And here we go.... after a tumultuous regular season and an...ahem... interesting postseason we find ourselves at Hughes Bowl 42 to cap off our 43rd campaign. Paz' Blizzard, winners of a wildcard 'golden ticket', and Bobby's Bombers, as stealthy as the plane on their helmet, will duke it out in the first Hughes Bowl to not feature the Giants since 2018!
This is the third time these two clubs have met to decide the champion of our league. They faced off in back-to-back Hughes Bowls with the Bombers wrecking the Bliz 114-57 in 2013 and the Blizzard gaining their revenge in 2014, 122-98. I took a quick glance at our HB history and I think this will be the first time that two clubs have opposed each other three times.
Random facts from our record book... the last (only?) time two Wild Card clubs gained the Hughes Bowl was in 2012 when the Giants took on the R'backs (more on this below)... the Blizzard last took part in fantasy football's biggest contest in 2016 when they lost to the Holes... the Bombers last visit to the big stage was the 2014 game versus the Bliz mentioned above... that 2013 win is obviously their last HB victory.
This one and the 2012 Hughes Bowls are, technically at least, the only ones to feature two Wild Card clubs. The first Hughes Bowl (1981) and the third one (1983) were played by two clubs that finished second in their divisions. In those early two division seasons, the division champs and runners-up made up the postseason field. Whether or not the 2nd place clubs should be considered 'wild cards' is up for debate I guess...
This is the seventh Hughes Bowl for the Bombers who have won four times. The Blizzard are looking for their fourth league crown in their ninth Hughes Bowl. Based on regular season scoring (and their respective semi-final showings) the Bombers would have to be considered the favorite but I'm retired from the prediction game. I'll just wish them both good luck.
I'll have a Hughes Bowl wrap-up next week. Included in that blog post or in a separate one shortly afterward I'll have some year-ending thoughts on the league and what the future holds. I also hope to have a league owner meet-up with a trophy presentation early in the new year. Details to come.
Meanwhile...
My sweet pixie wanted NO PART of Santa!
But she had no problem enjoying her treasure trove of gifts.
The Messi picture has nothing to do with our league but I am convinced he's some sort of alien being. I watch him play and I find it hard to believe he's merely human. Same way I felt about Bobby Orr and Roberto Clemente. I hope he gets to raise the World Cup for Argentina! Okay, on to Hughes things...
Before I go any further I need to give a big Ed Hughes cap tip to David. It's been awhile since he had a team like this and he fully deserved a bye in the first round. I wouldn't have blamed him for being upset with my playoff setup decision but he took it with humor and grace. This league has the best damn owners.
Playoff thoughts..... Just random things from conversations with other owners and stuff that occurs to me as the dust settles: And some of it actually pertains to the Hughes League.
Hogan mentioned how things kind of leveled off when we dropped the keepers and everyone had start from scratch. That's very true. It was pretty hard to choose a favorite after the draft. Nowadays everyone has the best intel for drafting and results come down to injuries, the fantasy schedule, lineup mistakes and luck.
I was thinking that a five game win bump was fairly uncommon but we've seen it happen more than I had thought. In digging I noticed that the Pirates improved by 7 wins(!) from 2017 to 2018 and then had a six win bump from '19 to '20. That's a real roller coaster ride.
Be honest.. if I'd have asked you in August to name the top fantasy quarterbacks would you have had Geno Smith at #6, Trevor Lawrence at #7 and Justin Fields at #8? I thought not. Hey, here's a prediction based on absolutely no research, just a hunch...the winner of the Holes-Bombers game wins the Hughes Bowl. Remember who told you first.
I have nothing else for the moment. Good luck to everyone still in the hunt. Remember your tie break guy.
No matter how simple I try to make it, this commish thing continues to jump up and bite me. Looks like I failed to update on the rules page what I intended to change for this year. It says that the sixth playoff qualifier (the one based on points) needs a minimum of six wins. That was fine in our 13 game season days but I thought a seven win minimum would be appropriate in a 14 game season. I brain cramped when I edited this years rules and was so used to having a six win minimum that that's what I typed.
I have no intention of allowing a six-win team knock out an 8 win (or better) club from the post-season. I'll do what needs to be done to avoid that even if it means expanding the playoffs to include more teams. Doing that might require eliminating a bye (or byes) for the top seeds and if that happens it might piss someone off but we shall see. Of course if it's my team that gets bumped I'll take the fall. Whatever.
Next year we will go back to just having wildcards based on records. I've always believed that a really good team with bad scheduling luck shouldn't be punished but I'm not going to go through these shenanigans anymore. Just not worth the effort.
NOTE: After all this time I discovered I had restricted comments to those with Google accounts. I've changed that setting so anyone can comment on how adorable my granddaughter is! Or anything else.
Last year while I was still just contemplating the changes we made for 2022 I never foresaw the scenario we are looking at today. Last week we had SEVEN teams at 5-3 and a couple more at 4-4. We've somehow managed to flip that script and now we are looking at two clubs at 6-3, SEVEN at 5-4.
I've brought in some extra equipment and a few software engineers just in case. Here's a live look-in at League Headquarters as the team runs through it's paces.
This is the second crew I hired, btw. The first guys spent a few days on that machine, walked out to me and said "Fuck it, let's just give Hogan the title and call it a day!" I shit-canned those clowns in a hurry.
Notes and Quotes... Nine weeks down, five to go...and how 'bout those Ridgebacks?!? ... here's something I just now noticed: six of the seven 5-4 teams are 2-1 in their division, both 6-3 teams are as well. That won't help me in the least if things don't change... Screw Kenyon Drake. I picked his ass up twice this year and he was an unfulfilled promise. Padilla nabs him and the guy runs wild on Monday Night. (ツ)╭∩╮
The Blizzard are tied for first in their division but rank 11th in scoring. Interesting, but given how goofy things are at the moment, not too surprising... Worth mentioning that Joe Mixon (in the Sticks' win over the Bombers), outscored the Nationals 52-48…That's the first time a player has outscored a full lineup this year. I need to go back and check the last time it happened. It's pretty rare, the equivalent of a guy shooting his age in golf I'd wager. Rarer still would be a player outscoring his opponent's lineup that week... Mixon and Justin Fields combined for 94(!) points for the Sticks.. That's easily the top one team duo of the season... Mixon's total ties him for second for most points in a game behind Drew Brees' 53 point total in Week 8 of 2015... The $5 FCFS waiver price has made a big difference in waiver cash remaining. Most years we'd have a couple teams down to double digit bank accounts by now.
I meant to include these points last week but I got sidetracked...
#1..I still plan to look really closely at using a dedicated TE as part of the lineup. It's been a shallow position so far this year but even if it remains that way it will throw a wrinkle into draft strategy. "do I jump on a stud TE early? Do I wait for a second level guy a few rounds in? How about just streaming TEs?" And strategy wrinkles are a good thing, IMHO.
#1A..If we add the TE how do we construct lineups? We have 8 spots. QB and Kicker take two. What should we require for the other six? It has to have a minimum of one at each position so QB-RB-WR-TE-K leaves three slots. I tend to think the optimum way would be to require 2 RB, 2 WR and allow one Flex player from the ranks of those same slots.
That would look like this:
1 QB
2/3 RB
2/3 WR
1/2 TE
1 K
An alternate setup could be requiring just one player at each slot and having what amounts to three flex players. Like so:
1 QB
1-4 RB
1-4 WR
1-4 TE
1 K
I'd lean towards the first scenario but I'm open to suggestions.
#2.. One thing I've noticed over the last couple of years is that our 9 pm Wednesday night waivers sometimes don't process in a timely manner most weeks. I believe that 9 Central on Wednesday (10 Eastern) is the most popular time for leagues to schedule waivers. I know the five other leagues i have access to (I served as co-owner for drafting purposes) all have waivers scheduled at that same moment. I'm thinking of moving ours up or back 30 minutes next year. I know one league opted for Tuesday waivers for just this reason. But I like letting everyone have a couple of days to do their due diligence prior to wasting $78 on a guy who had 23 points the previous week and won't score 12 total the rest of the way.
It's really a minor thing but it's one that bugs me every week, even when I'm not bidding.
Don't believe the hype... I'm using Google Chrome again since Firefox seems to have gotten slower and slower for me. No problem with Chrome until I clicked on some of the EHFL Links on the league site that lead to stuff like Playoff Record by Owner, etc, etc. Chrome gives me a red page warning of a "Deceptive Site Ahead". That's just incorrect. There is nothing involved with the site hosting my records documents or the docs themselves that is in any way harmful. To view the records you'll need to click through using the 'Details' button the present and then the last link in that page which allows you to go to the 'unsafe site'. I'm working on a resolution but in the meantime it's perfectly OK to check the pages there.
EDIT..when I checked this morning (Tuesday 11/8) to see if the links still led to a warning page I found the site appears to be down, or at least my files are not accessible. If it's not a temporary glitch I'm going to have to find a better solution.
Another edit... as of late this afternoon things appear to be back to normal with the hosting site. I get the warning page noted above on my phone but not on my desktop computer. but at least the pages are still there. The issue this a.m. must have been some temporary snafu.
A bottle of white..a bottle of red...
Her other grandfather taught her to wrinkle up her nose like this. She thinks it's a riot. 😆
I'm not sure I've ever seen this before...seven, count 'em, SEVEN teams at 5-3. And nobody is any better than that. It's absolute raging mediocrity. The good news is that almost everyone reading this is still in the fight. The bad news is that your team sucks just like the next guy's. Oh, and did I mention that two teams are at 4-4? That means that 9 of 12 of us are at the top or within a game of being at the top of a division. It's like we've played for eight weeks and nobody has left the starting blocks.
If I get some free time this week I'll try to find out if we've ever had a situation like this before. I f'ing doubt it.
Random stuff being random... the Strawmenn and Flyers combined for 284 points this week. That's good for a tie for the sixth-highest game ever. I thought we had a chance to approach the record (306) with Joe Burrow going Monday night but he had a middling game (not that it mattered to Padilla!)... So, do you think scoring is down this season? You'd be correct. Check out this comparison of our weekly scoring through eight weeks of 2021 and 2022:
Over 500 fewer points this year league-wide. I thought that maybe there were fewer early byes last year. Nope, byes started with Week 6 as they did this year. And there had been 12 teams on bye through Week 8 while there have been 10 teams with a week off so far in 2022. So there has been one moreNFL game this year. I have no idea what's behind this downward screwing trend and it'll be interesting to see if it continues. And did you notice? The top four teams so far this year were the bottom four last year through the same number of weeks! And they are in perfectly inverted order. It's a damn harmonic convergence of points (or something).
And btw...that's a really nice Chris Stapleton song at the top of the post. It popped up when I was searching for John Lennon's song of almost the same name and I spun it and liked it.
Look! It's Wario! LOL My baby girl wasn't too thrilled with her cap but I finally convinced her to keep it on for her Halloween fun.
For the full effect here is the family group...Mario, Luigi, and Wario. I have no idea what that means.
Lots going on here at the palatial League HQ so I'm not going to have much of a post.
Had a waivers snafu occur this week which should serve as a cautionary tale for all owners. The Rbacks put in a blind bid claim on Monday for Taylor Heinicke and dropping Matt Ryan as part of the bid. Should have been pretty straightforward. But with no other bidders he was NOT awarded the Washington QB.
Why? It seems that Dave came back on Tuesday and dropped Ryan preemptively. Cutting through all the minute details...the system saw the Heinicke bid but since the 'drop Ryan' part was no longer a possibility (having been dropped already) the bid was tossed as invalid. It didn't matter that Dave had an open slot or that no one else bid in the guy, the bid itself was bounced. At least that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Lucky for David the guy he wanted was available this morning (and for only $5 as opposed to his original bid) and everything turned out for the best. I'm alerting everyone not to pick on Dave (it's an easy mistake to make) but to emphasize the fact that the system is not human and can't interpret your intent. Always double-check your work when it comes to blind bidding, especially if you go back and revise anything (bid amount, player to be dropped, add more bids, switch player priority, etc.)
In a perfect system when Dave went back into the system on Tuesday evening to drop Ryan and add more bids a warning that the Heinicke bid was illegal would have been helpful. But you're pretty much on your own in these things.
Meanwhile...enjoy a little Marshall Tucker Band with the late Toy Caldwell. I saw them a couple of times in Houston at the old Sam Houston Coliseum and they tore the place up. Just a super live band.
And my cutie!
Those vermicelli noodles took 10 minutes to eat and thirty minutes to clean up!
I'd always thought the above quote was uttered by Orioles' lefty Dave McNally but it turns out to be much older. No matter, it certainly applies to fantasy football as much as it does pitching. Want proof? I got bunches of it. Check this out:
That's a screen grab of part of our standings thru six weeks. The Flyers are 5-1, the Sticks are 1-5, a four game difference. Now look at Points For (PF)..the Flyers have scored only TWO more points than the Sticks. Two points over six weeks. Now go to Points Against (PA)...Flyers have had 522.5 scored against them while the Sticks have had to overcome opponents who tossed up 682.5 points. For the math-challenged that's 160 points, almost 27 points per week. Is it any wonder the Sticks are where they are?
The Legends are even worse...they have scored only eight points less than the Flyers but their PA differential is 227! That's THIRTY EIGHT points per week. And on and on it goes. There are two things you can't control in Fantasy Football, the schedule and your opponent's score. Sure you need to draft well, pay attention during the season and submit a 'smart' lineup...but even if you do that there is no guarantee it's going to pay off.
Luck goes both ways. This past week I made what I thought was a really good move. I picked up Deon Jackson of the Colts for $5 when it was announced that Taylor and Hines were both very much long-shots to play. I had him in my starting lineup...or so I thought. He name is written on my scratchpad right here on my desk with a star that means he's 'in'. But apparently I failed to push 'submit' or something because come Sunday I checked the scores and saw he had points on my bench!
Which leads me to the awful Monday Night Football game just past. If you watched (and I can't imagine why you would have, Denver is awful, and boring) you saw Melvin Gordon (my starter) spend most of the game scratching his nose on the bench and Mike Williams (Jack's starter) get shut down almost totally. The result is my three point lead melted to 2.5 at the end of regulation. But the Rams extended the game into tortuous overtime.My lead was down to one when Williams hauled in a pass in overtime. My rookie mistake didn't hurt me due to dumb luck.
This and that... I read somewhere today that fantasy scoring is down 15% so far this season. I don't know about that but it was sure off this past weekend. I guess part of it was the first round of byes. Only two teams scored over 100 points. In the first five weeks we had either six or seven break that barrier every week... no time for much more this week. I'm trying to clean up some past seasons webpages and download the stats I want to keep before this all goes sideways.
The great Neil Finn and Crowded House. A song I never get tired of.
Brooks, one of our former owners, stops by with my pretty little pixie!
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