Week 7 Recap (oh, and a Mea Culpa )

How 'bout them (two) Flyers?!?! For only the second time in league history a team had two 40+ point players. Yup, it was my Flyers and it was a good thing Burrow (41 points) and Lockett (45) were in gear because the rest of my crew was wallowing in mediocrity. The only other time we've had two guys blow up in the same week for a team was back in Week 13 of 2015 the S'menn had 40 points from Cam Newton and 43 out of Allen Robinson. 

The league's Numbers page shows those sorts of records (or at least lets you dig 'em up). The data only goes back to 2004 when we started on MFL but prior to that 40 points was a good week for a team never-mind a player so I doubt we had anyone threaten that record in the old days. 161 points, btw, is tied for sixth best all time. The Legends scored that same total three weeks ago.  

Sidebar, your Honor? the Holes hold the records for most points in a regular season games (181 in Week 12 of 2018) and the most points in a playoff game (138 in Week 16 , the Hughes Bowl, also in 2018). 2018 Holes=Best Hughes team ever?

Week 7 Thoughts.....

The standings are starting to shake out. This was one of those non-division weeks (more rare this year, more on that later). The Barenholtz Division looks close to being locked up. The Nats won again and are 7-0, four games up with six to play. Dan goes up against some good scoring clubs in the next couple of weeks. We'll see how he stands at the other end of that stretch. OTH, with a four game lead it may not matter at this point. 

Notice that the Nats have scored fewer points than the Flyers (873->817) yet have a (much) better Power Rank (41.23->37.52). System gets most things right I'd say. And that's one of them.

The Bliz lost OBJ early but it may not have mattered as they fell and dropped a game off their lead in the Kuhlmann. They might get McCaffrey back this week which would set their needle pointing up again. My impression is that the Sticks and Strawmenn are finding their footing, though, and either could make up that two game deficit before the final stretch run. Speaking of the Strawmenn..when I see a team is under-performing in wins compared to their points it usually is due to 'points against'. Not so here. The Smenn have the second fewest points against average in the league. Odd. Seems like schedules & bad luck at play here. 

Note to Hogan...DK Metcalf's 90 yard sprint to catch that Cards guy at the five does not earn you any points! It should I guess, but that's not what you're paying him for. Take your loss and move on. Your team looks better than mine overall, anyway. I like your chance in our division even with me holding the tiebreak.

James actually went back and forth between starting Mahomes and Herbert this week. That's surprising...or is it? Turned out Herbert had 41 to Mahomes' 14. 😧 WTH is the world coming to? And how ingenious would James have looked had he started Herbert?  Legend(ary), indeed.

The Holes, benefiting from James' wrong but understandable choice, are back to being on the + side of the ledger and seem to be more or less in control of the Hamman.

LEAGUE STUFF:
Lots to unpack in this section. First things first...here's Item #1, the short version:

I saw that the Bombers and R'backs are scheduled to play each other in  consecutive weeks but I'm gonna let it ride.

Now here is Item #1, the long version:

I've been kicking around some ideas lately. One of them is the schedule and how to fix the out-of-whack divisional match up weeks. With the three team divisions there is obviously no way to have the first and last three weeks on the schedule devoted to division games as we've had in the past. It's kind of like the MLB and their 15 team leagues. There has to be someone playing interleague games every day. In the Hughes League there couldn't be more than four of the six games as division games.

In looking at what I can do to make things better I color-coded the 2020 division games and published the schedule. (You can see it at this link). As I started to shift things I noticed that the schedule as it currently stands has the Bombers and R'backs playing each other in the final two weeks of the season! Obviously that's less than ideal, to put it mildly. It's something I should have caught this summer. I guess I was too concerned with making it through a season like this one. Whatever the reason, I am fully at fault.

I had two options. I could go ahead and swap out weeks near the end of this year's schedule. Swapping  Week 9 or 10 for Week 12 would put a bit of space between the two Bombers-R'backs games. Or I could leave the schedule as is and just take my lumps for the oversight. I asked a few non-involved owners (my unofficial official competition committee) what they thought and they leaned the way I did. Let the schedule stand.

If I was a commish only I might make the swap of weeks. But now that I'm back as an owner I have to look at things differently. I could see a situation where multiple games could have their outcomes changed by switching weeks. A team not even involved in the mix-up could score 100 points in Week 10, for example, and beat their originally scheduled opponent 100-70. Swapping games might just align that 100 point team with a different opponent who scores 101. And so on.

All-in-all, letting the schedule stand is for the best. The good news is that I played around with some schedule weeks and came up with a 2021 schedule that has more division games at the beginning and end. It's not perfect but it's much better than this year when some teams were done with a division opponent by Week Five. And as we go forward I can shuffle some weeks from year to year to avoid the schedule being static. You can see the tentative 2021 schedule at this link. I call it tentative because I still may tweak it a bit.

------------------------------------------------------------

 I had a situation come up on Sunday (for the second time this season) which will require a tweak as well.  James found himself unable to turn in a lineup for the Legends on Sunday morning due to an 'IR violation'. The issue traced back to Sterling Shepard having been activated very late in the day on Thursday by the Giants. Since players being 'locked' once their game kicks off technically includes coming off our league IR, James was stuck simply because he wasn't watching the transactions data or the Thursday night pregame show. (Heck, I monitor Shepard closely since I have him in two leagues and I didn't know either).

James couldn't start Shepard retroactively anyway (his game kickoff was long past) so I forced his activation and James was able to submit his lineup. It's an odd quirk in the system and the only way to 'automate' a solution is to change the setting that blocks lineup submissions when a team has a 'violation'. I'm not sure I want to do that because that 'solution' might cause more problems than the 'Thursday Night Conundrum' causes. Meanwhile, if you find yourself in that situation going forward just contact me ASAP and I will 'unlock' your team for you.

------------------------------------------------------------ 

OK, sit down and chill a bit, I've got ideas. In the never-ending quest to make the league better I listen to the vox populi and bounce them around in my normally empty head until they actually make (some) sense.

Here's what has been percolating lately:

Idea One...add a team to the playoffs, a seventh team. This third wildcard would be the highest scoring team not already qualified (you knew I'd still be lobbying for this, didn't you). It would entail giving only one bye in the first round but wouldn't add a week to the playoffs or anything dumb like that. Like so... #1 gets the bye, 2 plays 7, 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5. 

I know byes are big. OTOH, I hate seeing a good team left out of the playoff mix. Oh sure, you could see (in theory) an 0-13 team get the seven slot but if they had the highest (or fourth/fifth highest) PPG for the year that would mean they had terrible luck. Thoughts (but not prayers) are always appreciated on this stuff. 

Idea Two...and this was floated last year..a consolation playoff bracket  for teams that missed the playoffs. The six (or five) teams that miss out on the champs bracket would face off for the right to hold the #1 draft pick or alternatively, pick the slot in the draft they'd prefer. 

This would keep owners involved all the way to the end of the regular season and beyond. Teams out of playoff contention could possibly qualify for a consolation bracket bye.