Who Dat?

Aaaaand into the Semis we go! 

Pirates-Giants...The upstart Pirates advanced to the next round with a mild upset of the Legends who went from scoring 165 points in the season finale to 81 this week when it mattered most. Jack will now have the tall task of facing off against the #1 seeded Giants. But don't count the 'kid' out. His crew has been pretty consistent the last month or so and if this season has taught us anything it's that you need to expect chaos when it comes to the NFL. BTW...this is Jack's second playoff run and first semi-final game, he lost in the wildcard game in 2019. 

The Giants remain the #1 seed for a reason and the defending champs have been doubly blessed by not having multiple injury losses over the season. 

Sticks-Flyers... Two old heads will bump in this one. Both teams are reeling from injuries over the last few weeks which makes this one tough to forecast. If the Flyers, who have lost most of their top runningbacks, can get any of them back this week it might make the difference. The Sticks lost two Tampa Bay stalwarts this week and their ability to cover for those will be the key to their outcome. 

Things... COVID has certainly taken its toll over the last week or two in fantasy football. I came close to awarding an emergency claim to the Bombers on Monday. But the close-to-gametime Adam Thielen injury announcement, when I reconstructed the timeline, didn't fall under our guidelines. Bobby made a game of it anyway. Having made the ruling that he wasn't eligible to pick up a player (and Bobby was fine with my explanation) I was kind of relieved that no Vikes player  Bobby might have chosen would have made a difference in the outcome. I always dread making those kinds of decisions and then having the outcome hinge on it.

On a semi-related note..this is the second week in a row that an NFL team has won with under 100 yards passing. Is this a new NFL thing? In the copycat world of pro football can we expect other teams to try going this route? Or is it that Kirk Cousins just blows? 

Enjoy the games this week. Hope everyone has a great holiday season, and let's pray we get through our year without NFL cancellations and more schedule shenanigans. 

Fun Fact... (and I'm not sure how to interpret this)...only two teams have NOT appeared in the playoffs in the past two seasons. One is the Strawmenn. Mike was in the 2019 Hughes Bowl (and got squeezed out last year on a tiebreak) so it's not really a playoff 'dought', The other team is the Rbacks who haven't made it since 2012. Everyone else earned a berth in 2020 or 2021 or both.