Lots of stuff spinning thru the Hughes League's orbit this week. Wildcard games, some special circumstance rules, and a quick look at some of the weirdness that was 2021.
Wildcard Preview
Young Guns faceoff...James and Jack are the only two owners in the playoffs without a Hughes League crown. Sadly, one of them will have to wait for another day after this weekend. The Legends were tied for second in the league in scoring and had 9 wins, the third-most in the league. They are coming off a huge game that saw them blessed with six players scoring over twenty points to go with a double-digit kicker. Had Terry McLaurin not been KO'd early with a zero and actually scored his average the Legends would have been over 175 in the season-ender.
The Pirates were fifth in scoring, well back of the Big Four', but much of that was due to a dry spell in the middle of the season that saw them score 75 or less in three of four weeks. Other than that patch the club was solid.
I'm out of the prediction business but you have to figure that the Legends are the favorites to move on to the semi-finals in this battle of second-gen Hughes guys. But James has to be aware that a monster week doesn't guarantee success the next time out.
The other game has two old hands at the fantasy playoff business. Bobby has to feel pretty blessed to have been able to navigate to eight wins and a playoff bid while commanding the 8th highest-scoring team. And it wasn't like nobody scored against him. His Points Against total was surpassed by only three other teams. I'm telling you now that if you check his backyard you'll find evidence of some sort of animal sacrifice. He'll need more of that luck this weekend when he faces Keith's division champion Sticks. Their 110.0 PPG was tied for second in the league with the Legends and they only dipped below 90 points once.
So this week you have the classic battle of the two principal fantasy factors, strength vs good fortune. Should be a good one. BTW...the last time the Bombers made the playoffs was 2017. They were the Lombardi champ and played the Sticks in the semifinals. The Sticks prevailed 106-93 and went on to defeat James' Flyers in the Hughes Bowl.
Yo. Playoff guys...don't forget to pick your Wildcard player. There is a dropdown box at the bottom of the submission page. In the enhanced version of the page, it's not labeled as being the tiebreak guy which is something I'm trying to get fixed. Meanwhile, I've dropped back and punted by going to the default style i.e. plain vanilla lineup page. If I get it fixed I'll switch back to the fancy-schmancy view.
You probably saw the email that was sent earlier concerning some changes to the waiver situation in the '21 Playoffs. I saw multiple lists of players from sports ranging from the Premier League (Go Man U!) to the NHL postponing games and several NFL teams listing multiple positive COVID tests early in the week. After some thought and discussions among a few playoff owners, I came up with a plan that may help in case the NFL's cases really affect upcoming games. Nothing radical, just a one roster spot bump, a small waiver supplement for teams with upcoming games, lowering the waiver cost to stretch tight budgets, and a Sunday morning waiver window similar to the old 'emergency claim rule that you should remember if you were around in the 'lineups-by-telephone' days.
I was also concerned that we'd be more likely to run short of players because the playoffs require a tiebreaker of one non-starter. Makes those thin rosters even thinner. Hopefully, we are overreacting to the situation but I really don't want a crucial game outcome to be determined by COVID issues if I can help it. If I have to further revise things I'll do so.
Just odd shit...the Strawmenn went 3-10-1 while scoring the sixth-highest number of points. How is that even possible?....the Bombers, OTOH, went 8-6 while sitting at #8 in the points scored column. You tell me...
Just for grins here's the list of each team's most expensive acquisition for 2021...
- Legends-Hunter Renfroe $51
- Heroes-Elijah Mitchell $130
- Flyers-KJ Hamler (who?) $40
- Bombers-Randall Cobb $39
- Strawmenn-Rondell Moore $23
- Sticks-Boston Scott $69
- Pirates-Adrian Peterson $210 (that's just over $23 per point contributed)
- Blizzard-Big Ben $92 (Mike's a 'Go Big Or Go Home guy, he had five guys cost over $40 each)
- Holes-Kadarius Toney $90
- Giants-JK Osborn $75
- Ridgebacks-Cordarrelle Patterson $22 (about a buck a letter!)
- Nationals-D'Ernest Johnson $120
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