Gut Wrenching!

Remember last week when I mentioned the lack of close games in Week Nine? Well, sometimes the fantasy gods strike in ways you just can't imagine.

First things first, we had two huge games this past weekend with implications across three divisions. My original lede for this post, which I began Monday evening, is below. But somewhere between that headline and this morning, we had an ending for the ages. 

The Legends, sitting atop the Lombardi, had a 25.76 point margin in their game against the Kuhlmann-leading Blizzard going into Monday night's Packers-Eagles game (82.30 to 56.54). Our site projected the Blizzard to make it close as they had Jacobs and Goedert on tap. And that projection was not wrong. Paz' club inched closer and closer despite the game on the tube being a defensive struggle. 

With less than six minutes remaining, the Packers scored a TD (their only points on the night) with Jacobs carrying it in from six yards out. That score pushed the Blizzard ahead of James, 82.44 to 82.30. It looked like a win (by the margin of less than a yard and a half of rushing) for the Bliz and that they would hold their piece of 1st place. I'd been following along on the app while reading, and when Jacobs scored, I closed the app, opened Blogger, and got a head start on today's news post.  

In no way was I counting on what happened next. The Eagles killed off about three minutes and punted, the Pack crossed midfield, faced a 4th-and-1, handed the ball to Jacobs, and he LOST 4 Yards and fumbled! That play cost the Bliz 0.4 points, knocked them back to 82.04, and behind the Legends. 

Green Bay did get the ball back one more time, moved it enough for a desperate attempt at a tying FG, but that kick came up short from 64 yards out. Had McManus made it and the game gone into OT, either Jacobs or Goedert would have surely picked up a couple of yards or nabbed one catch, and given Paz his win. 

Fantasy football can surely drive you crazy. 

Not that it's any consolation to Paz, but I lost by a half point in a different league a few years back when Eli Manning (I think it was Eli) threw a last-play Hail Mary that was intercepted by a guy lying on his back, as I recall. The pick cost me a point, but I still would have won, except the guy I was playing also got a point, since he had the defense Eli was going against. Sigh

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This is Monday Night's original post title and partial lede for this edition..

.Did We Just Witness...

...a Hughes Bowl Preview??

To paraphrase the great Bum Phillips, "If the Sticks and Holes weren't the class of the league, it doesn't take long to call roll!"

And those two clubs met in Week 10 with the Sticks rolling to a 160-121 win. The Sticks become the first team to hit the 160 point mark (160.08 to be exact) since the Flyers got there in Week Three of 2024. It's the 13th-highest regular-season game score in league history. 

The Holes will fall back to a tie for first in the Barenholtz Division with the streaking Nationals despite a sterling 120-point effort. 

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Now back to live action... Jeez, so many moving parts. The Nats, as mentioned, are streaking and sit third in points scored. They would hold the #4 seed if the season was done right now. 

With six wins, the Bombers have a grip on the #6 seed and have a cushion between them and the rest of the pack. And they remain just a game behind the Legends. The four-win Giants and Rbacks have paths to the postseason, but they are pretty tenuous. I haven't looked closely, but I can't see a three-win team sneaking in, even if one would win out. I'm open to correction by a math whiz out there. 

We have four weeks left. One non-division week and then things get tense. As I mentioned, it appears that six teams have damn near wrapped up postseason slots. But where they fall, and who gets the byes are the unanswered questions. We shall have to wait and see. 

Can we talk? (#1)... I need everyone to be aware of the fact that I try to monitor lineups and such each weekend, but I, like you, have things that come up that may keep me away from seeing problems. Owners can get tied up with life and wind up with inactive/out/bye players in their lineup, which is not ideal, obviously. As commish, I reserve the right to 'fix' a lineup if I can't reach an owner. That is something I *hate* doing, for multiple reasons, but we are not some random, free ESPN league of strangers where half the teams are ghosted by Week Eight. We have 45 years of being competitive and fun. Everyone has my phone number, and a text asking for me got take care of something is all it takes if you can't get to the site for whatever reason.

I've moved the Invalid Lineup warning module to a more conspicuous location. It will list a team of a player in your lineup who has been ruled 'Out'. 

Can we talk? (#2)... let's discuss late-season trades. First, let me say that in almost 46 years, we have never had a deal made that I felt was worthy of being overturned or disallowed. Nothing shady, nothing that hinted at collusion, period. And I'm proud of that fact. I'm also a minimalist when it comes to rules. I don't want to have to come up with guidelines as to who can be involved in trades at any point in the season. 

A few years ago, I moved the trading deadline back to the beginning of the last week of the season. My thinking was that it gave more freedom to make moves, especially back then when we had smaller (by a player or two) rosters. And (and this is crucial) we were a keeper league with assets to stock, and we allowed future draft picks to be included. 

Over the last week or so, there have been some trades proposed, with one accepted this morning. That trade was between a non-contender and a team with at least a mathematical chance to get to the playoffs. I approved it after a bit of thought. I was involved in a trade proposal/counter-proposal last week. At the time, I had a glimmer of a spark of a teeny hope that I could reach a playoff spot. That's gone, so today I turned down a fair offer from another non-contender. I DO NOT want to discourage anyone from trying to win every possible game, but OTOH, I need to make sure that a deal made is fair to both teams and to the rest of the league. 

I'm walking a fine line here, I guess. But that's why I get paid so damn much, yes? Thanks for understanding. 

Another Hughes photo... has landed. The partial picture below is seen in full on the Hughes Tribute page. It's the latest addition to my collection. 

My wife and I don't have identical musical tastes, but we do agree that Raul Malo (with or without The Mavericks) is our favorite artist. We've seen him countless times at all sorts of venues, from Central Texas to New Orleans and beyond. He's a classic road warrior who tours constantly. When the Mavericks take a break, RM hits the road solo, with a small group, a sidekick, or just with his son on the drum kit. And he fills gaps in that schedule by playing on cruises or just showing up at record stores and guitar shops. 

He recently battled colon cancer, and it looked like he had it beaten. But in time it returned, and now it's spread to his brain. He's been here in Houston (where else?) for treatment. And, true to his nature, he hung out at Rockin' Robin on Shepherd to noodle with guitars and entertain. Sadly, he's had to cancel all his upcoming shows, including one here in Houston that was scheduled for October and one we were really looking forward to, New Year's Eve at Austin City Limits Live. 

Here's to you, Raul Malo. 

Here the Mavericks play our favorite, Harvest Moon.

The band is just awesome.

 

This Post Has No Title

 

Well, Well, Well... We have a new #1 Seed. OK, I know it's too early to even look at that stuff, but at 2-7 I have the time, right? 

Plus, keeping track of this foolishness is kind of my job. If you check the playoffs tab, you'll see that the Holes have climbed to the top, tied with the Bliz at 7-2. But with a win over Paz earlier, they hold the tiebreak. But, as noted, it's too early to get too invested in this, as a lot can (and will) happen over the final five weeks of the season. 

The week was unusual as we didn't have a close game. It was a rare Monday night in that the matchups had all but been finalized before the Cards and Cowboys kicked off. So the MFL app on my phone got a night off. 

Does anyone have their eyes on the Legends? Second in points scored and 6-1 over their last seven after an 0-2 start. They just lost Tucker Kraft, and I'm not sure what Rico Dowdle (Rico Dowdle!) is doing is sustainable, but hey, James is gonna ride that wave for the foreseeable future. He's gonna owe me a beer if he wins this thing because I'm the guy who tipped him wise to nabbing Rico D. 

Seeding and Bleeding... I had a casual discussion last week with an owner about seeding for the playoff teams. The point was made that the best two teams in the same division can lead to one of them being KO'd by the other before they have a chance to meet in the title game. Which is absolutely true. 

And because I do enjoy mulling over the league, an actual discussion point gives me something to focus on. So, that discussion led me to think about the following:

The potential KO of a strong second-place team comes up fairly regularly. Last season the Flyers tied for the best record in the league (10-4) and were less than a half-point(!) behind the Bombers for the top scoring total in the league. Lost the bye by less than one single catch over the course of the season and off they went to the #4 seeding. I breezed through the Almanac and found that over the last decade, give or take, there have been four instances where the two best teams by record came from the same division ('24, '23, '19, '13).

I have some core beliefs in how the league does and should work, among them is that 1) we will always have a head-to-head schedule...2) winning your division, however strong or weak it is, should be worth something, and... 3) 'bad luck' i.e. scoring a bunch of points but losing games, can and should be factored into playoff qualifiying. 

Sidebar: I realize that the last of those can be problematic; a team with 7 or even 8 wins can get squeezed out by a team with several fewer wins. I got a lot of pushback when we went in that direction a few years ago, so I shelved that idea. PPG is part of tiebreaking, but unless a lot of you have had a change of heart, we won't do the '6th Seed  Goes To Highest Point Team' thing again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, back to the discussion at hand. If there is a way to make the seedings/matchups more fair while still keeping the divisional aspect intact, I'm all ears. And if enough folks want to toss qualifiers into a 'PPG hat' for seeding, I'd put that up for a vote as well. It's food for thought anyway.

Ed Hughes Page Fallout: First of all, I hope someone actually looks at it. LOL Most of this stuff lands in an echo chamber, obviously, but that page deserves a look, not for my writing, but for the memorabilia. 

The Rams at Colts program from Hughes' 1954 NFL debut had some :::ahem::: interesting features that I finally got around to scanning. Click on them for the full experience. 

The 1950s were, well, different.

Six points, indeed! 😏

This next one had me LOLing. I'm not sure which section is more entertaining, the 'Cheers' or the 

'Chants'!

LOL @ Chant #6....

"Go! Go! Go! Go!"

How inspiring! How the fuck did the Colts lose a single home game while hearing that? 

Being An Idiot... Twice last week (TWICE!!!) I bid on behalf of the Flyers without realizing I was logged into the site as commish. I will always be aware of how I'm logged in to avoid just those issues. But I've been doing a lot of 'under-the-hood' work lately, trying to figure out how to get the playoff seeding tab to display correctly, trying to add my cutsey Halloween graphics to the banner, and so on. So I've been on there as commish quite a bit. 

Of course, being in commish mode causes waiver bids to go in as claims unless I check a box. And with this new template, I find it much easier to miss that checkbox. I've done it before with the old site, but likely never twice in a decade, never mind twice in one week. Jeez. 

Obviously, I can fix it without a lot of work, so it's close to no harm, no foul. But it also shows the world who I'm bidding on (via the emails generated), so I need to do better. LOL, maybe I'm just too old to do this?

Sidebar #2.. Yesterday, I came across a weird anomaly that likely factors into all this. Putting in a bid as owner, I still had to check a box to prevent the bid from going through immediately as a claim. I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug! I guess it's been that way all along in this new template, and I just never thought about it while using that page. And, yes, I'm still working the wire. Never give up! Never surrender! (Gordon Ramsey be damned)

Sidebar #2B... After some testing, I found that the site continues to treat me as a commish (on the bid page only) if I switch to owner mode after entering as commish.  If I were last logged in as an owner and I log back in, the waiver bid/claim page works as expected. A bid goes in as just that, without me having to specify it as NOT being a claim. I'm sending MFL a support ticket. But if it's a template-specific thing, they won't be able to do anything. The template is a 'third-party' deal.

Random thought... The three division leaders are also the teams in their divisions with the most waiver cash left. What's the significance? You tell me. 

This is Terry Stafford, NOT Elvis!  A great song nonetheless.

R.E.M.....underrated band

Rumbling, Stumbling, Slowly

 

Connect THIS, MFer!... I won't bore you with the details, but I've been fighting an uphill battle to fix my HIGHLY erratic internet connection for the past week and a half. After finally getting through to a living person (I think) at AT&T, I believe the solution is in sight. We'll see. In the meantime, I will continue with this stuff as long as my connection and patience hold out.

Well, Well, Well... the seemingly invincible Blizzard took one on the chin this week, and now, combined with another Sticks' win, the Kuhlmann has tightened right up. Those two clubs are a notch (at least) ahead of the Hughes League pack and headed for a showdown in about a month. Which reminds me....

Since the Playoff tab refuses to populate the sixth projected playoff team. I'll do the work for you. The playoff tab is now fixed (more or less). If the playoffs started this week:

Byes,..Bliz (#1 seed) and Holes (#2)

WC Games: Legends (#3) vs. Nats (#6) and Sticks (#4) vs. Bombers( #5). 

Elsewhere across the league... the Legends have quietly emerged as the leader in the Lombardi Division. They are tied with the Bombers (a big winner this week!) and hold a Week 1 win over Bobby. That's a Week 14 rematch to look forward to. 

....the Nationals remain right on the Holes' heels 😏, but, like the Sticks, they lost the first matchup, which adds a bit more of an uphill tilt to their efforts to win the Barenholtz. Their rematch comes in the last week of the season. Buckle up! The R'backs, at 4-4, are very much in the picture. In the first division go-round, they beat the Holes, then lost to the Nats. Both games had razor-thin margins. It's worth noting that they are the only team currently outside the projected playoffs to be at .500 or better.

Yes, we have FIVE teams at 2-6. Five. That's pretty weird. I've mentioned previously that seven wins can often come with a Wildcard slot, but the way things appear this year, it is tough to visualize a playoff path for any of those clubs. Maybe I'm being pessimistic. All I know is that I got a terribly lucky and much undeserved win this week and went to bed thinking maybe I was getting some fortune smiling at me. But the first email I get is a lineup from my next opponent, the Sticks. A guy can't even enjoy a moment of respite from a shit season. LOL It was soul-crushing, lemme tell ya!

A Gentle Reminder... a lot of the IR'd guys we picked up on spec earlier are now hitting the active NFL rosters. Once they are off the IR, you'll need to activate or cut them before the system will allow you to make any roster moves. 

The Ed Hughes Page... As I mentioned last week, I've been picking up some new items for my Ed Hughes collection, and they have all arrived. New to me are game programs from his 1971 season with the Oilers and his appearance in the '53 Gator Bowl with Tulsa, a Topps trading card that shows CEH, a ticket from his debut on the sidelines (shown last week), and various photos, some bought, some found on the 'net, and more. 

Nearly everything is now posted on the Tribute page. I've also rearranged the page to get it into chronological order (more or less). I'm still editing text and researching some of the photos. But the page is ready for viewing. Click the link to the right and let me know what you think. It's not mobile-friendly, so a desktop view is best. I'm working on perfecting my skills in various areas, such as limiting photo size, etc. 

Did You Know?... With my recent interest in expanding my Ed Hughes collection, I've found a few interesting facts about his life and career while digging through publications and websites. For example:

• He is listed as having played for the Hamilton WildCats of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in 1949, which meant he was (presumibly) playing amateur Canadian-rules football before attending college. From the sketchy details available about that league, it was not 'rugby' as we know it, but indeed the 110-yard version of football played in the current CFL. That's my assumption since the Hamilton franchise played for the Grey Cup in the '40s. 
• He played football at North Carolina State, Cameron Junior College (OK), and, finally, Tulsa.
• He began and ended his coaching career at the collegiate level, returning to coach at Tulsa in 1959 once he retired as a player, and finishing with a year as the defensive coordinator at Division III Lake Forest College in 1990. 
• His younger brother Dick followed him to Tulsa to play football and, in 1956, led the Golden Hurricane in rushing yards. He was drafted by the Steelers in 1957. He played just one game that season (two carries for six yards in their season opener vs. Washington) and was out of the NFL after that. 
• Tulsa was in the Missouri Valley Conference along with the Houston Cougars in 1952 and 1953 when EH played there. They split the two matchups. Houston won in 1952, finishing first in the MVC, but Tulsa was ranked higher (11th vs. UH's #19 finish in the AP poll) and got an invite to the Gator Bowl, where they lost by a point to #15 Florida. 
• EH's brother-in-law was Dick Nolan, a long-time NFL player and coach. They met as rookies with the '54 Giants and had two separate stints working on the same NFL staff over the years. 

I Should Know Better, But... when your team isn't on the right track, you have a lot of time to think about other league-related matters. Lately, I've been thinking about roster size, IR slots, that sort of thing. I even got to musing about a 'taxi squad' spot. It would entail a drafted or claimed rookie that is put into an inactive slot until an owner decides to 'promote' him. Once active, the player is not eligible to be put back on the taxi squad but is treated like any other rostered player. 

Two things I know... 1) the taxi squad slot is available under the MFL system, and 2) anything we do has to be fully automated within the system. In other words, I do not want to have to monitor it as commish. 

I have to look more closely into it. I'm not sure, for example, if an owner should or would be able to fill the taxi squad slot once his original rookie was activated. My initial thought was that once the drafted rookie is activated, the slot goes away, but I'm not sure if that is an available option.

Your thoughts, as always, are very much welcome. 

Never stop, Jim Kerr. Never stop!

Oh, the same goes for you, Peter Gabriel!

Weak 7

If you had told me forty years ago, hell, TWENTY years ago, that I'd be sitting here in 2025, almost 73, doing Hughes League newsletters and listening to someone who calls herself beabadoobee I'd have advised you to cut back on the cocaine, and yet, bygawd, here we are. 

Hey, check this out....

Care to venture a guess as to the significance of that ticket? Well, the 1971 Hall of Fame Game in Canton was the first time Ed Hughes stood on the sideline as the Oilers' new head coach. I've been picking up some nice CEH-related items lately, and this ticket is among them. This is only the second example of this game ticket that I've seen. Luckily, the seller of this one was in a mood to accept an offer.  In a week or two, I will update the Hughes Tribute page with some additional new items. 

And the back of the ticket lists the '71 Hall inductees...

Jim Brown, Y.A., Title, Norm Van Brocklin, & Vince Lombardi!!! That made for quite a group. Don't want to shortchange Andy Robustelli (one of my father's favorites) and Bill Hewitt either. 

Speaking of Lombardi... his 'Division' in the EHFL suffered the ignominious fate of losses across the board.  But when everyone is marching backward, nobody falls farther behind, right? ;-/

Over in the Barenholtz Division, the Holes have established a one-game lead over the Nats and R'backs. As we turn for home, that one is anyone's for the taking.

The Kuhlmann houses the two strongest clubs in the league, the Bliz and the Sticks. Looking closely, you see the power of having a great defense in our league! Paz' crew is 7-0 with a two-game lead on the Sticks despite the two clubs being almost identical in scoring power. Again, the difference is the PA column. There is over a one-hundred-point difference, and that explains the two-game gap. Week 12's Bliz-Sticks matchup looks big, but with a two-game lead and a win in their first game, the Bliz have a bigger margin for error. Gonna be interesting.

Homepage items... I'm not sure I like the addition of player photos everywhere on the site. There is supposed to be a way to exclude them on some modules (I'd prefer they not clutter up the Waivers page, for example) but I have not had any luck in making that work. I'll keep trying. 

That's all for this week, as we stay pretty busy with appointments and grandparent stuff. 

RIP John Lodge

My Kind Of Town

 

We had a great time in the Windy City! We didn't do much sightseeing (we've done it all that many times), but we hit a bunch of our favorite food joints, celebrated our granddaughter's first birthday, and spent a lot of time with 4-year-old Leo. I did go downtown to watch Manchester United pull off a rare match win with the Chicago MUFC Supporters group at their bar. That was a lot of fun. 

Back here in the real world... Thursday night's MFL Live Scoring snafu resolved itself as expected, not long after the game ended. I might not even have noticed, as I rarely watch or check in on games/scores on Thursday night. But I flipped over after the Rangers beat the Sabres and kind of enjoyed seeing the Giants dismantle the Eagles. My father was a Giants fan, and they still own a piece of me.

But the glitch caused the commish message forum to experience a 'meltdown' of epic proportions. "My league is in revolt!" "MFL won't be around next season!" Yup, guys actually typed those sentences. I was all rather amusing. At least one other commish shared my perspective. He suggested everyone wait for Friday's USA Today and calculate their league by hand. Oh, the memories!

Sorting Out The Week... I don't think I quite have a handle on what happened. The Flyers had to score 125 points to win a freaking game, and at that, it was a less-than-five-point win...at least I'm spared the shame of a zero-win season... the Blizzard seems unstoppable right now...they own the top seed at the moment but the season is just arroaching the halfway mark... the R'backs are on top in the Barenholtz but have scored the fewest points in the division and have fewer points that any of the three 1-win teams!! No need to scratch your head, just look at their PA...

...the Legends have won three straight to claim a share of the Lombardi lead. I spend a lot of time prepping for the draft, James, well, not so much. WTF?... I dunno about the rest of you bottom feeders, but you know that 7-7 can get you a decent shot at a wild card bid. Poker players will tell you that all you need is 'a chip and a chair' and anything can happen! I figure I've had some bad luck to open the year, so maybe a few breaks will swing my way... 

Updates On This Site... With the issues some had on the league site now a memory (knock on wood), I've had a chance to work on things over here on the blog. If you click the Memorials link over on the right, you'll see that I added a small photo collage and memorial blurb for my uncle, Ralph Straley. As you know, he passed away earlier this year and was the guy who inspired me to start this silly thing that we enjoy each fall. BTW...the same update was applied over on the league site under the 'About Us' tab. 

Something else I've recently worked on, something I'm excited about, is adding some photos to the Ed Hughes Tribute Page. There are some new sideline photos, including one with running back Joe Dawkins that I particularly like (for no real reason other than 'just because'). I've added a couple of archived NY Times articles that ran late in the 1971 season as the Oilers' season unraveled and Coach Hughes' seat got hot, and a Chicago Bears 1985 anniversary team pic that has notations for CEH as well as Walter Payton.  

Even better are some pictures of EH in action in the late 50s with the Giants and Rams. Coming soon are three items I've been chasing for quite a while. I think I'll wait to discuss those when I have them in hand, scanned, and posted. 

The Team Profile page is a revision of one I had previously linked on our league site. It's been cleaned up.  The Flyers Helmet History is a complete redo of a page I did a long time ago and hadn't touched in forever. It's just for fun. 

In general, I've been trying (with mixed results) to bring some visual consistency to those pages. I used different methods to compile many of them, Excel, MSWord, ChatGPT, coding by hand, the native Blogger system, etc. That's why, for example, the fonts are inconsistent from one page to the next, and some columns are different from one page to the next. I'm working on those things slowly but surely. 

Yeah, Right! LOL... For reasons not worth getting into, I've recently looked at changing where I host this blog. One choice was Wix.com. I eventually decided that I'm not going to make any moves, but not before I clicked one of the options at Wix, which was claiming a domain name*. I typed in EHFL.com and here's what popped up:

The stuff in red represents my reaction. I think I'll pass. But if I change my mind, you can expect a slight rise in league fees for 2026! 🤯🤯

*=I used to own 'www.hughesleague.com'. But it was costing me an annual fee, which wasn't worth paying since I had no real need for ownership of that domain name. 

More Chicago tunes!

Scenes from Aìda's birthday weekend.  Yes, she is always this happy! 

Bits And Pieces

 

It's a busy week here at Hughes League Headquarters, so I will make this a quick entry. 

We are through four weeks of the '25 season, and now only the Blizzard stand as unbeaten. A big midyear showdown with the Sticks awaits them in Week Five. The going will get a bit trickier for all as we enter bye weeks. The waiver wire will keep you out of trouble. 

Milestones await!... I mentioned these at the conclusion of the '24 season, but I've failed to bring them up this year. We have four franchises within striking range of inclusion in the '300 Win Club'! Here is where they stand as of today:

• Nats 296 wins 
• Holes 294 wins
• Strawmenn 293 wins
• Giants 290 wins

As we all know, Dan and Mike are not the original owners of their respective clubs, but as a league, we have chosen to honor the Charter Franchises in a 'continuous line,' as it were. The transition of both franchises was seamless and natural since both guys were involved with the teams before taking over officially. 

We will have to see how the season plays out, but I fully expect to award at least a couple of you with 300-win plaques once the year is done. To be clear, these totals are for regular-season games, 1981 to date. 1980's weekly high score wins are not included.

🤯 Hogan won his 300th regular-season game last year, and I failed to order his plaque (OK, I was focused on MY trophy!!!), but I'll rectify that this time. 

Chat GPT... I've added a few pages to this news site that had previously been located on the league homepage. Over in the right column, you will find links to our Team Profiles, Rules, Site Banner Archive, Championship News editions, Draft Locale list, etc. I even revived my Flyers Helmet History page! Most of these have been cleaned up using ChatGPT. I'm still tweaking some of them, but they are worth a look. 

Site Issues Resolved (I hope)... From everything I can see, the issues that popped up after Week One have been resolved. As I mentioned in a few messages, the problems were likely a result of MFL's data feed conflicting with some browsers. Hopefully, we've put that behind us. The developer of this template has added an easy way around any similar occurrences by adding links to the help dropdown menu. Those will switch you to the plain version of the site and then back again. Here is where they are located.

In a related note, over the past weekend, the Injury Report was not filling in with information correctly on my desktop machine. The 'Status' and 'Details' columns were showing question marks. I checked, and the problem was only seen in Chrome. The report was fine in each of the other browsers I tried. I solved the problem by going to Settings-->Reset Settings-->Restore settings to their original defaults. I had to sign back in to most sites I use and reset my homepage, but it cleared up the problem. That is something to keep in mind if you use Chrome and come across isolated issues. 

And that reminds me... we will be traveling over the next week, and I will have limited access to computers. So if you have any problems posting a lineup to the site, be sure to email/text/chat it to your opponent and me. I fully expect the site to work correctly now, but you never know when a hiccup might occur. If you are caught in a bind due to byes, I won't be much help, so check your roster and be prepared.

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A few more oldies!

My wife's friend Christina has a Selena Tribute Band and did a show at the Children’s Museum on Thursday evening. Ellis danced the entire 45 minutes and was dying to get on stage. Christina had her up there for the final song. Here are some pics.

And she had to wear her dance skirt to school on Friday!

The Post With No Name

 

I'm not sure which made me feel worse last week—the AFIB episodes I had on Tuesday or the realization on Sunday that the Flyers are garbage. LOL, it's funny how a strategy that led to a title one year can lead to the road to oblivion the next. Oh, well. We live, we learn, and in general, we have fun.

Scoring? Boring! I had a fit on Sunday afternoon when I looked at the scores on my app. I thought it had to have failed, like the web scoreboard. I figured the thing wasn't updating. But the problem was that the actual scoring was off, and it remained that way through the whole weekend. Just how 'off' was it? Glad you asked, because I've done the work so you don't have to. Here are the Week Three point per team averages for the seasons since we went to 8-man lineups:

• 2018  110
• 2019  109
• 2020  106
• 2021  102
• 2022  94.0
• 2023 105.0
• 2024 102.0
• 2025  89.3

So this past weekend was easily the worst Week Three in this system.

And here are the seven weeks that saw a scoring average below 90 for that same period. These are rounded to one decimal point where needed. The number of byes is listed for each week as well.

• 2021 Week 9    83     4 byes
• 2023 Week 1    84.1  0 byes
• 2022 Week 6    85.5  4 byes
• 2024 Week 7    88.0  2 byes
• 2021 Week 10  89    4 byes
• 2025  Week 3  89.3  0 byes
• 2022 Week 7   89.7  4 byes

So this is only the second time in this system we've had a week with a <90 point average with no NFL byes. I don't have any insights or an explanation for any of this. Just chalk it up to how things go sometimes. It does lead to some teams winning even on an 'off' week. (Hi Bobby and Dan 😉)

I started doing some research on the fates of teams that started 0-3, but it was so depressing that I gave it up. 

The Last Word On Site Problems! Maybe, maybe not. The last comment I've had on our 'issues' was Padilla letting me know that his view of the league was back to normal. I'm hoping it is the same for everyone else who experienced problems. I don't know if it was the adjustments I made,  workarounds/fixes you made, MFL glitches being fixed, or the developer's tweaks that solved the worst of it. I'm hopeful we've seen the end of having to deal with this stuff. I have restored the custom template in full, and I hope to keep it up. But in case you need them, I'm leaving the 'alt site view' links right there in the League Links module. 

If you are still having problems, please reach out. Last Friday's News post was devoted to site problems and offered some possible solutions. 

RIP Chester.