Marino Re-incarnated? (aka this week's foolishness 2.0)

 

NOTE: I had a nice long post written. I'd taken a deep dive into comparing Dan Marino and Josh Allen in terms of our fantasy league numbers compared to their peers. But the Blogger app had other ideas and destroyed the formatting, making it pretty much unreadable. Here's a shorter version, with fewer stats...

The conventional wisdom among fantasy football experts is to not take your QB too early. The scoring among the top tier of quarterbacks is normally spread across a narrow range. Sometimes one guy will break away from that pack though, and prove to be a difference maker. Mahomes was that guy for a bit but he's settled back towards the pack. Now we have Josh Allen. Look at the top scorers through Week 5 in our league:

 

A few things jump out at you...The 3-point spread between the #5 scoring QB (Wentz at 22.8) and the #14 QB (Lawrence) is LESS THAN the 5-point spread between Josh Allen and his nearest competitor, Lamar Jackson!

There are three 'tiers' at the position at the moment. The third tier are the ten guys in green above. They include a fourth round pick, a last round pick, and two free agent acquisitions. As I mentioned these 10 are basically interchangeable, separated by a short field goal worth of points.

The 2nd tier had Jackson, Hurts (Channelview's own) and Mahomes. And then there is Allen, alone at the top. 

What does this tell us? I see it as meaning that the conventional wisdom is both right and wrong. You can find a perfectly fine QB in the middle to late rounds of a draft, sometimes even after the draft. But some guys coma along that can pick up a team and carry it. Guys who make a week-to-week difference in game outcomes. Dan Marino was one, Josh Allen is another. 

For those of you who were not around in our first decade here is an amazing stat...Dan Marino was taken by the Dolphins in the 1983 draft. he was good as a rookie but went to another level in 1984. Between that year and 1990, a stretch of seven seasons, the EHFL teams that had him as their QB won the league SIX times! 

Can that sort of streak happen in this era? I don't think so. Back in Marino's day we had a 'TD scoring only' format, with 6 points for a TD pass. It was truly a QB-dominated league. And Marino's number of touchdown passes gave whatever team he was on a big edge.. Our scoring now is much more balanced, both across positions and within any one position. 

Having said that Josh Allen was Rick's QB last season and has the Bombers on top of their division this year and they are also an elite scoring team at the moment (2nd in the league). It's entirely possible that Josh Allen can be this era's Golden Ticket and if so, he's worth a first round pick no matter what the experts say.

Other stuff.. the good news is we are done with early Sunday (London) games for a few weeks thankfully. The next one has the Jags playing their annual overseas contest in Week 8 I think. BTW..why the hell don't the Jags just move to England and be done with it?... The bad news is we begin bye weeks (as if I didn't have enough trouble filling out a lineup of guys who are not on crutches)... 

Weirdness Abounds... The Sticks are 0-5 but second in their division in scoring... the Legends have had 625 points scored against them. That's at least 90 more than every team except the Sticks. It's just shy of 200 more than have been scored against the Blizzard!..btw, we are fresh out of unbeaten teams now that the Flyers and Bliz lost. Which reminds me..I pay for a newsletter/weekly advice and then I completely ignore the advice. Had I taken the adice to heart and started Geno Smith and Travis Etiene I'd still be undefeated.. I'm just not smart I think.

Let's go back in time for a live performance of a masterpiece from a musical genius, Steve Winwood and Traffic.  

 

 

 And what has become a weekly tradition..my cutie!

 

Disclaimer: No child was hurt in the making of this video!

Some Days You're The Nail...

 ...and some days you're the hammer! Hell, some days you can't even tell which you are.

Well, that was...umm...interesting. Where to begin? Howsabout with the Lincoln Legends. Thru three weeks they had posted 224 points, total. That's under 75 a game. This week they explode for 169. The Sticks run up 120 in that game and lose! That 120 is a point more than double(!) the Flyers' total (59) and yet the Flyers won! Good lord, fantasy football is a cruel, cruel mistress. Hey Howdy Hey.... the Legends have five of the Top Ten game scores in league history. The Holes (twice), Flyers (twice) and Strawmenn make up the rest of the list. The Legends' 169 this week is tied for 5th best all time and is two points shy of the team record of 171 set in 2019.

More weirdness...Only two teams scored under 90 this week. And those two played each other. I should be embarrassed by a winning total of 59 over the Nats' 54 but fuck it, I've had my share of screw jobs in 42+ years in this league. I'll take and move on. 

I'm trying to find out if: A) 59 is the lowest winning score in the 'modern' (performance scoring) era, and B) if we've had so many 90+ scores in a week previously, and C) if a team has ever won with four starters scoring two points or less. I suspect the answer to all three is 'Yes' but I'm having issues with previous seasons' webpages. I think it has to do with the inaccessibility of the files I had on the old web storage site. I'll get it straightened out.

More Random Number Crap: The Bombers hit 143 this week and yet weren't close to being the high scoring team. BTW..they are the highest scoring team so far in 2022. Yup, Tight Ends Inc.©  is at the top of the points chart.... that 59-54 Flyers-Nats game...the two lowest totals of the year across all teams. It is not the lowest total of the performance scoring era (2004 and onward) however. It's not even close. The record for fewest points by both teams in a game is 73 which was hit twice. In 2006 the Bliz beat the Strawmenn 49-24! In 2008 the Flyers beat the Nats 38-35. So me and Dan have a shitty score history. LOL... It's worth noting that back then there were seven player lineups and no PPG. But still, those are lousy scores....

Webpage Blues...I'm pretty much fed up with issues on our league site. The majority of the problems stem from conflicts between my customization and MFL's back end changes. Other snags  are the result of me having to make a new account at the web hosting site. But, whatever it is that's behind them, the issues are pretty annoying. I may just go with a bare bones site next year or change platforms completely. I'm tired of spending time with this stuff.

Haven't heard any Merle Haggard lately so here he is with Tammy Wynette doing Today I Started Loving Again, a terrific song.

You know who doesn't care about your running back troubles? This sweet little pixie!

Wack Job Plus Music...and Ellis

NOTE: As of about Midnight on Wednesday night, I have found a way around the problem. Hopefully it won't reoccur anytime soon. My favorite module is back on the home page! The section below is no longer valid but I'll leave it up.

Tech Stuff... I've always keep those historical/numbers spreadsheets (All Time W/L, etc) on a free site. Been there for years with few issues. So Tuesday night I get an email that said I was going to lose my EHFL files due to 600000+ visits in a day on the server where I store them. LOL Even with Rick popping in to look for rules loopholes every day I doubt those things have ever been accessed a ten times in a week!

Long story short...I upgraded to their paid level ($2 a month, two year commitment) but it was too complicated so I got refunded and am currently looking at other free hosting sites. It's not like I'm looking to build an international conglomerate's network. I have like a dozen shitty little HTML files. LOL I'll get it figured out and then get the EHFL Links module up and running. 

I figured I'd have an easy year.. no keeper values, automated draft slot assignment, etc. And all those things were fine. But then last week MFL made some changes on the back-end and most of the scripts I use to enhance the site suddenly broke. That was fixed and now this. Jeez.

Football Stuff... Three weeks in and things are sorting out. I mean nobody has anything in the bag and nobody is out of it, but you can start to see who are the likely contenders for the Hughes Bowl. The bye weeks will seperate the wheat from the chaff (which was going to be the title to this post until last night happened). I think the Flyers are going to be a petri dish for navigating the year with lame-ass quarterback numbers. Not my first time, won't be the last... On a related note: I poked around my usual FF sites last week and all of them advised benching Aaron Rodgers for Mac Jones. ALL OF THEM! That's one of those "I can't do it...I know it's smart, but I can't do it" sort of situations. I mean he's just aaron rodgers at this point, a JAG for sure, but it wasn't very long ago he was AARON F'ING RODGERS! End result...Jones outscored him. Lucky I didn't lose my game because of it.

Other Stuff... How about a little Ike music. Back to the UH dorms circa 1971 we go!!

And the beautiful Birthday Girl!!

 

Assorted Random Stuff For Week Two

 

Just stuff crossing my mind... I didn't get to watch much Week One action but I had RedZone on for most of this past Sunday and it was just frigging crazy! Even in that late window with just a few games going on Scott Hanson could barely keep up with the goings on. I don't think I've seen a 'quad box' on RedZone before but as the first games would down they had four different games with big plays happening at once. 

We had a taste of that ourselves on Monday night. Josh Allen pushed the Bombers past the Pirates but with Dalvin Cook going in the 'second' MNF game you'd think a small lead wasn't safe for Bobby. But Cook came up small and the Bombers got a one point win...meanwhile I figured I'd get passed by the Rbacks with Justin Jefferson going in that late MNF game but he was smothered all night and his 12 targets didn't add up to nearly enough points for David. Had me up watching until the last minute for sure...none of our other games were particularly close.

Speaking of me...I'm either way out of touch when it comes to waiver prices or some of you are! LOL My bids got CRUSHED last week. Maybe that was for the best... We've got four 2-0 teams, four 1-1 teams and four 0-2 teams. I still don't see anyone emerging as a heavy favorite for the title right now.

 

You probably saw my email from earlier this evening. I'm trying to track down a site issue that crashes the front page scoreboard when a team is clicked. Doing that is supposed to bring up a popup of that team's scoring. It works sporadically, some team 'clicks' crash it, others don't. Changing the settings to have it appear at the top of every page fixes it but I don't like having it set up that way.

I can 'clone' our league and work on things but I don't always remember to delete the owners email addys from the clone league so odd stuff may get sent out. Bear with me. I'm likely going to end up stripping out some functionality from our site to speed things up. The guy who writes most of the scripts that provide whistles and bells (like that scoreboard) said our site is very slow to load compared to some others.

I'll try to get things squared away this week. 

And finally...

Guess who is turning a year old on Wednesday, September 21st? That's right, this adorable little pixie!

 

 

 It's hard to believe it's been a year since she arrived. How did I live without her?

 Feel free to wish her the happiest of birthdays!

 

 

Weekly Waiver Timeline

 This may help anyone who had an issue understanding our weekly waiver sessions. Or maybe it won't. 

Hey, how 'bout a little Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler? Okay? Okay!

Week One Is Done

 

Okay, so we have Week One of 2022 in the books and it's time for my annual 'You're Not As Good (or as bad) As You Think You Are After One Week' warning. Maybe that should be my next statistical rabbit hole...how many teams have had a big first week and then gone on to win the title. Or the opposite.

Patterns will emerge over the next few games but one thing we are already seeing is a bunch of injuries. When I saw Dak Prescott go off with his hand injury I was thinking 'man, he sure is injury prone!'. But I looked it up. Other than his 2020 injury he's played every game of every season he's been the Cowboys' starter. ¯\_㋡_/¯

Monday Report-- If you checked into the league site yesterday (and why wouldn't you?) you might have seen the Monday Report module front and center. Each Monday it'll be there with a summary of our games and you can see where every game stands going into MNF. Best part of it is that it goes away on Tuesday and I don't have to do a thing.

Myfantasyleague Apps-- Last week one owner had an issue making a waiver move using his phone. It wasn't letting him sign into the league. My suggestion to everyone is to use one of the two available apps. Search your app store for "my fantasy league" and you should come across MFL Mobile 2020* and MFL Platinum. Both work equally well and allow you to submit lineups, place bids, etc. There is a third app, MFL Lite but while it's looks really nice I have yet to figure out how to submit a lineup with it. I suspect it is simply scraping the league pages for info (rosters, schedule, etc) and doesn't have any real interaction with the system. 

*=it uses 2020 in the app name but it works perfectly fine for 2022.

MFL Manager-- Here's a neat thing to use if you have teams in more than one MFL league. Using the URL below you will (once you've logged in with your MFL username and password) go to a page with your leagues listed.:

Click 'My Scoreboard' at the top and you'll see all your games:

Clicking your team brings up this menu with links to all the owner tools you likely need. You can move the blocks around to suit your preference as well. Just use the edit (pencil) icon at the upper right.

Go to this page, log in, and save the site to your toolbar or bookmark bar/bookmarks.

 https://www63.myfantasyleague.com/2022/home/19048

That's it for now. Remember that waivers are currently in our first blind bidding session of the year. They will process Wednesday night. Thursday morning begins 'open' waivers with a cost of $5 a player. That runs through the noon (Central) kickoffs on Sunday. 

 That's it for this week. Next week is special because someone is having her first birthday!

 

 

Random Crap Being Random

 

We are one game into Week One of 2022 and I thought I'd toss a few things up on the blog while they are still fresh in my mind. Some may have been already sent in emails but this is where I come to reference what I've said, so here we go....

--Most teams took advantage of the Open Waiver window and added a final player to their roster. Some (like me) made additional moves. We are now done with waivers until the Blind Bidding session now in place is processed next Wednesday night. You can put in bids now. Our 'normal' waiver schedule begins next week.

--I spent a few minutes this morning looking at a few dedicated fantasy football draft clients. I found a couple others in addition to the one I linked to last week in that email. None are perfect but they still seem better than the MFL Draft Room. The one I linked to is the best looking and easiest to use I think but it doesn't have a chat feature which I believe is important for what we do. It also requires a little bit of extra work for the remote drafters but that's not very difficult. The other two have both good and bad points. But I have a whole year to come up with something. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of using ESPN or NFL.com, etc. Then just 'back-loading' our rosters into MFL. We'll see.

--I generally ignored the league website all summer and have only recently put back into place the in-season modules. I'm still moving them around so you may not see something in the place you're used to. 

--Clarification on the dedicated TE spot for next year. If we go that route we will still have 8-man lineups and continue to use the flex slot,

Our lineup requirements would go from this:

Total Starters:          8
Number of Starting QBs:               1
Number of Starting RBs:             2-3
Number of Starting WR+TEs:    3-4
Number of Starting PKs:                1

Total Starters:          8
Number of Starting QBs:              1
Number of Starting RBs:            2-3
Number of Starting WRs:           2-3
Number of Starting TEs:            1-2
Number of Starting PKs:               1 

In other words you'd start a QB and a kicker, two RBs, two WRs, a TE plus an additional player who could be an RB, WR or TE. And I've even given some thought to doing away with the kicker slot. But that might be just too radical?!?

I'm planning to return here next week with a Week One summary and more nonsense. 

Meanwhile, enjoy a pic of........

My Little Pixie ©