The Joliet Giants concluded their roll thru the 2021 Hughes League campaign with an easy 128-108 over the Thai Sticks in Hughes Bowl 41. It is the Giants' third consecutive league title.
Rick's club jumped to a 25 point lead by the end of the Sunday afternoon NFL games. So it would be up to Nick Chubb on Monday night as the Sticks' last weapon but his five-point performance left them well short.
QB Josh Allen led Joliet with 27 points and earned game MVP honors. KC fill-in Darrel Williams added 24. The Sticks were paced by Rashaad Penny's 32 points, a season-high for the player picked up for the Sticks' playoff run.
Numbers and other trivial matters: The title is the fifth for McCallum which ties him for second on the all-time list... this was Keith's first Hughes Bowl loss after three wins... 128 points by the Giants ranks them at #4 on the winning team scores list while the Sticks' 108 is the second-highest in a losing effort.
The combined 236 points total is one more than last season's HB total and one less than 2015's 237 points. The all-time high is the ridiculous 262 points that the Holes (138) and Flyers (124) scored in 2018.
Tales of Woe: In my dynasty league I lost in the semi-final round by 0.75 (not seventy-five points but ZERO POINT SEVENTY FIVE). An ill-advised last-minute lineup change cost me. Had I not made the move I'd have won the league title the next week (and $400) by a third of a point. LOL... I joined a league on ESPN a couple games into the season to help out a fellow commish. The team was 0-2 but it had been orphaned and looked much better than that. I ended up getting it to 10-4 and then lost in the semis by a point and a half because both my kickers sat with COVID and the league didn't allow post-season claims. I'm amazed that there are guys who are so set in their ways or are too blind to see the way things have been going. This is the second year in a row that restrictive rosters under stubborn commissioners cost me in a third league. At least this time there wasn't money involved.
Feel free to drop your own tales of woe in the comments (or anything else that strikes your fancy). After last night's Chiefs-Bills game I'm sure Dan could use some encouraging words.Yikes.
I'll have one more Hughes News coming as I decide on the future of the league (or non-future if I was deciding today).
Here we go, spinning into HB41 after a wacky semi-finals. The less said about the Sticks-Flyers game the better. We can sum it up with an actual photo representation of the Flyers ::ahem:: lineup...
In the interest of being precise the Sticks won, 854-2 or something like that. And I was lucky to get the two, honestly.
In the other game...and I'm not exactly sure how this can happen...the Giants went into the MNF game leading the Pirates 124-123, had no players going while Jack had a Dolphins receiver, and the Giants emerged on the other side with a 124-123 win. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But let us not look back in anger. Let us look forward to the title game, shall we? The matchup should be a good one. I always like to look at the postseason history of the two teams involved. Not that it means shit for this game but it involves numbers and I like numbers, and (more importantly) it is a way to fill up this space with something other than bitter bitchin'.
This is the 15th postseason for the Sticks. They are 14-11 in 25 games through this past week. It is their fourth Hughes Bowl and they have won all three of their previous attempts. Only one other team with more than one appearance in The Big One (the S'Rats/Legends/Settlers at 2-0) have never experienced a loss.
The Giants win in the Semis puts them at 19-16 in 20 postseason appearances. They are playing in their ninth Hughes Bowl and are looking to jump to five wins which would give them a tie for second in the all-time list behind the Nationals (6 wins).
The last Hughes Bowl for the Sticks was a 2017 win over the James Andrews-led Flyers. This is the third straight HB game for the Giants and they have won the last two.
I was a bit surprised when I looked into previous Giants-Sticks postseason matchups. There have only been three of them and none before 2004. And all three came in the semifinals:
2004-Giants def. Sticks in Semis 78-63
2006-Sticks def. Giants in Semis on a tiebreak after an 84-all score. The Giants had been the #1 seed.
2010-Giants def. Sticks in Semis 113-81. The Sticks had been the #1 seed.
Should be a good one. Good luck to Rick and Keith.
And I can't close without a shoutout to Jack who had a terrific run in 2021 and came oh-so-close to making the Hughes Bowl. Helluva turnaround from a 2-11 2020 season to now.
Pirates-Giants...The upstart Pirates advanced to the next round with a mild upset of the Legends who went from scoring 165 points in the season finale to 81 this week when it mattered most. Jack will now have the tall task of facing off against the #1 seeded Giants. But don't count the 'kid' out. His crew has been pretty consistent the last month or so and if this season has taught us anything it's that you need to expect chaos when it comes to the NFL. BTW...this is Jack's second playoff run and first semi-final game, he lost in the wildcard game in 2019.
The Giants remain the #1 seed for a reason and the defending champs have been doubly blessed by not having multiple injury losses over the season.
Sticks-Flyers...Two old heads will bump in this one. Both teams are reeling from injuries over the last few weeks which makes this one tough to forecast. If the Flyers, who have lost most of their top runningbacks, can get any of them back this week it might make the difference. The Sticks lost two Tampa Bay stalwarts this week and their ability to cover for those will be the key to their outcome.
Things...COVID has certainly taken its toll over the last week or two in fantasy football. I came close to awarding an emergency claim to the Bombers on Monday. But the close-to-gametime Adam Thielen injury announcement, when I reconstructed the timeline, didn't fall under our guidelines. Bobby made a game of it anyway. Having made the ruling that he wasn't eligible to pick up a player (and Bobby was fine with my explanation) I was kind of relieved that no Vikes player Bobby might have chosen would have made a difference in the outcome. I always dread making those kinds of decisions and then having the outcome hinge on it.
On a semi-related note..this is the second week in a row that an NFL team has won with under 100 yards passing. Is this a new NFL thing? In the copycat world of pro football can we expect other teams to try going this route? Or is it that Kirk Cousins just blows?
Enjoy the games this week. Hope everyone has a great holiday season, and let's pray we get through our year without NFL cancellations and more schedule shenanigans.
Fun Fact...(and I'm not sure how to interpret this)...only two teams have NOT appeared in the playoffs in the past two seasons. One is the Strawmenn. Mike was in the 2019 Hughes Bowl (and got squeezed out last year on a tiebreak) so it's not really a playoff 'dought', The other team is the Rbacks who haven't made it since 2012. Everyone else earned a berth in 2020 or 2021 or both.
Lots of stuff spinning thru the Hughes League's orbit this week. Wildcard games, some special circumstance rules, and a quick look at some of the weirdness that was 2021.
Wildcard Preview
Young Guns faceoff...James and Jack are the only two owners in the playoffs without a Hughes League crown. Sadly, one of them will have to wait for another day after this weekend. The Legends were tied for second in the league in scoring and had 9 wins, the third-most in the league. They are coming off a huge game that saw them blessed with six players scoring over twenty points to go with a double-digit kicker. Had Terry McLaurin not been KO'd early with a zero and actually scored his average the Legends would have been over 175 in the season-ender.
The Pirates were fifth in scoring, well back of the Big Four', but much of that was due to a dry spell in the middle of the season that saw them score 75 or less in three of four weeks. Other than that patch the club was solid.
I'm out of the prediction business but you have to figure that the Legends are the favorites to move on to the semi-finals in this battle of second-gen Hughes guys. But James has to be aware that a monster week doesn't guarantee success the next time out.
The other game has two old hands at the fantasy playoff business. Bobby has to feel pretty blessed to have been able to navigate to eight wins and a playoff bid while commanding the 8th highest-scoring team. And it wasn't like nobody scored against him. His Points Against total was surpassed by only three other teams. I'm telling you now that if you check his backyard you'll find evidence of some sort of animal sacrifice. He'll need more of that luck this weekend when he faces Keith's division champion Sticks. Their 110.0 PPG was tied for second in the league with the Legends and they only dipped below 90 points once.
So this week you have the classic battle of the two principal fantasy factors, strength vs good fortune. Should be a good one. BTW...the last time the Bombers made the playoffs was 2017. They were the Lombardi champ and played the Sticks in the semifinals. The Sticks prevailed 106-93 and went on to defeat James' Flyers in the Hughes Bowl.
Yo. Playoff guys...don't forget to pick your Wildcard player. There is a dropdown box at the bottom of the submission page. In the enhanced version of the page, it's not labeled as being the tiebreak guy which is something I'm trying to get fixed. Meanwhile, I've dropped back and punted by going to the default style i.e. plain vanilla lineup page. If I get it fixed I'll switch back to the fancy-schmancy view.
You probably saw the email that was sent earlier concerning some changes to the waiver situation in the '21 Playoffs. I saw multiple lists of players from sports ranging from the Premier League (Go Man U!) to the NHL postponing games and several NFL teams listing multiple positive COVID tests early in the week. After some thought and discussions among a few playoff owners, I came up with a plan that may help in case the NFL's cases really affect upcoming games. Nothing radical, just a one roster spot bump, a small waiver supplement for teams with upcoming games, lowering the waiver cost to stretch tight budgets, and a Sunday morning waiver window similar to the old 'emergency claim rule that you should remember if you were around in the 'lineups-by-telephone' days.
I was also concerned that we'd be more likely to run short of players because the playoffs require a tiebreaker of one non-starter. Makes those thin rosters even thinner. Hopefully, we are overreacting to the situation but I really don't want a crucial game outcome to be determined by COVID issues if I can help it. If I have to further revise things I'll do so.
Just odd shit...the Strawmenn went 3-10-1 while scoring the sixth-highest number of points. How is that even possible?....the Bombers, OTOH, went 8-6 while sitting at #8 in the points scored column. You tell me...
Just for grins here's the list of each team's most expensive acquisition for 2021...
Legends-Hunter Renfroe $51
Heroes-Elijah Mitchell $130
Flyers-KJ Hamler (who?) $40
Bombers-Randall Cobb $39
Strawmenn-Rondell Moore $23
Sticks-Boston Scott $69
Pirates-Adrian Peterson $210 (that's just over $23 per point contributed)
Blizzard-Big Ben $92 (Mike's a 'Go Big Or Go Home guy, he had five guys cost over $40 each)
Holes-Kadarius Toney $90
Giants-JK Osborn $75
Ridgebacks-Cordarrelle Patterson $22 (about a buck a letter!)
Well, the 2021 playoffs are set. It was an ::ahem:: interesting night watching the Rams and Cardinals. Setting aside the horrendous uniforms that were worn there were a lot of moving parts in terms of our bracket. My main point of interest was seeing if the Pirates could move ahead of the Nationals in scoring for the season and thus knock Dan out of the 'points scored Wildcard slot' and further thus allow my suddenly sad team to get a much needed bye. Until yesterday afternoon I had not considered the fact that the Strawmenn, of all teams, had a shot at sneaking into that points slot.
That complicated things to the point I pulled out a dry erase board to keep a tally of who was sitting where in the points ranking as the game evolved. It reminded me of a Monday Night game many years ago that featured the Jets versus someone I can't remember, maybe the Dolphins. What I do remember is that I was in a tight late season matchup with Hogan and we each had a Jets receiver. I had Lam Jones and the Heroes had Wesley Walker (it might be the other way around, I dunno). Anyway, I spent the entire evening yelling at Ken O'Brien to "Don't look at HIM, you bum! Look left!!!" and so on and so on. Fantasy football at it's finest.
Last night wasn't quite that intense, mostly because I don't care as much as I did back then. LOL And I was only trying to avoid a first round game, not trying to make the playoffs. But it was still entertaining.
When the dust settled six teams made the playoffs including the standard three wildcards. (I'll have more to say about the possible 7-team playoffs in a bit.) Should be an interesting weekend. The Sticks drew the short straw (no pun intended) and are the division champ without a bye. They will face the rather magical Bombers who somehow emerged with a berth (and 8 wins) while finishing eighth in scoring. In the other game the Legends square off against the Pirates in a battle of strong if somewhat inconsistent teams. The Flyers and Giants wait on the sidelines and try to heal up.
Playoff thoughts and stuff I learned (and stuff I screwed up)
When I added the possible seventh playoff spot thing I intended to have a stiputaion that would set a minimum number of wins (six) to go along with the points requirement. I mentioned that in the first draft of the June edition of the Hughes News when I outlined the new season stuff. Of course, in a move that is so 'me', I failed to put it in the 'official' rules. As a result we could have easily had a three-win Strawmenn club as a five seed. That would have been, well, interesting. And (no offense, Mike) would have annoyed the hell out of me since I would have missed a bye (because of a three win team) and likely gotten a first round boot with a lineup featuring Cam Newton and Dontrell Hilliard. LOL!
I doubt I'll carry the possible seventh slot over to next year's simplified league (if there is a next year, I'm 50/50 on the whole thing) but we'll have to see.
Another quick reminder/explaination... The wildcard teams qualify on record and are then seeded on points. I enter the teams with their seed and the bracket is created automatically based on one assumption...that the first round will go according to seed. In other words, the system places the 3v6 matchup on the same side as the #2 seed and the 4v5 matchup on the side with the #1 seed. That way, if the higher seeds prevail in the first round, the #1 seed plays the lowest remaining seed. It doesn't always work out that way because there are first round upsets. And we all know through four decades of experience that the seeds don't always reflect team strength. Sometimes one, two, or even all three wildcards are stronger than one or more division winners.
But this isn't the NCAA where a bunch of old dudes hold a team beauty contest and finagle tournament seeding. We have a set of guidelines for seeding and they are followed. Once upon a time I intervened in the process after the wildcard games and re-seeded to ensure that #1 team played vs the lowest remaining club but a few seasons back I forgot to do that (nobody noticed!) and I decided that letting the brackets play out as created is for the best going forward.
And finally...I've turned off eliminated teams' ability to make any roster moves and will continue to do that each week thru the playoffs. There is only one waiver period each week and it's the blind bid session that processes on Wednesday evening.
Good luck to everyone still playing, especially me. I'm gonna need it!
This post has been a few months in the making. I've reached the point where I just haven't been enjoying the league very much. Lots of things factor in here. For one I spend more time than I should tweaking and fidgeting with 'stuff'. I think I've gotten away from my own rule of 'Strive to keep things simple.' Split drafts, Draft Values, etc. make things interesting I suppose, but they are also more work and I'm just not sure it's really needed. And I certainly need to spend less time sitting in front of a computer screen or staring into my smartphone.
A big factor is also that I continue feeling the long-term effects of my bout with COVID in August. I'm still struggling at times with breathing, stamina, and equilibrium issues.
I've been considering what to do going forward since early in the season. We've had a nice run over the last 4+ decades. I'd like to continue but not under the current circumstances. We can move forward towards 45 seasons but it would either be with changes or without me. Here's what I'm thinking.....
1) No Keepers...we'll be a complete redraft league. This is 180* from what I think of as 'optimum fun' in fantasy football but I don't want to deal with Values, trade-based changes to values, Cook Rules etc. etc. This is as good a place as any to mention that if we continue on and you traded for 2021 draft picks you'll still be entitled to them. If you traded away a 2021 pick you got the player value for the remainder of the season. I might add a compensatory pick at or near the end of the draft.
2) Simple serpentine draft... I'll put everyone's info in the same draft order generator site we've used before and whatever happens, happens. I think I'll generate the order just before we draft like the old days of pulling names from a hat at the intramural offices. There won't be any trading of future picks as of this date going forward.
3) No IR... We can set the roster limit at something reasonable, 16ish sounds right, and let it go at that. No need to 'stash' injured guys for next season. We did 15 man rosters without an IR for years but with COVID possibly (god forbid) still a factor we can go a spot higher. No more getting caught in the Thursday Night/Sunday Morning IR 'trap'. If you have a guy out with an injury you decide if he's got 'same-year value' to you and keep him. 16 slots are more than enough to run a team.
Plus the IR can complicate trades needlessly and confuse everyone involved, including me. Right, Mr. Strawmann? 😇
Things I'm thinking about but haven't decided on yet...
4) The scoring system is overdue for a re-evaluation. By that I mean I'll look at the PPR we currently use and if either receivers or runningbacks are 'out of balance', I'll rework it. I'd like to go with either a full PPR or a half-PPR for everyone instead of the current setup. It makes using online cheat sheets less useful since they are almost always based on one standard for all positions.
5) Simpler playoff qualifiers...three division winners, two next best records, one next best points. Over and done. The top two division winners by record get the byes. Seeding for teams 3 thru 6 (that includes the third division winner) would be based on PPG.
6) No more attempts at a weekly Hughes News. I've enjoyed doing it and it occasionally has some good stuff but I can't get to it every week and on some weeks I don't have much to say. I think that shows. But mostly it doesn't get looked at. Blogger's stats show that it gets an average of under three viewers a week. And this damn Blogger interface is a bear to jack with. It's just not worth the time and effort if it's not being read. I can put essential news on the page or the message board.
7) I might just move the league over to ESPN, NFL.com, CBS Fantasy, or one of the other sites. I love customizing our MFL pages but that feels more and more like a waste of time as well. If we move I'll try to figure out which site has the ability to duplicate our scoring and such. I'm guessing we may have to bend a few things to fit somewhere else. This leads me directly to...
8) The cost of another site would probably be $0. MFL if I recall correctly is $75. Trophy plus shipping and whatever else I send out to the champ usually runs $100 or so. That's where I get the $15 fee I ask for. Obviously, that would change depending on what site we use.
9) Waivers...see above paragraph #7. If we stay with MFL we can keep our system in place with a few tweaks to make it less work. If we move it'll be a whole new world. Most of the other sites have take-it-or-leave-it waiver systems that don't give us many options.
All of this is tentative. I'll continue to think about it over the course of the '21 season. If some owners decide that this wouldn't be of interest I'll understand. I can probably replace an owner. If several of you decide to drop out I decide what to do at that point. I'm not up for a big recruiting campaign. I'm going to put a poll up to test the waters.
Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome. Good luck to those in the playoff chase.
Up and down, 'round and 'round, fantasy football has taken a lot of twists and turns so far in 2021. We're dealing with significant injuries to significant players (Hi, Derek Henry!), COVID losses (Hi! Packers), and everything in between.
Some random shit.. the Bombers are 5-3 and in first place in the Lombardi despite the second-lowest number of points scored in the league! Eight teams scored 96+ points this week while four teams scored in the 70s or worse. Those four teams played each other in two games so two of them won. I think it was the Orioles' Dave McNally who first said "I'd rather be lucky than good."
I've added more goodies to the Historical Data module. It now shows not only a bunch of highs and lows and team records but the new tabs give you Historical Standings, Top Players, Playoff Brackets, and Draft Results. All going back to 2003. Complete historical data (back to 1980) can be found through my spreadsheets, etc. that are available via the Link module near the bottom of that right column on the home page.
Cook Rule Update... had a few questions this past week as to who might qualify. I was actually in the middle of doing some checking when one of those emails arrived. Below is the latest update. Players in black text are already ineligible due to having played in six games (or more). Players in red or green text qualify at this point as far as the number of games played but the green names indicate not having appeared on the NFL IR list with Chris Carson (in red) qualifying in both needed categories.
McCaffrey and That Man himself, Dalvin Cook, are not eligible for reasons shown in the Notes.
In looking at Saquon Barkley I saw that MFL sometimes has a 'zero' for weekly points, and sometimes a 'blank'. The zero could indicate that the player was on the field and simply didn't do enough to earn a fantasy point. Barley had a zero for Week 5 when he played briefly and gained nine yards and a zero for Week 6 when he was never on the field. But he has a blank for Week 7 when he was 'inactive'. To avoid confusion I'm making a Commish Decision and declaring that I will use the official NFL snap counts to determine cases like this. In figuring Games Played for the purposes of the Cook Rule I'll look at any games that MFL has marked with a zero and check the NFL for his snap counts. If he's listed with any I'll consider that as a game 'played'.
