One of my favorite things to do with the league site is check the Weekly Summary chart. It is under the Scores dropdown on the top menu. (Link here) That's where I noticed that the Legends have outscored a couple of 2-1 clubs. How many times over 45 years have I said that luck plays a huge role in fantasy football? The schedule and injuries can wreck a good club. James has had more points scored against him than any other club (and it's not very close). Ain't no defense in fantasy. On that Summary page, you can switch to view Potential Points (best possible lineups). That's always a good way to feel bad about yourself.
Random Thoughts: since nobody reads this anyway... The Flyers' 162-point total isn't that unusual as we've averaged one 160+ point score every season over the last decade... why are there two Monday night games? Doesn't that split the ratings and lower ad revenue? It just seems counter-productive... we've had two, count 'em, TWO trades so far this season... I'm gonna faint... I moved the Chat module to a more prominent place on the site... I hope you use it. Nobody comments here very often (that's a huge understatement) but maybe some will be encouraged to drop some wisdom in the chat module... Looks like I was right about Sam Darnold, he's thriving in that Viking offense. I regret trading him and did almost as soon as I dealt him... I vowed not to chase 'last week's points' this year but I make the same vow every year, and I never stick to it. Never... I've been thinking of shaking up the division alignments and/or the schedule next year (if there is a next year). Thoughts welcome.
Finally, here's a fun list. These are the highest-scoring Free Agent weeks in our history. You can toss out half of them as they came during our playoffs and we had no playoff waivers until a couple of seasons ago. I wish I could go back and see what the bidding was the week following each performance that came during the regular season.
I did check to see the Fitzpatrick saga for 2018. After FitzMagic's sterling Week 1 performance, he was nabbed by the Pirates for $41 and started in Weeks 2 & 3 with fairly nice results but got hurt and sat a month or so. Portland cut him during that time and he landed with the Sticks. BTW...I tend to think of Fitzpatrick as an old fart but he wasn't born until a couple of years after this league was!
EDIT..I looked at Chase Claypool for 2020. The Heroes had drafted him in the 15th round. He had a good week sandwiched between two lousy ones and Hogan let him go in Week 4, the Steelers bye. He went off in Week 5 of course and the Bombers won him with a $210 bid! They traded him to the Rbacks for a 2021 3rd rounder after six pretty productive weeks. Unfortunately for Dave, Claypool fell off the cliff and finished the year with a couple of single-digit games.
*=I used 'bode' twice in the same paragraph. What do I win?
Happy Birthday Little Pixie!!
It's been far too long since I dropped some Leningrad Cowboys!
Welcome to the Week Two postmortem. It was a fairly interesting week as we began to see trends emerge and teams either recover from Week One disappointment or dig themselves into deeper holes. More on that in a bit but first...
The Case Of The Missing Lineup
We had a lineup snafu this past weekend so it's a good time to review how I handle situations like that. If you go to the Rules page (linked here) and scroll to the 'Positions' paragraph you will see the regulation covering these situations. It says I will fill in a lineup for any owner who has an emergency using the recommendations on Fantasy Sharks' page.
We haven't had a team play without a lineup since early in our first season. As a commish, I really don't want that to happen again if I can help it. If I see that you have not turned in a lineup once the early Sunday block begins I will assume you have an emergency and do it for you. I don't know if Fantasy Sharks is good or bad but I do know they are tied to MFL so a suggested optimal lineup is just a click away.
Having said all that, keep these things in mind...
-I don't spend time with league stuff (or the NFL for that matter) on Sundays the way I used to. I will check my game using an app but I may not see a missing lineup right away. I believe it was close to halftime before I saw the issue on Sunday.
-I will make attempts to reach you before I jump in. And this is where I screwed up on Sunday. I was trying to text the owner using an old phone number. I have the correct one (I even had a text conversation with him a week ago!) but I was out and about and none of that clicked with me until an hour had passed.
-If you are on the other end of this situation, i.e. the opposing owner, keep in mind I'm trying to make things work. There isn't much on the line in the Hughes League and we're just having fun. A shout-out goes to the owner on the other side of Sunday's deal who had no problem with losing what could have been a 'walkover'.
Site Stuff:
The Live Scoring page should be working as expected. I had the 'scoreboard' graphic linked to last year's site for a bit during Week One.
The useful in-season modules like the Monday Report, Team Sked, Lineup Submission, and Current Waiver Claims have been restored to the front page of the site. I tinker with these from time to time so if you don't see what you're looking for just check around.
In the EHFL Links module, I replaced the First Hughes News with the listing of all Hughes Bowl-winning team lineups. I need to clean that one up a bit but I enjoy that sort of stuff.
I'm going to try and get to a waiver bidding 'explainer' at some point in the next few weeks. Haven't had the time recently.
And now a bit about Week Two:
Things always come into focus a bit after two weeks. These are some random observations of mine (your mileage may vary)... the Scofield clan is undefeated and the guys have the two top-scoring teams at this early juncture. Saltwater Power!... if David didn't have bad luck he wouldn't have any luck at all... although McCaffery going on IR isn't the most shocking thing to ever happen... Speaking of bad luck, the Legends lost their tight end (Evan Engram) with a warmup injury that wasn't announced until nearly game time (if at all). With any warning, James could have swapped in Hunter Henry and had a win... average points per team jumped from 92 in Week 1 to 95 in Week 2. Last season the jump was 21 points(!) from 84 to 105. The Week 2 jump of this year and last breaks a trend going back through at least 2018 of points dropping off in Week 2. I have no idea what to make of it... We had a trade last week. I wish we had more of them although I realize that the inability to include future picks in a deal doesn't help. OTOH.. when you could trade future picks we hardly had any deals either...
The Stones do Waylon!
The late, great George Carlin and his classic take on Baseball vs Football. Always worth a watch
Someone is having fun!
Here's my grandson, Leo (aka The Prince), from Evanston. He's social media averse but I have permission to post his pics sparingly.
He was promoted to Junior Firefighter when a fire crew arrived the day my daughter's house had a gas line leak. Leo was damn proud of that sticker! LOL
Padilla said it in an email Tuesday morning. I've said it almost annually as long as I've been doing newsletters, and it's a fact of fantasy football life...your team is neither as good nor as bad as it appeared after this past weekend. Unless of course, your last name is Andrews. In that case, you can just flip the f'ing switch. Pass the jelly, you're toast.
The first Blind Bid waiver session concludes tonight. At this point, about an hour before it cycles, I have three guys in the hopper but I have no idea if I did it right and I can only hope I get someone. How pathetic am I? I'm the commish. I made the settings and have no idea how to best put in bids correctly.
Not much newsworthy happening. So here are some pictures of my granddaughter being silly while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today.
A few quick reminders and notes as Week 1 creeps closer...
--First Come First Served waivers will run through Thursday afternoon. Once it ends the next waiver window is a bidding window that will process next Wednesday evening. The League Calendar is your friend.
--There are Thursday and Friday night games this week. I'm not going to post this reminder every week as by now every fantasy player in America is aware of how the NFL schedule works. But I figured I'd kickstart the Weekly Updates with the observation that a team was caught short at least once last season because they failed to turn in a lineup before the Thursday lineup and found themselves in a jam on Sunday.
As I type there are four teams without a lineup and three of them have Thursday players.
Other Stuff...
--It dawned on me why the Zoom attendees couldn't see me on Monday night when I first opened the meeting. My laptop had a slider that closes and opens the camera. I had it closed. LOL
--The Saints have now changed Taysom Hill from a QB back to a TE. MFL's policy is that they don't change a player's position once the season starts. I don't know if they consider the season to have started yet but no matter, I've switched him to TE. In these situations, I just try to do what makes sense. This is a rare circumstance and if another one comes up at some point in the future I'll try to use the same logic.
Well, our 45th Annual Hughes League Draft has come and gone. First things first...a big Thanks! goes out to Mike and Lynne for hosting again. Great food and good company made for a fun evening. It was nice having Jim and Rick beaming in from the East Coast. My goal is to have everyone 'live' for a draft. Maybe next year. While sometimes it felt like it was dragging, we went just a shade over three hours which is just about the usual length of our drafts.
Here is the UH contingent from last night at Mike's. We made James take the photo since he refused to be associated with a school with such a shitty football team.
We had our usual tech issues, some of which were caused by the fact that many of our owners probably find operating a toaster too advanced. Or don't read my emails. Or both. The rest of the issues stem from me not knowing what I'm doing half the time. But we overcame them all. I thought the PrimeTime Draft application worked well once everyone accessed it :::cough:::Jimmy:::cough::: It's made to be used with a true live draft with everyone in the room and the board shown on a big screen but it works fine in our situation. The only issue I see is that the remote use causes a delay in the selection popping up for everyone. But that isn't a dealbreaker and I think the $25 is money well spent.
And how about a round of applause for Jack Scofield? He drafted coming directly off a work shift on his ship in the Canary Islands (above*) which was immediately preceded by an air trip from Boston via Atlanta and Madrid. That is dedication! 👏
*=Jack sent me this pic of the view from his ship. I deleted the random Canary Island shot I'd used.
League Stuff...
---First Come First Served waivers are open as of this morning. It ends Thursday at 5 p.m. Central. At that point, your roster is your roster for the weekend. There is no blind bidding this week. Sidenote... I tried to add my kicker using one of the MFL apps while walking my dog and somehow ended up with a random Steelers wideout. 🙄 That's been rectified. Those phone apps are fine for checking scores and other mundane tasks but doing adds/drops always seems like a risk. YMMV
---It doesn't seem that I should have to explain this at this point but I will anyway...we start the following:
1 QB
1 RB
2 WR
1 TE
1 K and...
2 Flex players who can be any combo of RB/WR/TE.
---Please log into the league and let me know if you have any issues. Here is the link:
---Players are locked in or out of lineups once their game kicks off.
Late edit... I probably shouldn't schedule the FA window for early on a weekday. Working folks (the three of you) are at a disadvantage with that. I don't remember when or why I switched the time (our calendar events generally carry over year-to-year) but I'm sure I had a good reason. I'll try to remember to adjust it next year.
And Finally...
I think that covers everything. Good Luck to everyone this season. I plan on doing the vast majority of my communication through this news blog. I will email when I post something. You can also check the league site as I post the date of the latest news update under the banner.
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