Crunch Time... Twelve weeks down, two to go, and things have gotten, well, interesting to say the least. The Sticks took the drama out of the Kuhlmann Division with a win over the Blizzard. What had looked like a huge battle a month ago turned into a routine win.
The Heroes and Flyers secured division wins, keeping the Legends and Bombers within range. They meet in two weeks, a traditional closer. Will a playoff spot be on the line? Hey, I haven't gone through all the tiebreaks, so maybe one of them is already DOA.
The Holes and Nats both won to get to 9-3, and they each could do no worse than 9-5, obviously. The Bliz could go 9-5 but lost to both these two, so I think I am safe in assuming that both the Nats and Holes have spots locked up. They also meet in Week 14, and that one could be for the division and a bye. Buckle up!
Things (I think) I know:
Sticks have won their division and clinched a bye
Holes and Nats have (I'm fairly certain, see below) clinched playoff spots
Pirates, Rbacks, S'menn are eliminated from playoff contention
Two Wildcards are still up for grabs, with the Bliz (7-5) and Bombers (6-6 with a chance at the division) having the inside track. Lincoln has the edge on the Lombardi Division, but could drop to a WC contender
Multiple teams from the Lombardi may qualify, but the permutations give me a headache
Figuring this shit out isn't as much fun as it used to be 💀
So, with the Sticks, Nats, and Holes holding three spots, let's look at the rest of the teams not yet eliminated....
Legends 7-5/2-2 1st Lombardi.
To Play: Heroes and Bombers. (1115 points scored in last 5 games)
1-1 vs Flyers, beat Giants & Bliz, lost to Heroes & Bombers
Blizzard 7-5 2nd Kuhlmann.
To Play: Smenn and Pirates (900 in last 5)
Beat Heroes, Giants, Bombers, Lost to Flyers and Legends
Bombers 6-6/2-2 2nd Lombardi.
To Play: Flyers and Legends (1162 in last 5)
1-1 vs Heroes, Beat the Flyers; Lost to Legends, Blizzard, and Giants
Giants 5-7 3rd Barenholtz,
To Play: Holes and R'backs (1029 in last 5)
Beat Bombers and Heroes; Lost to Legends, Flyers, and Blizzard
Heroes 5-7/3-1 3rd Lombardi via current tiebreak vs Flyers
To Play: Legends, Flyers (1113 in last 5)
1-1 vs Bombers; Beat Flyers, Legends; Lost to Bliz and Giants
Flyers 5-7/1-3 4th Lombardi via current tiebreak vs Heroes
To Play: Bombers and Heroes (1115 in last 5)
1-1 vs Lincoln; Beat Giants and Blizzard; Lost to Heroes and Bombers
I did this in a hurry, so I could very well be full of crap on some of this. Please feel free to check my work.
The chart below shows numbers from the last 5 weeks, Potential Points on the left, and actual Points Scored on the right. I used it to configure the notes above; take it for what it's worth.
Click to expand:
Vote Early and Often!...Jack commented last week in response to my waiver-related complaints by suggesting that we reduce the size of our rosters by one. Doing so would dump a dozen bodies into the open market and make the pool of players more attractive. And I'll add that it makes roster management a bit more challenging. I'm on the fence here; I truly have no preference. I posted a poll to get everyone's take.
As of this writing (Tuesday morning), we have 11 votes cast. The poll will remain open until Midnight on Wednesday. Hopefully, the lone holdout will weigh in by then. If not, I will use my proxy to reach 12 votes, according to our rules.
A few weeks back, I mentioned a Taxi Squad slot that would be a rookie who wouldn't count against your roster until activated. (There were a few more parameters as well.) I'm not sure if that would negate the roster size reduction or enhance it. LOL Somebody help me!!
The Site, what say you?... We are nearly a season into using this template. While I really do like the look, I do find myself annoyed at a few 'features', and I'm soliciting opinions on a few things.
I dislike and generally ignore the Notifications box that jumps up (sporadically) when you enter the site. It doesn't seem to be there every time, but when it is, it's annoying.
The yellow banner that tells you who has entered is less annoying, but I dislike it as well. LOL
Do you care about the scrolling headlines? I sometimes pay attention to the names of injured guys, and I do look at the leaders on occasion, but I wouldn't miss it if I deleted it.
Thirteen weeks in and I still hate the waiver page. I find the team and position dropdowns to be slow, the filters over the free agent lists next to useless, and the difference between the 'Place Bid' and 'Make Claim' buttons less than obvious. (See the next paragraph)
Let me know your thoughts on the new look. I think it is 'clean', but maybe not as intuitive as the old layout.
Site Related: Again today, I pushed through a claim I intended to be a bid. I've spent a lot more time logged in as commish this season than I did in the past. The template creator has posted tweaks to be implemented, and I like to putz around with stuff anyway (it's like a new toy). And some stuff is just easier to get to as commish. Combine that with a more convoluted waiver page and it adds up to wearing the wrong hat half the time. Maybe I need to put a big note on my monitor. 👮
Here is this week's Top 5...
Sticks (0.5)
Nationals (0.25)
Holes (0.25)
The Sticks' Bench Guys
Legends (or maybe the Heroes, Bombers or Giants, I dunno)
Also receiving votes: Lionel Messi, Shohei Ohtani's dog 'Decoy' 🐕, and hmmmm....nobody in the Hughes League TBH
Not receiving votes: The rest of us, Manchester United, 610 Loop eastbound @ I-45
First place votes in parentheses.
I'm not a John Meyer fan, but I thought this was pretty awesome.
Ellis has perfected the 'One Chopstick' method of enjoying her chicken Pho.
And she is somewhat less than excited about her after-school t-ball program. She told me, "Baseball is too tricky!" 🤷🤣
Beats The Hell Outta Me!... We just had the worst scoring week (84.75 PPG) since Week 1 of 2023 (84.05 PPG) and only the third overall sub-85 PPG week since we switched to an eight-player lineup in 2018. Oh, and Week 1 of '23 was the last time we only had one team break 100 points. I knew there wasn't much chance of the Nats not going over 100 on Monday night, but I've watched enough of the Cowboys this year to know there was a remote possibility.
Normally, I'd blame the bye week for the dip in scoring, but it was just a two-team week. Of course, the Colts were one of those two, which explains why the Sticks (no JT) were held to 82 points and barely avoided an upset.
The blame falls mostly, I believe, on injuries. Just look at how many NFL teams are starting QBs who began the year on the bench, and add in two (or three guys that were KO'd early in games this week and you have a lot of your answer.
That's not even taking into account the number of backs and receivers falling out. A week or two back, the Legends had Kraft and LaPorta. Poof, now they are starting Luke Musgrave at TE. Hopefully, scoring picks back up as our season runs down.
The State of Things... Week 12 is the start of division games and the home stretch. Put that together, and it means BIG games are coming up. The biggest this week is one that a month ago looked like it would be a clash of titans. Now it features the league's top team (the Sticks) looking to end the misery of the former top team (the Blizzard). After a 7-0 start Paz' crew is spiraling downhill with a four-game losing streak. A loss to the Sticks ends their chance to win the Kuhlmann Division and may even cast some doubt on their playoff hopes. As Ellis likes to tell me, "Papa, that's crazy talk!"
I'll keep my other eye on the Nats and Giants. The Nats have low-key crept into a tie for the Barenholtz lead with the Holes. Okay, maybe a five-game win streak isn't 'low-keying' it, but they snuck up on me at least. And don't discard the Gaints. Rick has them at 5 wins, and my handy Playoff Calculator says that while their chances to win the division are about the same as me opening for George Strait, they are a toss-up to make the playoffs. Keep hope alive, Rick.
The Lombardi guys keep stumbling to the finish line. I'm gonna just ignore them for now.
Talking Trading (again)... Continuing our (rather one-way) discussion from last week. As I've mentioned many times, I really prefer not to 'get my hands dirty' with 'governing' this league. I'd rather things ran smoothly within the MFL system. I think I made my point very poorly. Bottom line, I'm likely to move the trade deadline forward next year. Maybe to where it was back before we had keepers, which was around Week 10 or 11.
Waivers, OTOH, are strongly encouraged. Maybe it's my imagination, and I have no way to verify this, but I feel like there have been fewer bids being made this year. And that seems weird considering the number of guys getting sidelined. I'm a fairly conservative bidder normally (the exception being late in years when I'm in contention), and I lose a lot of $11 bids, but this season I've had more success. Maybe I'm just imagining that, but in any case, get out there and use that cash whether or not you are contending or not. /rambling
I'm an Idiot, Part ???... it took me 11 weeks to realize that the dots next to the team names in the Playoff Projections correspond to Divisions. Red=Lombardi team; Green=Barenholtz; Blue=Kuhlmann. I'd notice those dots every week and wonder WTF they were for. Sheech. Does anyone have some extra Prevagen?
I'm an Idiot, Part ???+1...I won two free agents last week, and they combined for almost 60 points... on my bench. Yeah, I won, but still...
Here's a new 'old' feature...
Sticks (1)
Nationals
Holes
Blizzard
Legends
Also receiving votes: Bombers, Manchester United, Shohei Ohtani
Remember last week when I mentioned the lack of close games in Week Nine? Well, sometimes the fantasy gods strike in ways you just can't imagine.
First things first, we had two huge games this past weekend with implications across three divisions. My original lede for this post, which I began Monday evening, is below. But somewhere between that headline and this morning, we had an ending for the ages.
The Legends, sitting atop the Lombardi, had a 25.76 point margin in their game against the Kuhlmann-leading Blizzard going into Monday night's Packers-Eagles game (82.30 to 56.54). Our site projected the Blizzard to make it close as they had Jacobs and Goedert on tap. And that projection was not wrong. Paz' club inched closer and closer despite the game on the tube being a defensive struggle.
With less than six minutes remaining, the Packers scored a TD (their only points on the night) with Jacobs carrying it in from six yards out. That score pushed the Blizzard ahead of James, 82.44 to 82.30. It looked like a win (by the margin of less than a yard and a half of rushing) for the Bliz and that they would hold their piece of 1st place. I'd been following along on the app while reading, and when Jacobs scored, I closed the app, opened Blogger, and got a head start on today's news post.
In no way was I counting on what happened next. The Eagles killed off about three minutes and punted, the Pack crossed midfield, faced a 4th-and-1, handed the ball to Jacobs, and he LOST 4 Yards and fumbled! That play cost the Bliz 0.4 points, knocked them back to 82.04, and behind the Legends.
Green Bay did get the ball back one more time, moved it enough for a desperate attempt at a tying FG, but that kick came up short from 64 yards out. Had McManus made it and the game gone into OT, either Jacobs or Goedert would have surely picked up a couple of yards or nabbed one catch, and given Paz his win.
Fantasy football can surely drive you crazy.
Not that it's any consolation to Paz, but I lost by a half point in a different league a few years back when Eli Manning (I think it was Eli) threw a last-play Hail Mary that was intercepted by a guy lying on his back, as I recall. The pick cost me a point, but I still would have won, except the guy I was playing also got a point, since he had the defense Eli was going against. Sigh
This is Monday Night's original post title and partial lede for this edition..
.Did We Just Witness...
...a Hughes Bowl Preview??
To paraphrase the great Bum Phillips, "If the Sticks and Holes weren't the class of the league, it doesn't take long to call roll!"
And those two clubs met in Week 10 with the Sticks rolling to a 160-121 win. The Sticks become the first team to hit the 160 point mark (160.08 to be exact) since the Flyers got there in Week Three of 2024. It's the 13th-highest regular-season game score in league history.
The Holes will fall back to a tie for first in the Barenholtz Division with the streaking Nationals despite a sterling 120-point effort.
Now back to live action... Jeez,so many moving parts. The Nats, as mentioned, are streaking and sit third in points scored. They would hold the #4 seed if the season was done right now.
With six wins, the Bombers have a grip on the #6 seed and have a cushion between them and the rest of the pack. And they remain just a game behind the Legends. The four-win Giants and Rbacks have paths to the postseason, but they are pretty tenuous. I haven't looked closely, but I can't see a three-win team sneaking in, even if one would win out. I'm open to correction by a math whiz out there.
We have four weeks left. One non-division week and then things get tense. As I mentioned, it appears that six teams have damn near wrapped up postseason slots. But where they fall, and who gets the byes are the unanswered questions. We shall have to wait and see.
Can we talk? (#1)... I need everyone to be aware of the fact that I try to monitor lineups and such each weekend, but I, like you, have things that come up that may keep me away from seeing problems. Owners can get tied up with life and wind up with inactive/out/bye players in their lineup, which is not ideal, obviously. As commish, I reserve the right to 'fix' a lineup if I can't reach an owner. That is something I *hate* doing, for multiple reasons, but we are not some random, free ESPN league of strangers where half the teams are ghosted by Week Eight. We have 45 years of being competitive and fun. Everyone has my phone number, and a text asking for me got take care of something is all it takes if you can't get to the site for whatever reason.
I've moved the Invalid Lineup warning module to a more conspicuous location. It will list a team of a player in your lineup who has been ruled 'Out'.
Can we talk? (#2)... let's discuss late-season trades. First, let me say that in almost 46 years, we have never had a deal made that I felt was worthy of being overturned or disallowed. Nothing shady, nothing that hinted at collusion, period. And I'm proud of that fact. I'm also a minimalist when it comes to rules. I don't want to have to come up with guidelines as to who can be involved in trades at any point in the season.
A few years ago, I moved the trading deadline back to the beginning of the last week of the season. My thinking was that it gave more freedom to make moves, especially back then when we had smaller (by a player or two) rosters. And (and this is crucial) we were a keeper league with assets to stock, and we allowed future draft picks to be included.
Over the last week or so, there have been some trades proposed, with one accepted this morning. That trade was between a non-contender and a team with at least a mathematical chance to get to the playoffs. I approved it after a bit of thought. I was involved in a trade proposal/counter-proposal last week. At the time, I had a glimmer of a spark of a teeny hope that I could reach a playoff spot. That's gone, so today I turned down a fair offer from another non-contender. I DO NOT want to discourage anyone from trying to win every possible game, but OTOH, I need to make sure that a deal made is fair to both teams and to the rest of the league.
I'm walking a fine line here, I guess. But that's why I get paid so damn much, yes? Thanks for understanding.
Another Hughes photo... has landed. The partial picture below is seen in full on the Hughes Tribute page. It's the latest addition to my collection.
My wife and I don't have identical musical tastes, but we do agree that Raul Malo (with or without The Mavericks) is our favorite artist. We've seen him countless times at all sorts of venues, from Central Texas to New Orleans and beyond. He's a classic road warrior who tours constantly. When the Mavericks take a break, RM hits the road solo, with a small group, a sidekick, or just with his son on the drum kit. And he fills gaps in that schedule by playing on cruises or just showing up at record stores and guitar shops.
He recently battled colon cancer, and it looked like he had it beaten. But in time it returned, and now it's spread to his brain. He's been here in Houston (where else?) for treatment. And, true to his nature, he hung out at Rockin' Robin on Shepherd to noodle with guitars and entertain. Sadly, he's had to cancel all his upcoming shows, including one here in Houston that was scheduled for October and one we were really looking forward to, New Year's Eve at Austin City Limits Live.
Here's to you, Raul Malo.
Here the Mavericks play our favorite, Harvest Moon.
Well, Well, Well... We have a new #1 Seed. OK, I know it's too early to even look at that stuff, but at 2-7 I have the time, right?
Plus, keeping track of this foolishness is kind of my job. If you check the playoffs tab, you'll see that the Holes have climbed to the top, tied with the Bliz at 7-2. But with a win over Paz earlier, they hold the tiebreak. But, as noted, it's too early to get too invested in this, as a lot can (and will) happen over the final five weeks of the season.
The week was unusual as we didn't have a close game. It was a rare Monday night in that the matchups had all but been finalized before the Cards and Cowboys kicked off. So the MFL app on my phone got a night off.
Does anyone have their eyes on the Legends? Second in points scored and 6-1 over their last seven after an 0-2 start. They just lost Tucker Kraft, and I'm not sure what Rico Dowdle (Rico Dowdle!) is doing is sustainable, but hey, James is gonna ride that wave for the foreseeable future. He's gonna owe me a beer if he wins this thing because I'm the guy who tipped him wise to nabbing Rico D.
Seeding and Bleeding... I had a casual discussion last week with an owner about seeding for the playoff teams. The point was made that the best two teams in the same division can lead to one of them being KO'd by the other before they have a chance to meet in the title game. Which is absolutely true.
And because I do enjoy mulling over the league, an actual discussion point gives me something to focus on. So, that discussion led me to think about the following:
The potential KO of a strong second-place team comes up fairly regularly. Last season the Flyers tied for the best record in the league (10-4) and were less than a half-point(!) behind the Bombers for the top scoring total in the league. Lost the bye by less than one single catch over the course of the season and off they went to the #4 seeding. I breezed through the Almanac and found that over the last decade, give or take, there have been four instances where the two best teams by record came from the same division ('24, '23, '19, '13).
I have some core beliefs in how the league does and should work, among them is that 1) we will always have a head-to-head schedule...2) winning your division, however strong or weak it is, should be worth something, and... 3) 'bad luck' i.e. scoring a bunch of points but losing games, can and should be factored into playoff qualifiying.
Sidebar: I realize that the last of those can be problematic; a team with 7 or even 8 wins can get squeezed out by a team with several fewer wins. I got a lot of pushback when we went in that direction a few years ago, so I shelved that idea. PPG is part of tiebreaking, but unless a lot of you have had a change of heart, we won't do the '6th Seed Goes To Highest Point Team' thing again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, back to the discussion at hand. If there is a way to make the seedings/matchups more fair while still keeping the divisional aspect intact, I'm all ears. And if enough folks want to toss qualifiers into a 'PPG hat' for seeding, I'd put that up for a vote as well. It's food for thought anyway.
Ed Hughes Page Fallout: First of all, I hope someone actually looks at it. LOL Most of this stuff lands in an echo chamber, obviously, but that page deserves a look, not for my writing, but for the memorabilia.
The Rams at Colts program from Hughes' 1954 NFL debut had some :::ahem::: interesting features that I finally got around to scanning. Click on them for the full experience.
The 1950s were, well, different.
Six points, indeed! 😏
This next one had me LOLing. I'm not sure which section is more entertaining, the 'Cheers' or the
'Chants'!
LOL @ Chant #6....
"Go! Go! Go! Go!"
How inspiring! How the fuck did the Colts lose a single home game while hearing that?
Being An Idiot... Twice last week (TWICE!!!) I bid on behalf of the Flyers without realizing I was logged into the site as commish. I will always be aware of how I'm logged in to avoid just those issues. But I've been doing a lot of 'under-the-hood' work lately, trying to figure out how to get the playoff seeding tab to display correctly, trying to add my cutsey Halloween graphics to the banner, and so on. So I've been on there as commish quite a bit.
Of course, being in commish mode causes waiver bids to go in as claims unless I check a box. And with this new template, I find it much easier to miss that checkbox. I've done it before with the old site, but likely never twice in a decade, never mind twice in one week. Jeez.
Obviously, I can fix it without a lot of work, so it's close to no harm, no foul. But it also shows the world who I'm bidding on (via the emails generated), so I need to do better. LOL, maybe I'm just too old to do this?
Sidebar #2.. Yesterday, I came across a weird anomaly that likely factors into all this. Putting in a bid as owner, I still had to check a box to prevent the bid from going through immediately as a claim. I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug! I guess it's been that way all along in this new template, and I just never thought about it while using that page. And, yes, I'm still working the wire. Never give up! Never surrender! (Gordon Ramsey be damned)
Sidebar #2B... After some testing, I found that the site continues to treat me as a commish (on the bid page only) if I switch to owner mode after entering as commish. If I were last logged in as an owner and I log back in, the waiver bid/claim page works as expected. A bid goes in as just that, without me having to specify it as NOT being a claim. I'm sending MFL a support ticket. But if it's a template-specific thing, they won't be able to do anything. The template is a 'third-party' deal.
Random thought... The three division leaders are also the teams in their divisions with the most waiver cash left. What's the significance? You tell me.
This is Terry Stafford, NOT Elvis! A great song nonetheless.
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