TL:DR version
1. Weighted sample: I erased the first two games and
double-counted the last two.
2. Luck matters
3. BROADWAY!!
Four weeks to go, and matchups start to matter, heading into
the playoffs. Do I have to go high-risk against this opponent, or can I play it
conservatively? Two weeks with byes, two weeks without, and I figure
everyone needs a better angle on how good a team is right now. We can all see
what someone's total points an d won-lost record is for the season. But everyone's had injuries, replacements,
and assortments of luck. You want to know
how good a team is over the closing weeks.
What I did was eliminate the first two games altogether as
irrelevant, and counted the last two games double. It's not perfect, but it should give you a
better feel for who is hot right now. I
included the weighted W-L and points
for each team.
The other piece is that I tied everyone's team in to a
Broadway musical, because no one else would. There was just this perfect song
for Bethany, so I had to find one for everyone else. Don't thank me.
10. Team WOW Widow 2-7 Points For: 1044 has Rob Gronkowski,
Eli Manning, Calvin Johnson, and the sleeper Latavious Murray. Then she has a bunch of guys who get you 23
points one week and 6 points the next. Then a third batch who just aren't any
good. If a player is bad, he moves to
the bench and is ignored, not replaced.
Carlos Hyde, Joique Bell, Dwayne Allen, and Vincent Jackson are all
sitting on her bench. This is a woman
who is signaling she has had it with FF.
9. Sad Panda Throwbacks 2-7 1055 has these ridiculous loyalties she keeps thinking will pay off. She still believes in Peyton Manning. She still believes in Alfred Morris. She still has both the Bills and the Ravens defenses. Alfred Blue. Randall Cobb. Maybe someday. Since she's carrying the torch for so many, I thought the ultimate torch song was in order.
8. Laconic Librarians 3-6 1135 will beat me this week, but basically, it's not a good team. She has to sit around, hoping that Antonio Brown, TY Hilton, or Ben Roethlisberger goes off. Not much else happening. Alas, things looked so promising that first week, but injuries have brought her low.
7. Crippled Cowboys. 3-6 1046. I put him a little higher than his points warrant for reasons that will become clear. He had Tony Romo, Percy Harvin, and Dez Bryant get hurt. He thought the Texans defense was going to be good. He expected Marshawn Lynch, Melvin Gordon, James Jones, and Emmanuel Sanders to get him consistent points right off the bat. He was waiting for Antonio Gates to come back and put him over the top if he had a decent team. None of those players seemed like a bad idea early in the season. But here's what mostly went wrong: Duke Johnson and Bishop Sankey suck. Also Jacob has moved 2nd-, 3rd- and even 4th-tier QB's in and out trying to catch lightning in a bottle: Ryan Fitzpatrick, Marcus Mariota, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, Landry Jones, Zach Mettenberger, Jay Cutler. Many of them had good weeks, but never when he needed it. Bad luck, poor skill, gambler's fallacy? You decide. Improvement alert: Between bye weeks and injuries, Tony Romo, Marshawn Lynch, Matthew Stafford, Antonio Gates, and Chris Johnson are all coming back. Jacob may finish well, so I'm moving him up in the rankings. But it's way too late.
6. Romanian Pro JA 3-6 1192 got off to a terrible start and has had some bad matchups. However, it's not really a bad team, and he plays Tracy twice going forward, so maybe it will all come around. But I doubt it, because it's not actually a good team either, and too many things have to happen for this to work out. Every year, JA hits on some high-scoring players that no one saw coming. Tyler Eifert, Stefon Diggs. And every year, he drafts a couple of suspects who don't hit. Julius Thomas, Eddie Lacy. High-risk, high-reward, which seems appropriate for a poker player. As in cards, however, it is important to remember to actually pay attention.
5. Team Pops 7-2 1307 Other than one little secret tweak, I don't think my team is much better this year than other years. It's just that those years I was moderately unlucky, and this year I wasn't. I have learned if your team is doing well and you just coast, it gradually erodes. With that in mind, I will have to find places to upgrade in preparation for the playoffs. It won't do any good, of course, unless I'm playing Jonathan.
3 & 4 (tied) FantasyFootball and Chill and Granite State Bears 7-2 1411 : 5-4 1387 play back-to-back, and both have a combination of solid producers and boom-or-bust-players. They are locked in a dance of death for one of them. Ryan wondered whether Kyle was going to give us another year of ridiculous luck followed by ADHD and not bothering with his team. It would have been fitting if Kyle made him eat his words this week, but he didn't. Ryan won by a bit. These teams are about even now, but Ryan had the early injuries and Kyle hasn't had many, so Walker is going to the playoffs and Letares isn't. Still, strange things happen.
2. Manchester Mortensens 6-3 1317 - this could be the greatest comeback we have ever seen in the 10-4 Good Buddy league. Jonathan lost his first five, some of them painful, and has now gone on to win four straight and come back into the playoff picture. He was better than his five straight losses. He's not quite good enough for eight straight wins. And yet, there he sits, with almost as many points as Ryan, Kyle, or me in our new weighted sample. I'm giving him the nod over the rest of us, mostly because I want to be the one to have predicted it, if he makes it. Of course, he could actually be the 2nd best team at the end of the season but only be 7-6 and not make the playoffs. That would be fitting for his luck as well.
1. The Yardbirds
7-2 1508 had his usual fast start,
when suddenly injuries and a couple of bad matchups put him down. Yet he didn't panic. He built a team that could win an average
matchup, and is now moving to excel. No
one wants to see him in the first round of the playoffs.
No comments:
Post a Comment