagreement over CHI/NOLA, but only Beaver Paw is backing Seattle from this crew.
Beaver Paw: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SEA
Ranger Horkan: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SD
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
Dingo: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SD
MLR Stats: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
The 2023 OG pickers have a bit more confidence in Seattle with only Bozo6 and Ranger John going for SD. No surprise with Rugby Morning picking OGDC of course, but a continued clean sweep for Houston.
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
Freejack fitzy: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SEA
Ranger John: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
Ranger Bunny: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SEA
Rugby Morning: OGDC, HOU, NOLA, SEA
Ranger Payne: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SEA
Will a new leader emerge from the ranks? Will this come down to tie breakers? Anyone as excited as I am to find out?
Missing Ranger Picks? Have I got news for you!
I know I just wrapped up the MLR 2024 Ranger Picks presented by TJRS season, but we can’t stop, won’t stop.
Presenting the MLR 2024 Ranger Picks Post Season Presented by TJRS!
We’re changing up the format a little bit this year thanks to suggestions from Ranger Mark (FreeJacks Fitzy) and Ranger John. Let me know what you think of this format.
Everything you need to know is over at https://rangerpicks.rugby/postseason so head on over and join the fun!
MLR Week 18 and Ranger Picks Season Review
With the conclusion of week 18, so comes the end of the regular season of Ranger Picks presented by TJRS.
In our first year growing from the original 6, we regularly had over 30 pickers, and a lot fewer “hiccups” than I expected with the hand crafted system I put in place with Google Forms, Sheets and some unofficial API usage.
For the overall picks, it seemed like a season long battle between Beaver Paw, Bozo6, Dingo, and MLR Stats, with Ranger Horkan silently sitting ready.
For the first 8 weeks, Beaver Paw had a lock on the number 1 spot even through week 8 which was our first pick-pocolypse until week 9 when Dingo, MLR Stats and Ranger Horkan shot past him, and Bozo6 drew level on points. Dingo then held the lead until week 11 when Bozo6 finally grabbed the top spot. That only lasted 1 week before Dingo reclaimed the top spot and Bozo6 dropped to 4th. Dingo held on to the lead with a lot of movement below him until week 15 when Bozo6 got his league leading 5th bonus point on the season and grabbed #1 again, which of course only lasted 1 week before Dingo shot back along with Ranger Horkan to pass Bozo6 one more time. Week 17 was another disaster for our pickers (though not quite as bad as week 8) but that allowed Beaver Paw to rise once more to grab the lead. Week 18 lead to what some might call a desperate final attempt to zig for Bozo6 and … it didn’t pay off.
Putting a pin in that for the moment. Week 18 had some exciting moments… for a moment Ranger X was the sole remaining ranger in contention for a bonus point. Right up until that heart breaking kick giving Houston the win. Congrats to Ranger John and UnforgivenPotato for managing 5 correct picks (the LA win in Utah robbing both of them of the bonus point).
As I mentioned a couple of times, my kids have been playing Ranger Picks this year. I’m relieved to say I won that pool but I’m proud of how well they picked each week. It was a lot closer than I thought it would be, especially with the littlest playing based purely on logo aesthetics!
I’ve had several “thank you"s this past week for Ranger Picks, but I’d like to thank all of those participating for making this a fun ride - and letting me promote it in odd places (for example the Fantasy Ruckers discord). Thank you to those who offered suggestions and offers for help to improve the pick analysis in the previews (especially Ranger X) - lets see what we can do for next year! I’d also like to thank Phil and The Jacks Rangers Show for letting me run with this, and I’d especially like to thank the “OG” 2023 squad for their support.
Talking of the OG squad, I kept track of their picks and results too. “Make sure to call me the bonus point king” Bozo6 dominated that table despite “Definitely Not a Ranger” Rugby Morning making an early run at it.
Now for the final standings. Most importantly I managed to squeak into the top 10 making sure that half of the OG squad represented along with Ranger John and Bozo6! MLR Stats hung with the table leaders the entire season. Uncle Phil and David Lawrence (from Scrum of the Earth podcast) cemented their positions in the top 10 despite Phil not watching any MLR matches that the FreeJacks weren’t playing.
Despite holding the lead multiple weeks, Dingo finishes in 4th place thanks to the extra bonus point held by “remember I’m the bonus point king” Bozo6. Ranger Horkan, who was one of the most enthusiastic advocates for opening up ranger picks to the wider audience finishes in 2nd place based on the dumbest tie breaker (alphabetical) - which gives Beaver Paw, our original table leader the win! Congrats and welcome to the winners circle.
The full tables for week 18 and overall standings are, as always posted at https://rangerpicks.rugby/
MLR Week 18 Preview
It’s the final week of the MLR 2024 regular season! This Ranger Picks presented by TJRS is late again, but I was at the beach so please forgive me :)
With 2 points separating the top 5, who will secure the top spot this year? Beaver Paw, Dingo, Ranger Horkan, Bozo6 or MLR Stats?
The upsets have already started this week with LA securing the win at Utah. That leaves only 3 pickers in with a chance of a bonus point this week - and spoilers… none of the top 5. The most popular pick are the Free Jacks over Anthem. The most contested is Seattle @ San Diego.
There will be post season Ranger Picks… spread the word!
