EDITOR'S NOTE 9/6 5:05PM - If you haven't gotten your predictions in, make sure you do soon.  If you miss out on the morning games, you can still get predictions in for the afternoon/evening games and even tomorrow's game.  This is a season-long cumulative score contest, so every pick helps.

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Since the end of last season we've gained a fair number of new regular readers.  For the new folks (and for those who don't remember the specifics), I present the 2nd annual Niners Nation Prediction Game (quite the original name, I know).

Each week I will select six games for you guys to predict the winner and final score.  The six games will always include the 49ers game, as well as the national Monday night and Sunday night games.  Beyond that, I try and just make some random picks based on interesting matchups.  Also, unless the 49ers are playing a Thursday game, I usually try and avoid those matchups (except maybe at Thanksgiving).

I'm going to have howtheyscored share the details (since he handles the scoring), but I'll lay out some basics.  The scoring involves a combination of how close you were in the scoring differential, combined with how close you were to the to total points scored will give you a score. Ignore the info below.  Howtheyscored has posted the rules in the comments.

I initially included some old rules, but they were dated, so howtheyscored has the rules posted at the top of the comments.

So, onto this week's matchups (and all times are Pacific):

Arizona @ 49ers - Sunday 9/7 1:15pm

Chicago @ Indianapolis - Sunday 9/7 NBC Game 5:15pm

Minnesota @ Green Bay - Monday 9/8 4:00pm

Denver @ Oakland - Monday 9/8 7:15pm

Seattle @ Buffalo - Sunday 9/7 10:00am

Tampa Bay @ New Orleans - Sunday 9/7 10:00am

We've got some realluy good matchups in Week 1.  And if you don't get your picks in before the Sunday morning games, you can still get in any picks for later games.  The points will accumulate over the course of the entire season.  At the end of the season, we'll take the top people (it was 8 or 16 last season) and they will form a playoff bracket for the real postseason.

If you have any questions, post them in the comments and myself or howtheyscored will respond.