Playoff Preview '24

 

Oh, So Close...The Fantasy Football gods can be cruel. Alternate view...Fantasy Karma can be a Bitch. Either way, I end up with the same outcome: The Flyers miss the division title by 0.24, a quarter of a point and land the #4 seed instead of a Bye. A quarter of a point. That's not even one catch over the course of the season. Oh, well. 

It was a rather entertaining weekend despite all six playoff teams having been determined. In the Lombardi the Bombers put up 146 points but had to sweat out: 1) the Legends crawling back into the game on Monday night and falling just five points shy of a major upset, and 2) the Flyers almost reclaiming in the closing moments on Monday night the total points lead they had held almost the whole season. Meanwhile, I was at a concert and missed almost all the 'fun'. 

The Blizzard claimed the Kuhlmann crown by beating the Pirates to split their two matchups and scored more than enough points to pass the Pirates for first place. 

The Nationals took care of business and waltzed past the Holes for the top spot in the Barenholtz and were rewarded with a Bye as the #2 seed. 

So the Wildcard games look like this:

#3 Blizzard (8-6  100.7 PPG)      vs      #6 Pirates (8-6 98.6 PPG) 

This will be the third 2024 meeting of these two Kuhlmann Division rivals. They split those two division games. As mentioned above the Bliz closed the season beating Jack's crew. They are coming off their best scoring week while Portland finished the year with their second-worst. But Week 14 byes played a part in every game so we start fresh with Week 15. 

Jack is 1-1 in Wildcard games. Mike is 5-5. The two clubs have never met in the playoffs before this upcoming game. 

#4 Flyers  (10-4 110.0 PPG)     vs      #5 Holes (9-5 102.9 PPG)

The Holes downed the Flyers in Week 11 which was just about the time Baltimore was starting its descent into mediocrity. Jim is 5-5 in wildcards while the Flyers' 1-8 mark should tell you all you need to know about why I was anxious to get that &%(*@#ing bye. 

The last time the Holes and Flyers met in the playoffs was the 2018 Hughes Bowl. James was at the Flyers' helm that season while I was only playing commish. That matchup was won by the Holes. 

This is the fifth playoff matchup of these two teams in our history. Here are all the previous results:

         

A combination of events led to the Rbacks not having a Week 14 lineup in the system. I was doing family things this past Sunday and didn't look at the site other than to check my score on the app. I noticed the issue pretty late on Sunday night after the SNF game was over. Luckily the game involved (Rbacks-Giants) had no playoff implications. That's pretty unusual for a Week 14 game, usually every game means something to some extent.

Had the game 'meant' something I'd have had a crisis to deal with. As it is I only had to deal with how to resolve the game itself. Two things are given, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Zero scores mess with my stats/records and nobody loves their league stats more than me. Therefore I won't let a zero score stand. This leads us to 'Given' #2:

2) No team without a lineup should ever win a game. 

With that in mind I did the following... set a lineup for the Rbacks. The team had pretty narrow guardrails with no active TE and several players hurt or on byes. My goal was to set a lineup that would score less than the Giants without using bye/injured players. With the Giants scoring under 60 points that goal was out the window. So today I went back and started the Rbacks' most logical lineup of active players (w/o a TE) and let that total stand. But I went into the system and changed the two reams' result, i.e. gave the Giants a win and the Rbacks a loss overriding to actual scores. 

I had talked to a few owners not directly involved and they had no issues with the plan. I also talked to Rick and he was more than willing to take the loss without any adjustment but that wouldn't fly (see Given #2 above).

Hey, as Padilla reminded me, life gets in the way of Fantasy sometimes (as it certainly should). And when it does I can always step in and fix things. It's why you guys pay me to do this. But I will also try to keep things from popping up that lead to me making arbitrary decisions. Next season I may, at least later in the year, turn on the Thursday morning lineup option. It's just a safety net that would keep stuff like this from happening.  

Finally...

I have decided that the consolation bracket wasn't such a great idea. I'll rethink it and maybe restructure it and if I like it I'll have it in place for next year, not as a last-minute gimmick announced without much thought. 

See ya back here next week for the Semifinals. 

Oh, Amy!