Week Six... and A Look At Defending Champs

As the '23 Champs, the Strawmenn, got off to their 0-4 start (they got a win in Week 5) I began researching both slow starts and what happened to championship clubs the year after they earned the crown. I posted my 'slow starts' gibberish a couple of weeks ago. Now I have the second part done. Call it 'The Aftermath of Glory' Report. 

Now, right up front, I would like to point out that over 45 seasons, we've had several different formats for assembling rosters. We had periods of keeping seven players (the famous, "Goddammit Commish, you're moving the line!" period), keeping two, keeping none, keeping zero to three players in a two-phase draft, keeping players based on the prior year's keeper value, and so on. So defending champs have been composed of nearly intact starting lineups, keeper 'stars' and new draftees, completely new rosters, and many things in between. 

Add to that the fact that we've had multiple playoff qualifying regulations. The bottom line here is that while the research is fun for me and (hopefully) interesting for you, it can't possibly be used to suggest an outcome for the '24 Strawmenn or any other team in the future that lucks into wins a Hughes title.

Here are the results of my research in chart form. Most of it is self-explanatory. In the right column, the red represents teams that repeated, blue means the team made it back to the Hughes Bowl but lost. 

Here are some observations from what I found...

Defending Champs have made the playoffs 27 times while 16 clubs failed to make the post-season after a Hughes Bowl win.

Teams with Hughes Bowl win 'streaks' ie: the '96-'97 Flyers, the '99-2000 Nats, and the '19-'21 Giants, all made the playoffs the year after their streak but fell short of the finals.

12 teams followed up their Hughes Bowl wins with below .500 records. Two of those teams were able to squeeze into the playoffs with 6-7 marks. The 2013 Giants lost in the Wild Card round but the 2014 Bombers went to the Hughes Bowl before losing.

Five HB winners made a return to the title game but lost.

Seven clubs backed up Hughes League titles with double-digit win seasons. The 1996 Flyers and 2020 Giants are the only clubs among those seven to win Hughes Bowls. 

The Bombers went 12-1 the year after their 2003 championship. that's the best record of all defending champs. They lost in the Semi-Finals. The 2020 Giants were 12-2. 

The worst record for a team coming off a Hughes title is 4-9. That dubious record was achieved by the 1985 Giants and 2007 Sticks. 

League Things, Football Things... Classic fantasy move by Dan got him a win. With a Monday Night guy's status up in the air, Dan covered his ass by grabbing Ray Davis to back James Cook. Cook was ruled out late on Monday but with Davis to pivot to the Nats grab a win and they stay in the hunt... there is more entertainment value in five minutes of any MNF Manningcast than in any three hours of an NFL game on any network... the Holes and Rbacks are on winning streaks that have tossed the Barenholtz Division into a top hat. All four are within a game of each other... this upcoming week will mark the halfway mark of the season. You can't rule anyone totally out of contention when you include six teams in the playoffs but the five-loss clubs will need to do some serious rallying ASAP. 

Speaking of the Holes...they had a 99.3% Scoring Efficiency Rating this week. Their best possible lineup (Kirk 5.40 for Aiyuk 4.70) would have added 0.7 points to their total. I'm burned out on research but I bet that's close to the best in many years. The fact that Jim didn't have much of a live bench had something to do with it, but still... We had our first 'two TE lineup' this week (only had six last year) and the Strawmenn scored almost 102 with it but they came up short. Yes, I am tracking lineup config data again. LOL

Hughes Quirks... One of the byproducts of research is stumbling across league tidbits I'd forgotten about. One such quirk was our innovative 😉 '13 start' rule. That was my effort to avoid owners going on 'autopilot' and never changing their starters. The rule was that no player could start 13 times in our 14-week season. I'd track starts and late in the year I'd list guys who hadn't yet met the 'sit rule'. We began that in 1984. It was a forced bye weeks thing and in that regard, we were ahead of the NFL which began their dreaded bye weeks scheduling in 1990.

We continued this for a few seasons, I think I stopped when I... a) realized we'd settled into a good group of owners who wouldn't 'draft and ghost' and b) got tired of jacking with it. In 1985 we had set the rule to 11 starters max in the new 13-week season. Here's a look at the pertinent piece of the Week 11 Stat Sheet from '85. 

In an unrelated note, I grinned when I saw the following in a newsletter from Week Six, 1983. 

Once a stats chump, always a stats chump. 

I'm usually up to date on local concerts but I found out I missed a chance to see Tom Jones a couple of weeks back when he played Houston—still kicking myself.

Here's our newest...Aida Jane Glusberg, the Queen of Evanston!