Welcome to your weekly, marginally Friday (but really Saturday) prediction post! A friendly reminder: if the game post isn't up in time, please feel free to leave a prediction in the previous week's thread. Just let me know later, and I'll include your prediction.

What did I promise last week? That me wearing my new Justin Smith jersey was a precursor to the 49ers demolishing the Bills. It gets even better this week, folks. I will be at the Giants game in person, wielding the awesome power of my Justin Smith jersey, in the same vicinity as an actual, live, likely pissed off Justin Smith. There will be destruction at the Stick on Sunday, oh yes. Starting with my vocal cords.

There will also be the 49ers league-leading QB in passer rating and ESPN QBR, Alex Smith. He of the mercurial, difficult to predict stats. Teasing us with big games, then frustrating us with modest stats, and then, just when he's got us right where he wants us--expecting the norm, the average--he attacks. And we cheer as our scores plummet, because damn if it isn't worth it.

The question this week remains the same: how well do you know Alex Smith? If he's anything like the QB we watched last week, we'd like to know him very, very well. And on the wings of killing everyones' scores with a lackluster performance at the Jets, Alex rocketed past all but the most optimistic of souls. Fortunately, we tend toward the optimistic here at NN, so the scores weren't quite as dreadful as the previous game. Sadly for the Buffalo Bills, they can't boast the same.

We had eight people break the 4.0 point barrier last week. The top five include another newbie in 3rd place, ILNinerNut. The rest of the top five include the ever-optimistic bradyk2, ak4niner, Edggy, and reedkrase. Deserving of special recognition is bradyk2, who predicting Alex's total passing yardage, 303, exactly.

The leaderboard will be MIA until after the weekend, as I am writing this fanpost past midnight and have set my ambitions at getting it finished before 1:30 am. And with that, let us review the rules and venture our best guesses.

Unlike the subject of this game, the rules are simple. Guess Alex Smith's passing stat line for the upcoming game (New York Giants at 49ers) using the following format in the comments below.

Attempts:
Completions:
Yards:
TDs:
INTs:
Sacks:
Rushing Yards (Optional):
Rushing TDs (Optional):

Feel free to revise your numbers all the way up to game time. I'll use only the most recent guess. If you want to update your numbers, please reply to your original comment with the revised guess.

NOTE: Although I'm not currently scoring rushing stats (yards and TDs), I'm considering doing something with them at some point. For now, if you'd like to add rushing stats to your guess, please do. I'll highlight the person with the closest rushing predictions in the results column.

Scoring:

The scoring is based on a 6-point system, with each of the following metrics accounting for a point: Attempts, Completion % (calculated from Cmp/Att numbers), Yards, TDs, INTs, and Sacks. It's a bit dry, but for the curious, here is how each of the metrics are scored:

Attempts: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualAtt - AttGuessed) / 12)

Completion %: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualComp% - (CompGuessed/AttGuessed * 100)) / 15)

Yards: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualYards - YardsGuessed) / 100)

TDs: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualTDs - TDsGuessed) / 3)

INTs: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualINTs - INTsGuessed) / 3)

Sacks: 1 - Min(1, Abs(ActualSacks - SacksGuessed) / 5)

The six scoring categories are added up to produce a composite score. The maximum that can be scored is 6 points; the minimum is 0. I'll keep a running leaderboard throughout the season, along with posting the weekly results.

WEEK FIVE RESULTS

Welcome to the extremely abridged results section, where I'm just going to highlight a handful of interesting tidbits. As I mentioned above, bradyk2 predicted Alex Smith's passing yardage exactly with 303 yards. I understand guessing 300. Or 310. But guessing 303 is something else entirely. Feel free to solicit bradyk2's gambling advice in the comments below. (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any ill-advised bets you place based on bradyk2's advice.)

Only five of us predicted a 3 TD performance. Pats on the backs, you five. Also, internet cookies go to liberty_JAC for predicting Alex's completion percentage exactly. Special mention also belongs to ak4niner, who was the only brave soul optimistic enough to predict 0 sacks.

As for rlott#42...I was close. So close. And yet fell 0.10 further behind in season standings. This week, I will have my day. (Though I think both of us have fallen out of top 2 contention based on our poor scores regardless.)

Here is what Alex Smith's week against the hapless Buffalo Bills looked like:

Att	Comp	Comp %	Yds	TDs	INTs	Sacks	Rush Yds	Rush TDs
24	18	75.0%	303	3	0	0	49	0

And here are the Week Five rankings:

Rank	User	Att	Comp	Comp %	Yds	TDs	INTs	Sacks	A	B	C	D	E	F	Score
1	bradyk2	32	25	78.1%	303	3	0	2	0.33	0.79	1.00	1.00	1.00	0.60	4.72
2	ak4niner	25	19	76.0%	222	3	1	0	0.92	0.93	0.19	1.00	0.67	1.00	4.71
3	ILNinerNut	31	24	77.4%	311	3	1	1	0.42	0.84	0.92	1.00	0.67	0.80	4.65
4	Edggy	33	26	78.8%	287	3	0	1	0.25	0.75	0.84	1.00	1.00	0.80	4.64
5	reedkrase	27	20	74.1%	241	2	0	2	0.75	0.94	0.38	0.67	1.00	0.60	4.34
6	49erLou	33	26	78.8%	288	3	0	3	0.25	0.75	0.85	1.00	1.00	0.40	4.25
7	liberty_JAC	28	21	75.0%	214	2	0	2	0.67	1.00	0.11	0.67	1.00	0.60	4.05
8	Average	29	21	72.4%	239	2	0	2	0.58	0.83	0.36	0.67	1.00	0.60	4.04
9	16to80fan	25	17	68.0%	233	2	0	3	0.92	0.53	0.30	0.67	1.00	0.40	3.82
10	Fred.P.Soft	24	17	70.8%	186	2	0	3	1.00	0.72	0.00	0.67	1.00	0.40	3.79
11	AzNiner	34	23	67.6%	308	2	0	3	0.17	0.51	0.95	0.67	1.00	0.40	3.70
12	Delmuir	26	17	65.4%	202	2	0	1	0.83	0.36	0.00	0.67	1.00	0.80	3.66
13	Desert Dog Runner	32	23	71.9%	251	2	1	2	0.33	0.79	0.48	0.67	0.67	0.60	3.54
14	rlott#42	27	19	70.4%	234	1	0	3	0.75	0.69	0.31	0.33	1.00	0.40	3.48
15	Ni9er	29	20	69.0%	220	2	0	3	0.58	0.60	0.17	0.67	1.00	0.40	3.42
16	Aaron Emerson	27	17	63.0%	260	2	0	4	0.75	0.20	0.57	0.67	1.00	0.20	3.39
17	Katydid	30	19	63.3%	242	2	0	2	0.50	0.22	0.39	0.67	1.00	0.60	3.38
18	PNK	28	19	67.9%	197	1	0	2	0.67	0.53	0.00	0.33	1.00	0.60	3.13
19	sik49er	31	21	67.7%	229	2	0	4	0.42	0.51	0.26	0.67	1.00	0.20	3.06
20	Stupifyed	34	22	64.7%	233	2	0	2	0.17	0.31	0.30	0.67	1.00	0.60	3.05
21	Drew Kerr	32	25	78.1%	205	2	0	4	0.33	0.79	0.02	0.67	1.00	0.20	3.01
22	whistlingmountain	29	20	69.0%	200	1	0	3	0.58	0.60	0.00	0.33	1.00	0.40	2.91
23	SH0ck-D	18	14	77.8%	198	2	1	4	0.50	0.81	0.00	0.67	0.67	0.20	2.85
24	See Jay	32	20	62.5%	223	0	0	2	0.33	0.17	0.20	0.00	1.00	0.60	2.30