Week 12 recap...It's Almost Over!

It's been a hell of a week!
First there was a trade that went sideways (see below) and then there was the whole Lamar Jackson/RGIII thing that went down on Monday. The only thing worse than having league issues that need to be addressed is having them come up and my team being involved. Life was easier when I was just the commish, believe me.

I'm not going to get into the Pirates lineup problems again. If you somehow missed the details just check the emails that went out on Monday morning. Next year we will (hopefully) be in a more 'normal' world and these sorts of things won't be an issue.

Navigating the role of commissioner while also running a team has always been a bit dicey. It's much easier now than it was back when people left their lineups on my answering machine of dictated them to my wife. With the adoption of systems like MFL I can pretty much let things work on their own. As long as I remember to log in and stay in 'owner mode' on the website things are fine. My one concession is that I always try to be the first guy to enter waiver bids each week. I do this to avoid any "Hey, Commish, how'd you get my guy by $3?" issues. Other than sometimes adjusting the order of my bid upon players (which I did after the trade for a QB I made last week), I like to have my bids in Monday night and leave them there. Doesn't always work out, but that's the goal.

BTW...you can see the history of any team's lineup submission attempts by going to Reports:Franchises:Starting Lineups and clicking Lineup Details any teams lineup, next to the date/time. It'll tell you when any owner submitted his lineup, or changed it and why any attempt failed.


The Week That Was:
Now, let's look at where we are as we enter the last week of the regular season. The Heroes and Legends continue to roll as the hottest teams in the league. The Heroes punished the Holes who nonetheless are already Hamman champs. The Legends, led by the Mahomes-Hill tandem, dealt a crushing blow to any hopes the Flyers had of being a playoff team. The Heroes-Legends upcoming match-up will determine the Lombardi with the loser getting the #5 seed.

The Strawmenn took control of the Kuhlmann Division when they handed the Nats their second straight loss. But the Nats have wins over both teams fighting for 9 wins in the Lombardi so they have the top seed locked up. I'm sure Dan would like to go into the bye with a win and feeling better about his club.

The big fight was actually among the clubs looking for the final wild card slot. The Flyers and Bliz lost and things got really interesting. Portland held a 4 point lead over the Giants going into this crazy Wednesday afternoon Ravens-Steelers mess. We all know about the RGIII business. No need to re-hash that. The Giants had Griffith's lead receiver (by default), Marquise Brown. For 45 minutes Griffith put up just enough points to edge away from Brown and therefore so the Pirates did the same against the Giants. The RGII pulled a hammy and gave way to Trace McSorley. The Ravens defense had kept that club in the game. With three minutes to go and McSorley looking desperate, he heaved one to, yes, Marquise Brown and that 70-yard score put the Giants in the playoffs and killed the souls of Flyer and Bliz fans everywhere. COVID cost the Ravens Lamar Jackson and cost me and Paz a chance at the playoffs. 😒  EDIT: The Bliz still have a shot at winning the division, a long shot but it's there. See below.


If The Playoffs Started Today:
I didn't do my deep dive into permutations because the week's games extended into Wednesday and I am preparing this as the clock winds down. Scratch that last paragraph, I was expecting a Pirates' win. That's what I get for projecting.

1) Nats 9-3 Have won division. Would have #1 seed vs Heroes, #2 vs Legends if tied at 9-4
2) Heroes 8-4 Must win vs Lincoln to win division, will be #5 with loss.
3) Smann 7-5 Clinch division with Wk 13 win. 1-1 vs Bliz and tiebreak would be points scored, beat Holes for tiebreak for seeding.
4) Holes 7-5 Have clinched division.
5) Legend 8-4 Clinched at least WC slot, win division and #2 seed with win over Heroes.
6) Giants 7-5 They get the #6 slot with a win. They could miss the playoffs if the Strawmenn end up getting bumped for the division by the Bliz. They have the tie-break over the Bliz and Flyers but lost to Smenn. See next paragraph...

The Bliz could tie the Strawmenn for the Division. They are 1-1 head-up on the season and it would go to Points Scored in All Games. The Strawmenn have a 74 point advantage. If the Bliz were to pull that off and the Strawmenn ended up in a tie with the Giants for the WC slot, the Smenn have the hammer with a win over Rick. I'm gonna double-check all this so don't call Vegas just yet anyone.

Additional Notes...there are numerous possibilities for three way ties for the last WC slot. There could be a four-way tie with the Sticks, Bliz, Giants and Flyers at 6-7. In that case we first compare the two Kuhlmann Division teams and they split to two games so we go overall points scored. The Bliz currently lead by 34. However, no matter which team wins that tiebreak and advances to a three team break the Giants get the spot because they would still be 2-0 in games among the three teams as they have beaten the Flyers and both Kuhlmann clubs. So, the Sticks are not in contention for a WC slot, win or lose in Wk 13. Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!

League Tidbits...Tyreek Hill had himself a fair week for Lincoln. Actually he set a record for points by a receiver in a game with 50. Just down the page is a table with the Top Ten scores by receivers in League history... Speaking of the Legends, James is to be commended for doing as well as he's done considering he's had injuries to two of his top three picks. Joe Mixon and George Kittle have played five full games apiece and are not looking to come back soon...Dalvin Cook Update: Barkley and McCaffrey officially qualify. They can be kept by the Holes and Bliz respectively as #1s...I'm going to make a few tweaks to that DC Rule for next year. I'm thinking of including our post-season in the minimum games played and possibly making that minimum "less than five" rather than "five or less". I may even drop the requirement that the player was officially IR'd. Open to suggestions, as always.

You can find numbers like this under the appropriately named Numbers tab on the league homepage. Use the Player tab there. The settings button at the top right of the module will let you filter by position, etc. In case you were wondering...the record for points by a starter is 53 by Drew Brees for the Bombers in Week 8 of 2015. Hill's 50 points puts him at eighth on the list of players at any position for one week.
 

For once it wasn't me!
Were you following the trade drama last Wednesday? I made a trade with David (Montgomery for Cousins) while sitting at the UH hoops opener. Once he accepted it, I approved it. Figured that was that. Nope. I got home and went to remove my waiver claims for a QB and saw David Montgomery's name at the top of the available players list. Obviously, that was wrong. The trade was listed in the transactions, Cousins appeared on my roster and no cut had been made by the R'backs. I contacted Dave and told him I'd add Montgomery back with a waiver push and get him his claim cost back. He told me that Cousins was still in his starting lineup!

Sure enough, Cousins had been cloned. He was on both rosters! That was waaay wrong. I contacted MFL and within a couple of hours their people had figured out that at the exact same moment that I had clicked 'approve' for the trade, Dave was clicking to deactivate OBJ. The system choked and the players involved went sideways. MFL told me that they'd never seen that happen before.

I was able to delete the transaction record, finagle the rosters back to their original configurations, and re-do the trade. It was clean and maintains the players' transaction history correctly. That makes life easier when I'm assigning Keeper Values. Other than when the system kept 'losing' my waiver cash adjustments a few years ago, this is the first real system glitch I've encountered since we've been on MFL going back to 2003.