Paging Stephen Hawking

NOTE: After all this time I discovered I had restricted comments to those with Google accounts. I've changed that setting so anyone can comment on how adorable my granddaughter is! Or anything else.

Last year while I was still just contemplating the changes we made for 2022 I never foresaw the scenario we are looking at today. Last week we had SEVEN teams at 5-3 and a couple more at 4-4. We've somehow managed to flip that script and now we are looking at two clubs at 6-3, SEVEN at 5-4. 

I had hoped for more competition when we went to redrafting every season. Looks like we have that competition! But the cliché 'Be careful what you wish for' keeps going through my head. Unless something happens to break up this iceberg at the top of the league before the season ends I'm going to need a much more powerful computer to parse the damn tiebreaks and figure out who makes the playoffs. 

I've brought in some extra equipment and a few software engineers just in case. Here's a live look-in at League Headquarters as the team runs through it's paces. 

This is the second crew I hired, btw. The first guys spent a few days on that machine, walked out to me and said "Fuck it, let's just give Hogan the title and call it a day!" I shit-canned those clowns in a hurry.

Notes and Quotes... Nine weeks down, five to go...and how 'bout those Ridgebacks?!? ... here's something I just now noticed: six of the seven 5-4 teams are 2-1 in their division, both 6-3 teams are as well. That won't help me in the least if things don't change... Screw Kenyon Drake. I picked his ass up twice this year and he was an unfulfilled promise. Padilla nabs him and the guy runs wild on Monday Night. (ツ)╭∩╮

The Blizzard are tied for first in their division but rank 11th in scoring. Interesting, but given how goofy things are at the moment, not too surprising... Worth mentioning that Joe Mixon (in the Sticks' win over the Bombers), outscored the Nationals 52-48…That's the first time a player has outscored a full lineup this year. I need to go back and check the last time it happened. It's pretty rare, the equivalent of a guy shooting his age in golf I'd wager. Rarer still would be a player outscoring his opponent's lineup that week... Mixon and Justin Fields combined for 94(!) points for the Sticks.. That's easily the top one team duo of the season... Mixon's total ties him for second for most points in a game behind Drew Brees' 53 point total in Week 8 of 2015... The $5 FCFS waiver price has made a big difference in waiver cash remaining. Most years we'd have a couple teams down to double digit bank accounts by now. 

I meant to include these points last week but I got sidetracked...

#1..I still plan to look really closely at using a dedicated TE as part of the lineup. It's been a shallow position so far this year but even if it remains that way it will throw a wrinkle into draft strategy. "do I jump on a stud TE early? Do I wait for a second level guy a few rounds in? How about just streaming TEs?" And strategy wrinkles are a good thing, IMHO. 

#1A..If we add the TE how do we construct lineups? We have 8 spots. QB and Kicker take two. What should we require for the other six? It has to have a minimum of one at each position so QB-RB-WR-TE-K leaves three slots. I tend to think the optimum way would be to require 2 RB, 2 WR and allow one Flex player from the ranks of those same slots. 

That would look like this:

• 1 QB
• 2/3 RB
• 2/3 WR
• 1/2 TE
• 1 K

An alternate setup could be requiring just one player at each slot and having what amounts to three flex players. Like so:

• 1 QB
• 1-4 RB
• 1-4 WR
• 1-4 TE
• 1 K

I'd lean towards the first scenario but I'm open to suggestions.

#2.. One thing I've noticed over the last couple of years is that our 9 pm Wednesday night waivers sometimes don't process in a timely manner most weeks. I believe that 9 Central on Wednesday (10 Eastern) is the most popular time for leagues to schedule waivers. I know the five other leagues i have access to (I served as co-owner for drafting purposes) all have waivers scheduled at that same moment. I'm thinking of moving ours up or back 30 minutes next year. I know one league opted for Tuesday waivers for just this reason. But I like letting everyone have a couple of days to do their due diligence prior to wasting $78 on a guy who had 23 points the previous week and won't score 12 total the rest of the way. 

It's really a minor thing but it's one that bugs me every week, even when I'm not bidding.

Don't believe the hype... I'm using Google Chrome again since Firefox seems to have gotten slower and slower for me. No problem with Chrome until I clicked on some of the EHFL Links on the league site that lead to stuff like Playoff Record by Owner, etc, etc. Chrome gives me a red page warning of a "Deceptive Site Ahead". That's just incorrect. There is nothing involved with the site hosting my records documents or the docs themselves that is in any way harmful. To view the records you'll need to click through using the 'Details' button the present and then the last link in that page which allows you to go to the 'unsafe site'. I'm working on a resolution but in the meantime it's perfectly OK to check the pages there.

EDIT..when I checked this morning (Tuesday 11/8) to see if the links still led to a warning page I found the site appears to be down, or at least my files are not accessible. If it's not a temporary glitch I'm going to have to find a better solution.

Another edit... as of late this afternoon things appear to be back to normal with the hosting site. I get the warning page noted above on my phone but not on my desktop computer. but at least the pages are still there. The issue this a.m. must have been some temporary snafu. 

 

A bottle of white..a bottle of red...

Her other grandfather taught her to wrinkle up her nose like this. She thinks it's a riot. 😆