Marino Re-incarnated? (aka this week's foolishness 2.0)

 

NOTE: I had a nice long post written. I'd taken a deep dive into comparing Dan Marino and Josh Allen in terms of our fantasy league numbers compared to their peers. But the Blogger app had other ideas and destroyed the formatting, making it pretty much unreadable. Here's a shorter version, with fewer stats...

The conventional wisdom among fantasy football experts is to not take your QB too early. The scoring among the top tier of quarterbacks is normally spread across a narrow range. Sometimes one guy will break away from that pack though, and prove to be a difference maker. Mahomes was that guy for a bit but he's settled back towards the pack. Now we have Josh Allen. Look at the top scorers through Week 5 in our league:

 

A few things jump out at you...The 3-point spread between the #5 scoring QB (Wentz at 22.8) and the #14 QB (Lawrence) is LESS THAN the 5-point spread between Josh Allen and his nearest competitor, Lamar Jackson!

There are three 'tiers' at the position at the moment. The third tier are the ten guys in green above. They include a fourth round pick, a last round pick, and two free agent acquisitions. As I mentioned these 10 are basically interchangeable, separated by a short field goal worth of points.

The 2nd tier had Jackson, Hurts (Channelview's own) and Mahomes. And then there is Allen, alone at the top. 

What does this tell us? I see it as meaning that the conventional wisdom is both right and wrong. You can find a perfectly fine QB in the middle to late rounds of a draft, sometimes even after the draft. But some guys coma along that can pick up a team and carry it. Guys who make a week-to-week difference in game outcomes. Dan Marino was one, Josh Allen is another. 

For those of you who were not around in our first decade here is an amazing stat...Dan Marino was taken by the Dolphins in the 1983 draft. he was good as a rookie but went to another level in 1984. Between that year and 1990, a stretch of seven seasons, the EHFL teams that had him as their QB won the league SIX times! 

Can that sort of streak happen in this era? I don't think so. Back in Marino's day we had a 'TD scoring only' format, with 6 points for a TD pass. It was truly a QB-dominated league. And Marino's number of touchdown passes gave whatever team he was on a big edge.. Our scoring now is much more balanced, both across positions and within any one position. 

Having said that Josh Allen was Rick's QB last season and has the Bombers on top of their division this year and they are also an elite scoring team at the moment (2nd in the league). It's entirely possible that Josh Allen can be this era's Golden Ticket and if so, he's worth a first round pick no matter what the experts say.

Other stuff.. the good news is we are done with early Sunday (London) games for a few weeks thankfully. The next one has the Jags playing their annual overseas contest in Week 8 I think. BTW..why the hell don't the Jags just move to England and be done with it?... The bad news is we begin bye weeks (as if I didn't have enough trouble filling out a lineup of guys who are not on crutches)... 

Weirdness Abounds... The Sticks are 0-5 but second in their division in scoring... the Legends have had 625 points scored against them. That's at least 90 more than every team except the Sticks. It's just shy of 200 more than have been scored against the Blizzard!..btw, we are fresh out of unbeaten teams now that the Flyers and Bliz lost. Which reminds me..I pay for a newsletter/weekly advice and then I completely ignore the advice. Had I taken the adice to heart and started Geno Smith and Travis Etiene I'd still be undefeated.. I'm just not smart I think.

Let's go back in time for a live performance of a masterpiece from a musical genius, Steve Winwood and Traffic.  

 

 

 And what has become a weekly tradition..my cutie!

 

Disclaimer: No child was hurt in the making of this video!