The Hughes News: February 2025

If you haven't already, you'll be receiving an email containing the 2025 Hughes League Yearbook. If you haven't been reading the blog or your emails it is my new way of getting the league history and stats into the hands of those who care about stuff like that.

It was a fun project and motivated me to research some numbers that have previously been buried across numerous files and programs. The Yearbook contains the data pages that were found in the EHFL Links module on the website. You will also find pages (tabs) for every league franchise going back to our founding in 1980. Emailing the info means I don't have to go through the issues I've had finding and maintaining hosting sites.

I have enhanced some of the numbers from previous stat pages a bit. I went through my Hughes News archives and found the final scores for every playoff game. Those have been added to the Playoff History page.

It took a bit more work to find the PPG for every team through our 45 seasons. The more recent seasons were right there on our websites for previous years. But finding and sometimes calculating the data from the previous years was a bit harder. But it's all there. Check out the All-Time Standings page and you will see the PPG as well.

As you might imagine scrounging through those old Hughes News issues and Stat Sheets brought up some interesting numbers. Here are some of the better ones...

In 1983 the Nats scored ONE point in Week 6 then rebounded with weeks of 56 and 57 points. Back in those TD-only days, numbers could really go to extremes.
The 1984 Giants averaged 37 PPG. Two other teams barely squeaked over 30 and seven clubs were in the low to mid 20s. It was one of the most dominant performances of the TD years.
In 1991 the Strawmenn scored 17 or fewer points in 11 of their 14 games yet managed to go 7-7 with that 14.9 PPG. Yes, that is the lowest average in our history.
In 2005, our second year of Performance Scoring, the Blizzard averaged 48 points a game. Two years prior the Bombers had a 40+ PPG with TD Only scoring!

Speaking of Performance Scoring...

When we entered the 'modern' world of Fantasy Football in 2004 I figured tied games would nearly become a thing of the past. But in that very first season, the Nats were involved in TWO playoff ties! They finished their Wildcard game with the Ridgebacks knotted at 109. That shouldn't have been an issue as I had a plan in place... a tiebreak player option was a MFL option. The thing was I had failed to notify the playoff teams that they needed to choose one. I couldn't retroactively revive our previous tiebreak (Total yards by starters) or just call the Tiebreak players a draw and skip to the 2nd tiebreak (TDs by Starters).

Luckily for me Bobby, who was to play the winner of that Nats-Rbacks game, suggested a three-team contest with the winner moving on to the Hughes Bowl. Ultimately, the Nats won that 3-headed Semi with 115 points to Bobby's 112 and Dave's 53. I was glad to escape what could have been a league-breaking mistake.

But, as you might have figured, the Nats and Giants played to a 79-all TIE in the Hughes Bowl. Tony Gonzalez' big day won the title for the Nats as their tiebreaker and that memory has faded into the mist. More or less.

BTW.. if you read carefully you may have noticed that the Nats won three rounds of playoffs scoring only three more points than their opponents!

Another interesting thing about that tied Nats-Rbacks Wildcard game is that the Nats went into Monday night trailing by 72 points(!). They chipped away all through the Chiefs-Titans game until KC quarterback Trent Green's TD pass with 32 seconds left gave Dan enough points to throw the Hughes League into chaos. According to my semi-hysterical Hughes News recap a penalty on the Titans had moved the ball from a spot (the Titan's 19) that would have given Dan six points and a win with that TD. Back then QBs got a point for every 20 yards. If Green had thrown that ten additional yards we would have avoided all that mess (and Dave would have suffered a heartbreaking, last-minute defeat).

Here is a list of all our playoff ties:

The Sticks pounded Attica 82-26 in the 1988 Semifinals. Attica crushed the Holes 81-27 in the 2002 Wildcard round. Those were both in the TD-only era. I started counting the number of times in the performance-scoring years that teams have failed to reach 80 points in a playoff game. I stopped at 40 with a long way to go. Crazy that teams could run up totals like that in the early years.

With the playoff scores in front of me, I dug for the highest and lowest game totals in our history. Because of course, I did. Breaking it down by scoring method, here is what I discovered:

Okay, maybe we should first do a 'Taylor Swift' and define the 'eras'. 😉 TD Only Scoring is actually TD+Kicker Points. It ran from 1980 thru 2002. Performance Scoring added yardage in addition to TDs and kicking. There were adjustments made during this period including PPR and 1/2 PPR for runningbacks and receivers. I'm not concerning myself with that level of detail. But I have defined the two lineup types which certainly made changes to our scores. From 2004 through 2017 we used seven players in our lineups. In 2018 we added an eighth player as a 'flex' option. These charts cover the extreme scores for all three scoring 'eras'. We'll look at Game Scores first.

Interesting things in the chart include my Flyers' involvement in the lowest-scoring games of the TD era—and winning both times. Attica was involved in both of the TD Era's high-scoring games, winning in 2003 and losing in 1986. The Bliz popped up three times.

And next is the rollcall of fame and futility...individual team playoff scores.

If I had included the top two scoring efforts in this chart you would have noticed that Attica had the second-highest game totals for TD and No Flex Performance games. He had 81 points in his 2003 Wildcard game and 135 in 2014, again in a Wildcard game, again a point off the top score in that era. I love stats!

I hope to eventually reconstruct scores for every regular season game in our history, Those from 2003 forward, our MFL years, won't be too hard. Those are just a matter of copying and pasting from each year's site into a spreadsheet and formatting them. The prior years offer a wide variety of challenges. Some I might already have as spreadsheets, others I'll have to glean from handwritten stat pages or reconstruct completely using Jim Nichols' team record pages that he kept for our early seasons. Hey, it keeps me off the streets, yes?

League Notes: MFL has rolled over the leagues for the 2025 season. I will decide soon whether to move forward with this thing. They are offering a $20 discount for renewing before the summer. That would make the cost for our league $90. This is $20 higher than just a few years ago. It's not an unreasonable cost when you consider we spread it out over 12 teams but it is approaching a point where I may seriously consider moving this thing to ESPN, NFL.com, or the like.

I've been reluctant to consider moving in the past because I know I'd miss the customization MFL allows. However, I have seen that the new owners are advertising for programmers, which might mean an overhaul is being considered.

If I renew and set up for the 2025 season, I will hold off on scrambling the schedule, which I do every season. I want to wait until the NFL announces its schedule so we can avoid playing division games during those dreaded '6 Team Bye' weeks. That may not be possible but one can hope.

Unless something significant comes up this will be the last Hughes News for a while. I'll send out emails when and if we crank up the '2025 league.

Ellis is joined by her cousin from Evanston, Baby Aìda!

Love this one from Rufus Wainwright and Sara Bareilles

Aaaaand we are done. With the Saturday meetup and the Second Season Contest concluding we can safely say goodnight to the 2024 season. First things first...

The Second Season...

Okay, I've never watched any of the Pirates of The Caribbean flicks but I know that the main guy's name is Jack. That seems appropriate today as Jack and his Pirates won the Second Season contest and came from back in the pack to do so. Here are the Top Four finishers and their waiver $$ rewards:

Jack $35
Keith $20
Dan $10
Bobby $5

Bobby ended up beating me for the last cash spot by less than a point and a half. Sound familiar?

I had mixed feelings about this year's version of the contest. It was more work to set up and maintain. OTOH we had a good response (11 of 12 teams participated) and the less restrictive method of choosing players kept more teams in the mix to some extent. Feedback is always welcome.

Saturday Fun:

Six of us got together (James was the foto guy so he's not in the picture) on Saturday and we spent several hours swapping stories and memories and kicking around the league and its history. Bobby had family commitments which caused him to miss it again but we're solving that by scheduling next year's gathering at his house.! 😉😀

Cactus Cove is a pretty nice setup for us. After the Kentucky hoops watch party ended, we commandeered the big table. Prices are reasonable, the food is good, and the folks are friendly. It worked out fine. (But I still think we were shorted a plate of our apps! LOL.) Thanks to Bobby, who forwarded me some money toward our tab, and to Padilla, who gifted me with a personalized beer glass commemorating the '24 Flyers title. TY, Bobby and Mike!

League Doings: I have not considered any changes for the league. I think we are at a sweet spot with roster numbers, transaction limits, and IR limits. I've heard no complaints about the scoring system. I always welcome suggestions and ideas on how we can improve.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see that the cost of our league site is now $110. That's the second (or third?) bump since MFL changed ownership a few years ago. I know office rents in Austin can get crazy, but jeez. There is no mention of the Early Bird discount that they had previously. They may still do that. EDIT:Link in above paragraph fixed

Our standard trophy cost was up $10, I think.* I could go cheaper with a plaque or one of those fake marble old-school deals but I think everyone likes the engraved acrylic trophies.

I will calculate the league costs for 2025 and let you know. I'm not going to bug everyone about ponying up this year. That gets old for everybody. Please pay promptly. I will send only one or two reminders.

I was going through our old newsletters and saw that I charged $45 a team in the late 80s when we were paying off for high week and division titles, etc. The cost per team is less than half that now. Just saying.

*= I spent extra on my trophy this year but that came out of my pocket.

EDIT: I'm going to have playoff week waivers run the same as regular season waivers. A blind bid session processing on Wednesday night, and an FCFS window that runs from Thursday morning through Sunday kickoff. NFL scheduling quirks may dictate a tweak or two but other than that this is much simpler for everyone.

Be On The Lookout: I've been busy with a project that puts all our statistical history in one spot, an Excel workbook. I have gotten tired of jumping through the hoops needed to post all the things you have found in the EHFL Links module of our league site.

Doing it this way I can send it out once a year and not have to worry that the hosting site has booted me or cratered. I have found that I can convert the thing to a Google Sheets workbook for those without Excel. It probably won't have the same formatting but it should be comparable.

The 'EHFL Yearbook', for lack of a better name, is just about finished. I should be sending it out in the next week. Thanks to Rick, Jack, and Mike Padilla for their assistance in this.