What I found was pretty interesting. First of all, I only went back through 2003 which is when we went online at MFL. As I clicked back through time I found the same result, season after season... 0-4 led to buying a ticket to watch the Hughes playoffs. I almost stopped as I got to the mid-2000s since it seemed like a lost cause. A few teams, the Sticks in 2022 and the Heroes in 2021 were able to move into contention at least with 6-8 records. Four other teams had ended up at 5-8 in our 13-game schedule days. But none of them had made the playoffs.
But I kept going and finally arrived at 2004. The late, unlamented S'Rats had started with four losses and finished at 4-9. And the Nationals had started 0-4 and gone on to...wait, they WON THE TITLE!?!? Seriously?
Indeed they did. The 2004 Syracuse Nationals have the honor of owning the best in-season turnaround in league history. Here are some screenshots from the 2004 site with the numbers.
The Week Four Standings:
The Final Standings (Week 13):
The Nats' Road to Glory:
And a deeper dive into some numbers. Check out the Power Rank and All Play Percentage.
Adding to the fun here is the fact that the Nats won the Hughes Bowl with their tie-break player points after they and the Giants ended up at 79-all! If you go back and check the Championship Hughes News you can read more about the Nats unreal season. That Hughes Bowl remains our only 'regulation time' tie in a title game. Here is the Hughes Bowl box score:
Sidenote... It takes a lot of work to dig through records of seasons before 2004, all of those are in .pdf format now and there is a lot of 'clicking' involved but I'm going to try to go back as far as our first head-to-head season od 1081 and see if anyone else has done what the '04 Nats did.
UPDATE...
It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I dug through the league archives and here is what I found;
34 teams have started the season 0-4 since 1981.
5 teams rallied to finish at .500 or better.
- 1990 Blizzard finished 7-7
- 1991 Strawmenn finished 7-7
- 1994 Giants finished 6-6-1
- 2002 Flyers finished 7-6
- 2004 Nats finished 7-6
Of those five, 3 made the playoffs... the '91 Strawmenn and '02 Flyers had WildCard slots but lost. The 2004 Nats, well, you already know about them.
Some other oddities I found. The Bay Queens (Pogge's one-year team that became Paz' Blizzard) started 0-4 in 1982 and finished 0-8 in a strike-shortened season. The '95 Flyers opened 0-6(!) and went 6-1 the rest of the way and finished as the league's top-scoring team. Not good enough for a WC spot though. The '90 Blizzard club listed above was part of a rare occurrence...each of the four Wice Division teams finished at .500 or above. Here is the final division standings for them:
What you can't see is that the Blizz were tied for the highest PPG in the league that year. Unfortunately, they had the 2nd highest Points Against. Fantasy football is a crazy pursuit, yes?
The bottom line seems to be that it's not impossible to come back from a terrible start, but it ain't easy.
League Stuff... It's nice to see some trades being made. As commish, I hold approval over trades but I have never vetoed one. It would have to be obvious collusion for me to ever do that. My feeling is that there is no 'perfect' trade. One team usually has the edge but so much depends on circumstances like team needs, how different owners value different players or positions, and on and on. Let There Be Movement!!
Live studio concert version.....
My pixie spending her birthday haul at the Disney Store. I wish I knew football players half as well as she knows Disney Princesses. She's the Ken Jennings of Disney Princess movies.
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I remember the week 12 loss to the Giants, figured i was sunk that week
ReplyDeleteWhat I remember is that it was the first year of our performance scoring system and I figured with the end on TD scoring I'd escaped without having to ever deal with a playoff game ending in a tie! Then you tied in TWO playoff games including the HB!
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