Week Two

 

Welcome to the Week Two postmortem. It was a fairly interesting week as we began to see trends emerge and teams either recover from Week One disappointment or dig themselves into deeper holes. More on that in a bit but first...

The Case Of The Missing Lineup

We had a lineup snafu this past weekend so it's a good time to review how I handle situations like that. If you go to the Rules page (linked here) and scroll to the 'Positions' paragraph you will see the regulation covering these situations. It says I will fill in a lineup for any owner who has an emergency using the recommendations on Fantasy Sharks' page. 

We haven't had a team play without a lineup since early in our first season. As a commish, I really don't want that to happen again if I can help it. If I see that you have not turned in a lineup once the early Sunday block begins I will assume you have an emergency and do it for you. I don't know if Fantasy Sharks is good or bad but I do know they are tied to MFL so a suggested optimal lineup is just a click away.

Having said all that, keep these things in mind...

-I don't spend time with league stuff (or the NFL for that matter) on Sundays the way I used to. I will check my game using an app but I may not see a missing lineup right away. I believe it was close to halftime before I saw the issue on Sunday. 

-I will make attempts to reach you before I jump in. And this is where I screwed up on Sunday. I was trying to text the owner using an old phone number. I have the correct one (I even had a text conversation with him a week ago!) but I was out and about and none of that clicked with me until an hour had passed. 

-If you are on the other end of this situation, i.e. the opposing owner, keep in mind I'm trying to make things work. There isn't much on the line in the Hughes League and we're just having fun. A shout-out goes to the owner on the other side of Sunday's deal who had no problem with losing what could have been a 'walkover'.

Site Stuff:

• The Live Scoring page should be working as expected. I had the 'scoreboard' graphic linked to last year's site for a bit during Week One.
• The useful in-season modules like the Monday Report, Team Sked, Lineup Submission,  and Current Waiver Claims have been restored to the front page of the site. I tinker with these from time to time so if you don't see what you're looking for just check around.
• In the EHFL Links module, I replaced the First Hughes News with the listing of all Hughes Bowl-winning team lineups. I need to clean that one up a bit but I enjoy that sort of stuff.
• I'm going to try and get to a waiver bidding 'explainer' at some point in the next few weeks. Haven't had the time recently. 

And now a bit about Week Two:

Things always come into focus a bit after two weeks. These are some random observations of mine (your mileage may vary)... the Scofield clan is undefeated and the guys have the two top-scoring teams at this early juncture. Saltwater Power!... if David didn't have bad luck he wouldn't have any luck at all... although McCaffery going on IR isn't the most shocking thing to ever happen... Speaking of bad luck, the Legends lost their tight end (Evan Engram) with a warmup injury that wasn't announced until nearly game time (if at all). With any warning, James could have swapped in Hunter Henry and had a win... average points per team jumped from 92 in Week 1 to 95 in Week 2. Last season the jump was 21 points(!) from 84 to 105. The Week 2 jump of this year and last breaks a trend going back through at least 2018 of points dropping off in Week 2. I have no idea what to make of it... We had a trade last week. I wish we had more of them although I realize that the inability to include future picks in a deal doesn't help. OTOH.. when you could trade future picks we hardly had any deals either... 

The Stones do Waylon!

The late, great George Carlin and his classic take on Baseball vs Football. Always worth a watch

Someone is having fun!

Here's my grandson, Leo (aka The Prince), from Evanston. He's social media averse but I have permission to post his pics sparingly. 

He was promoted to Junior Firefighter when a fire crew arrived the day my daughter's house had a gas line leak. Leo was damn proud of that sticker! LOL

Week One Done

 

Padilla said it in an email Tuesday morning. I've said it almost annually as long as I've been doing newsletters, and it's a fact of fantasy football life...your team is neither as good nor as bad as it appeared after this past weekend. Unless of course, your last name is Andrews. In that case, you can just flip the f'ing switch. Pass the jelly, you're toast.

The first Blind Bid waiver session concludes tonight. At this point, about an hour before it cycles, I have three guys in the hopper but I have no idea if I did it right and I can only hope I get someone. How pathetic am I? I'm the commish. I made the settings and have no idea how to best put in bids correctly. 

Not much newsworthy happening. So here are some pictures of my granddaughter being silly while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today.

Yup, Comfortably Numb. That's me/

Week One

 A few quick reminders and notes as Week 1 creeps closer...

--First Come First Served waivers will run through Thursday afternoon. Once it ends the next waiver window is a bidding window that will process next Wednesday evening. The League Calendar is your friend.

--There are Thursday and Friday night games this week. I'm not going to post this reminder every week as by now every fantasy player in America is aware of how the NFL schedule works. But I figured I'd kickstart the Weekly Updates with the observation that a team was caught short at least once last season because they failed to turn in a lineup before the Thursday lineup and found themselves in a jam on Sunday.

As I type there are four teams without a lineup and three of them have Thursday players. 

 Other Stuff...

--It dawned on me why the Zoom attendees couldn't see me on Monday night when I first opened the meeting. My laptop had a slider that closes and opens the camera. I had it closed. LOL

--The Saints have now changed Taysom Hill from a QB back to a TE. MFL's policy is that they don't change a player's position once the season starts. I don't know if they consider the season to have started yet but no matter, I've switched him to TE. In these situations, I just try to do what makes sense. This is a rare circumstance and if another one comes up at some point in the future I'll try to use the same logic. 

See ya on the other side of Week One's games. 

The Circle of Life

 

Well, our 45th Annual Hughes League Draft has come and gone. First things first...a big Thanks! goes out to Mike and Lynne for hosting again. Great food and good company made for a fun evening. It was nice having Jim and Rick beaming in from the East Coast. My goal is to have everyone 'live' for a draft. Maybe next year. While sometimes it felt like it was dragging, we went just a shade over three hours which is just about the usual length of our drafts. 

Here is the UH contingent from last night at Mike's. We made James take the photo since he refused to be associated with a school with such a shitty football team. 

We had our usual tech issues, some of which were caused by the fact that many of our owners probably find operating a toaster too advanced. Or don't read my emails. Or both. The rest of the issues stem from me not knowing what I'm doing half the time. But we overcame them all. I thought the PrimeTime Draft application worked well once everyone accessed it :::cough:::Jimmy:::cough::: It's made to be used with a true live draft with everyone in the room and the board shown on a big screen but it works fine in our situation. The only issue I see is that the remote use causes a delay in the selection popping up for everyone. But that isn't a dealbreaker and I think the $25 is money well spent. 

And how about a round of applause for Jack Scofield? He drafted coming directly off a work shift on his ship in the Canary Islands (above*) which was immediately preceded by an air trip from Boston via Atlanta and Madrid. That is dedication! 👏

*=Jack sent me this pic of the view from his ship. I deleted the random Canary Island shot I'd used. 

League Stuff...

---First Come First Served waivers are open as of this morning. It ends Thursday at 5 p.m. Central. At that point, your roster is your roster for the weekend. There is no blind bidding this week. Sidenote... I tried to add my kicker using one of the MFL apps while walking my dog and somehow ended up with a random Steelers wideout. 🙄 That's been rectified. Those phone apps are fine for checking scores and other mundane tasks but doing adds/drops always seems like a risk. YMMV

---It doesn't seem that I should have to explain this at this point but I will anyway...we start the following:

• 1 QB
• 1 RB
• 2 WR
• 1 TE
• 1 K and...
• 2 Flex players who can be any combo of RB/WR/TE.

---Please log into the league and let me know if you have any issues. Here is the link:

https://www47.myfantasyleague.com/2024/home/44355

---Players are locked in or out of lineups once their game kicks off. 

Late edit... I probably shouldn't schedule the FA window for early on a weekday. Working folks (the three of you) are at a disadvantage with that. I don't remember when or why I switched the time (our calendar events generally carry over year-to-year) but I'm sure I had a good reason. I'll try to remember to adjust it next year. 

And Finally...

I think that covers everything. Good Luck to everyone this season. I plan on doing the vast majority of my communication through this news blog. I will email when I post something. You can also check the league site as I post the date of the latest news update under the banner.

Tick, Tick, Tick

 

Quick (and important) note...I plan to rely on this space for keeping everyone informed this season. Doing a post here and then replicating everything in an email has been pretty much a waste of time. I'll use emails (or the league site message board) for personal messages and to let you know something new has been posted here. 

Now then...

As we edge closer to the 45th Hughes season it is time to update everyone on draft details and a few related items, as well as some announcements and reminders. 

1st up...in case you missed it... the draft order was drawn on Tuesday. Per the email sent...

The following draft order was randomly generated for your league:
1 - Rbacks
2 - Strawmenn
3 - Nationals
4 - Heroes
5 - Bombers
6 - Legends
7 - Giants
8 - Sticks
9 - Blizzard
10 - Holes
11 - Pirates
12 - Flyers

Once it was distributed I heard from Rick, one of the owners I mentioned earlier that has a potential Labor Day evening issue. We agreed that switching slots might give him some time to arrive home from his trip so the actual draft board will have the Giants in the #12 slot and the Flyers at #7. I prefer a mid-pack slot anyway so it works for both of us. And now that I think about it there is no reason other teams couldn't swap positions. If you can find a partner, go for it. Just have it done by this weekend and both guys need to contact me. Note that this is for initial draft slots drawn. You can't 'trade' individual rounds or anything of that nature. 

Draft Tidbits

This coming Sunday or Monday I will send the PrimeTime Draft room link to everyone. I kind of poked around it a bit and there isn't anything different that I can see from last season. I do have our team helmets loaded which you see when a pick is made. I'm asking for everyone's patience on draft night. There may be a delay or two along the way. I don't expect major issues but you never know. If anyone else thinks they may have availability issues let me know asap. Thanks. 

No changes at this time in the logistics of the draft. We are still looking at Paz' place in the Heights at 6:30 local time on Labor Day. I'll let you know if I need to push it back a bit. 

Roster and Waiver Things

We will have the roster capped at 17 this season. As we've been doing for the past few years we will have a 16-round draft. The morning after the draft the league is open for First Come, First Served waivers and that's when you can add a 17th player. That window runs through Thursday evening before the NFL openers. There is no other waiver window during that first week. Once the FCFS period ends you can begin bidding on players and those bids will be processed the following Wednesday, September 11. Our regular weekly waiver two-window calendar runs as usual from that point. 

EDIT (Aug 16): If you draft a player on IR, or have second thoughts on a player you grabbed, the FCFS window mentioned is when you can replace him/them. It's not just for adding a 17th player. Note that as of a couple of years ago I no longer reimburse the $5 FCFS waiver money spent in Week 1. When we went from $300 to $350 I figured that was one task I could eliminate from my list. /EDIT

Weekly and yearly player pick-up maximums remain the same as in prior years. Each team begins with $350 with the 2023 Second Season winners having a bonus. FCFS pickups are always $5, and blind waiver bids have a $10 minimum with $1 increments. In the postseason clubs are awarded $10 in extra waiver cash every week they survive. 

We will have two IR slots this year with players having to be officially listed as IR in the NFL to be eligible for one of those slots. 

And so on...

There are no rule changes this season other than the roster reduction (18->17) and IR slot increase (1->2) mentioned over the summer. Rules and regulations are found on the league page. I'll have more info for you as we get closer to the draft. All but two owners have paid for 2024. If you try to use the league message board and can post there you know I have received your payment. Thanks. 

Draft 2024

 

Note...the draft is scheduled for Labor Day evening. 

Burning The Midnight Oil

 

I've had a project in the back of my mind for a while and digging through the archives to find our draft locations prompted me to go ahead and look into it. Pulling up old Hughes News Championship Editions had me stumbling over Dan Marino's name quite a bit. 

I knew he had been the starting QB in six Hughes Bowl-winning lineups and I was curious if anyone else was even in that ballpark. The answer is...yes and no. Here are some random facts I pulled from my research...

1) Among QBs, only Drew Brees has more than two title game-winning starts. He had three. 

2) Four other quarterbacks had two. Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady (both understandable), Rich Gannon (well, Okay), and Jeff Garcia (Jeff Garcia?!?) Yup. 

3) Surprisingly, no running back has ever been penciled into winning Hughes Bowl lineups more than twice. Nine guys have reached two. Marcus Allen, Ricky Watters, Jonathan Taylor, and Pete Johnson are among the bigger names. Ryan Grant isn't, but he made the list.

4) When guys drafted Marino they usually made a point to go after his pals Mark Clayton and Mark Duper. Clayton came along with DM on four title-winning appearances, Duper was on three. Keyshawn Johnson helped three owners bring home the big prize as did the much less heralded Stephone Paige. But one other receiver deserves his own paragraph...

4) Tony Gonzalez, a tight end in a league that hadn't required one for its first 43 seasons, was officially part of four Hughes Bowl championship lineups in addition to being the tiebreaking player whose 24 points propelled the 2004 Nationals over the Giants in the only Hughes Bowl ever to end deadlocked. 

5) The ageless Gary Anderson kicked for the winning side in three Hughes Bowls. A handful of others have done so twice.

I'm still tweaking the data, correcting some spelling errors, and adding better IDs to some players with the same last names. But you can see the work as it stands by going to the league site and clicking Champs Lineups in the EHFL Links module. Or just go here.