Playoff Preview '24

 

Oh, So Close...The Fantasy Football gods can be cruel. Alternate view...Fantasy Karma can be a Bitch. Either way, I end up with the same outcome: The Flyers miss the division title by 0.24, a quarter of a point and land the #4 seed instead of a Bye. A quarter of a point. That's not even one catch over the course of the season. Oh, well. 

It was a rather entertaining weekend despite all six playoff teams having been determined. In the Lombardi the Bombers put up 146 points but had to sweat out: 1) the Legends crawling back into the game on Monday night and falling just five points shy of a major upset, and 2) the Flyers almost reclaiming in the closing moments on Monday night the total points lead they had held almost the whole season. Meanwhile, I was at a concert and missed almost all the 'fun'. 

The Blizzard claimed the Kuhlmann crown by beating the Pirates to split their two matchups and scored more than enough points to pass the Pirates for first place. 

The Nationals took care of business and waltzed past the Holes for the top spot in the Barenholtz and were rewarded with a Bye as the #2 seed. 

So the Wildcard games look like this:

#3 Blizzard (8-6  100.7 PPG)      vs      #6 Pirates (8-6 98.6 PPG) 

This will be the third 2024 meeting of these two Kuhlmann Division rivals. They split those two division games. As mentioned above the Bliz closed the season beating Jack's crew. They are coming off their best scoring week while Portland finished the year with their second-worst. But Week 14 byes played a part in every game so we start fresh with Week 15. 

Jack is 1-1 in Wildcard games. Mike is 5-5. The two clubs have never met in the playoffs before this upcoming game. 

#4 Flyers  (10-4 110.0 PPG)     vs      #5 Holes (9-5 102.9 PPG)

The Holes downed the Flyers in Week 11 which was just about the time Baltimore was starting its descent into mediocrity. Jim is 5-5 in wildcards while the Flyers' 1-8 mark should tell you all you need to know about why I was anxious to get that &%(*@#ing bye. 

The last time the Holes and Flyers met in the playoffs was the 2018 Hughes Bowl. James was at the Flyers' helm that season while I was only playing commish. That matchup was won by the Holes. 

This is the fifth playoff matchup of these two teams in our history. Here are all the previous results:

         

A combination of events led to the Rbacks not having a Week 14 lineup in the system. I was doing family things this past Sunday and didn't look at the site other than to check my score on the app. I noticed the issue pretty late on Sunday night after the SNF game was over. Luckily the game involved (Rbacks-Giants) had no playoff implications. That's pretty unusual for a Week 14 game, usually every game means something to some extent.

Had the game 'meant' something I'd have had a crisis to deal with. As it is I only had to deal with how to resolve the game itself. Two things are given, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Zero scores mess with my stats/records and nobody loves their league stats more than me. Therefore I won't let a zero score stand. This leads us to 'Given' #2:

2) No team without a lineup should ever win a game. 

With that in mind I did the following... set a lineup for the Rbacks. The team had pretty narrow guardrails with no active TE and several players hurt or on byes. My goal was to set a lineup that would score less than the Giants without using bye/injured players. With the Giants scoring under 60 points that goal was out the window. So today I went back and started the Rbacks' most logical lineup of active players (w/o a TE) and let that total stand. But I went into the system and changed the two reams' result, i.e. gave the Giants a win and the Rbacks a loss overriding to actual scores. 

I had talked to a few owners not directly involved and they had no issues with the plan. I also talked to Rick and he was more than willing to take the loss without any adjustment but that wouldn't fly (see Given #2 above).

Hey, as Padilla reminded me, life gets in the way of Fantasy sometimes (as it certainly should). And when it does I can always step in and fix things. It's why you guys pay me to do this. But I will also try to keep things from popping up that lead to me making arbitrary decisions. Next season I may, at least later in the year, turn on the Thursday morning lineup option. It's just a safety net that would keep stuff like this from happening.  

Finally...

I have decided that the consolation bracket wasn't such a great idea. I'll rethink it and maybe restructure it and if I like it I'll have it in place for next year, not as a last-minute gimmick announced without much thought. 

See ya back here next week for the Semifinals. 

Oh, Amy!  

Week 13 Update

 

 WEDNESDAY UPDATE!!!

I've decided that due to how the standings have played out this year I'd set up a consolation playoff bracket. The six teams not playing for the Hughes Bowl will play for a to-be-determined waiver cash prize(s). I'll seed the bracket the same way as the HB bracket. The difference is that the Consolation Bracket teams will NOT have waivers. You'll go with what you have on your roster as of the end of the season.

Two points: 1) The HB bracket will have a $$$ prize that mirrors the Consolation Bracket and 2) waivers for the non-HB hopefuls end Saturday so if you are in that group make plans for the postseason.

Last thing...I will set the Consolation Bracket teams to have their lineups filled automatically on Thursday mornings. I figure some of you may not want to be active in this. But you can override the automatic lineups or, if you wish, I can turn that feature off for you and you can fill lineups as normal.

EDIT..I'm thinking $30 waiver cash for the Hughes Bowl win, and $20 for the Conso Bowl winner.  Do we give something to the runners-up? Half the winners share? Nada? I'm all ears.

After I posted the Hughes News late Monday night (scroll down to read it first) I stayed up even later digging through past seasons. As best I can tell we have never had, at least in the three-division era going back to the 80s, a season where the following were true:

• All divisions were still up for grabs with a week still to play
• All playoff teams were known with a week still to play

It would take far more research than I'm willing to do but I'm pretty sure the 2024 season is unique in that regard. Having two qualifiers from each division isn't unusual (it's happened the past two seasons) but it satisfies my sense of...ummm... symmetry. 

BTW...does anyone have an opinion on the proper protocol? Is it...

1. WildCard
2. Wildcard
3. Wild Card
4. wild card
5. wildcard

😐 I've used all five (sometimes in the same newsletter)! Vote by number in the comments. Thanks! 

Other quick observations:

The Nats have made the playoffs after being on the outside looking in for the past three seasons. The Flyers' drought is snapped after two seasons. The other four clubs made the playoffs in 2022, 2023, or both (the Bombers)... a WildCard team has won three of the last four Hughes titles so the 'advantage' of getting a bye has not held true recently... Portland is the only team with a chance to capture back-to-back division crowns. Neither the Legends nor Strawmenn made the cut... you need to go back to 1994 to find a season where the league's 'best' record was achieved by a team with less than nine wins. The Heroes and Bullies (Rbacks) both went 8-4-1 that season. That streak remains intact... Since tied games are very, very rare in this era of decimal scoring we will have at least one double-digit win club for the fourth straight year. 

Research Corner:

I'm not sure what to make of the Lineup Configuration research but I started it and I feel like I need to continue it. Anyway, here's the latest. 

Reminders:

Playoff teams receive $10 in waiver funds each week during the postseason... the waiver schedule changes in the postseason, check the calendar... the trade deadline is Saturday. I go back and forth on moving the deadline back to where it used to be i.e. earlier in the season. But we've never had a trade that even hinted at collusion so I'm not going to concern myself with the deadline at this point. 

Gary Allan Video Dump. 

I've been saving this one for quite a while, it's a great farewell song. If you ever see it here again, you'll know. 😜

Almost There

 

Man, how annoying is that GIF? LOL, But it does a good job pointing out that we are at Week 14 of our 45th season. And there are still spots to be filled. 

That was a wild and fun Monday Night game. In the Hughes we had two come-from-behind wins to cement shots at division titles (although neither the Holes nor the Bombers had all that far to come back from going into the game). For a bit there it seemed like Nick Chubb had gone on break and I'm guessing he had Jimmy sweating. The game was so entertaining I was almost able to block out Troy Aikman. Almost. That fucker NEVER shuts up. Jeez. 

Oh, before I forget...

• The Trade Deadline is this Saturday, December 7 at 5 p.m. Central time. 
• I'm working on the lineup submission form/page. Let me know if you have any issues with it.
• If you get a message or warning when you click on one of the EHFL Links pages you can ignore it. The site hosting those pages is not harmful.

Okay, back to the things at stake this weekend. First of all, we know the six playoff teams. The Bombers, Flyers, Pirates, Blizzard, Nationals, and Holes are in. Period. No other team can get a Wild Card much less a division title. Things have played out so that each division will have a Wild Card qualifier. Let's look at each division and see what's possible.

Lombardi: The Bombers and Flyers are both 9-4 and split their two meetings. If both win or both lose the division goes to the team with the highest-scoring season. The Flyers hold a 29.14 point lead currently.

Kuhlmann: Portland is 8-5, the Bliz are 7-6. Portland won the Week One matchup and take the division with a win this weekend. A Blizzard win sends this division to the points-scored tiebreak. Portland leads in points scored by 33.74 through 13 weeks.

Barenholtz: The Nationals and Holes are 9-4. They meet this week with the winner taking the division.

Note that the point margins shown above are unofficial as I tabulated them as the final gun went off on Monday night. Sometimes that get tweaked overnight. 

Tiebreak reminders... In all cases head-to-head is the first tiebreak with points scored in all games (PPG) the second tiebreak. I haven't given any thought to how the seeds will fall given the weekend possibilities but there isn't any way for the Blizzard to get a bye (the #1 or #2 seed). They'd be #3 as Kuhlmann champs and #6 as Kuhlmann runner-ups since the other wildcards would have nine wins minimum. 

Here's a quick and dirty list of the other teams' head-to-head wins and losses for determining seeds:

Flyers beat Portland, lost to Nats and Holes

Bombers beat Nats, lost to Pirates and Holes 

Pirates beat Bombers, lost to Nats, Holes and Flyers

Holes beat Bombers, Flyers and Pirates

Nats beat Pirates and Flyers, lost to Bombers

That's all I have for the moment. I might post something later in the week. 

Acoustic Foreigner  (out of leftfield I know) 

Chris Stapleton (This and the one at the bottom are great Willie Nelson covers)

Merle

Chris Stapleton and his wife and the great Dwight Yoakam

Semi Random Thinking

Semi Random Thinking (whatever that means)... I know my goal is to make this commish thing as easy as possible (and I've mostly succeeded) but that doesn't mean I don't think about how it can be tweaked. The bit of work I did last week with bye-week scoring got me thinking. What if I shook up our schedule and moved our season-ending division games off the 6-team bye weeks? Those division games are usually crucial to playoff hopes and if teams can have access to more of their rosters, why not?

It would mean I'd hold off on finalizing our schedule until the NFL releases theirs but that usually occurs around their draft week so it wouldn't be a big deal. The NFL has moved those six-team bye weeks around over the years. This year they come up in weeks 12 & 14 which sucks.

What I'd do is place our division games as close to the end of our season as I could with a priority of using 0-team bye weeks, then 2-team bye weeks, and so on. I'd have a guideline that our division games would run in the last five weeks of the season. Then I'd place them in the schedule according to that 0-2-4-6 priority I just mentioned. 

The idea is food for thought. It may not be worth the little effort it entails but it's a tweak that might be worth kicking around. Ending our regular season with the division game block is a longstanding tradition and god knows I dig tradition. But we've blown up more than a few league traditions in the last decade and we're still standing.: :shrug:: I would appreciate your thoughts. 

TE Fever.. speaking of traditions, when we added a dedicated TE slot I figured it would alter roster strategy a bit. And it has. Has anyone else noticed how many TE moves we've been making? Seems like a research project in the making.

And finally... if the playoffs started this week the Nats(#1) and Flyers(#2) would be the teams with byes,  The Pirates would be seeded #3, and the Holes, Bombers, and Blizzard would be the Wild Cards.  Tiebreaks for division rankings are head-to-head followed by PPG, Division record, PPG in Division games. You can see all the tiebreak procedures here. 

We are on grandparent duty so that is all I have time for this week. 

And some Dylan plus Clapton. Dylan never sings a song the same way twice. 

Finally for this week...my favorite singer is doing my favorite song. 

Things I think I think

 

Randomness in a string... I think we are at a sweet spot regarding roster size. 17 players, given the parameters of our lineup configurations and the way bye weeks are running in the NFL, seem right to me. I haven't checked on the number of waiver pickups but I'd be willing to bet we are ahead of prior seasons. Some of that is due to injuries no doubt. But I feel like there is more talent on the open market. More claims = more fun as far as I'm concerned.

Another factor in the number of claims is that more teams are still in the hunt than is normally the case. I'm typing this before Week 11 is done but looking at the standings thru 10 weeks compared to last season is eye-opening. We have two teams more than three games off the division lead. In 2023 we had five. 

League Things... 'Live by Thursday Night, Die by Thursday Night' I turned on the Philly-Washington game and Jimmy O had 15 points against me with his two players. The game was winding down so I went to bed feeling pretty good. Wake up Friday morning and the holes have 33 points. Apparently, while I was sleeping, Barkley ran for 900 yards and two TDs in a couple of seconds. Oh well. 

In poker, they say "All you need is a chip and a chair." In the Hughes League, you need four wins and the division games coming up. Three teams in the last two seasons have made the playoffs with 7-7 records. 

Things I Thought I Thought... But It Appears Was Wrong About...  I looked back over the past four seasons (2021-2024 to date) and checked how bye weeks affected scoring. The chart below (you'll need to click to enlarge) is fairly self-explanatory. I'm trying to figure out what to make of it. For simplicity, all scores and scoring averages are rounded to the nearest whole number. Make of it what you will. 

Finders Keepers

 

This and That... I had a couple of discussions last week about Keepers—well, one discussion and one passing mention. Here's the deal. I can't see going back to a 'keeper' system. I'm fine with redrafting... it's simpler and less work. I liked our previous systems but any kind of keeper deal inherently makes it harder to bounce back from a bad run.

Also, you can't switch to keepers without a year's notice. IOW you have to draft with the knowledge that you could keep these guys for the future. And we didn't do that this year. The bottom line is that we are unlikely to change anything significant anytime soon.

I tried to update the lineup data (linked in the EHFL Links module) with 2024 data. I was thinking of doing an update each week to view throughout the season. I also wanted to clean up some misspelled names on the Hughes Bowl Champs Lineup page. But the hosting site for these files is quirky. Reliable, but quirky. I gave up on the idea but had problems restoring the old files. I think they are all in place but I can't guarantee it. That's what I get for not leaving well enough alone. 

My big crusade over the last few years has been to try and make things easier on myself. Another epic failure on my part. LOL

UPDATE... Looks like the original files are in place but I *think* that is not the latest Rules page. No big deal because nothing has been changed since I last updated it in the off-season. 

That Thursday Game... We were out and about Thursday Night and I only saw the last drive of the Ravens-Bengals game. I tend to forget Thursday night games and I didn't check the numbers until I turned on the game. As the Bengals drove down the field I thought it would be funny if Burrow threw one more to Chase. And damned if he didn't. Oh, and the Bengals got jobbed on the two-point try but that's neither here nor there. 

Friday morning, me being me, I checked to see if anyone had ever lost a game with a 50-point scorer in his lineup. (OK, Chase had 49.90 but let's not quibble over 0.1 points.) The answer is 'no'. I did uncover a couple of interesting facts. In 2018 Drew Brees scored 53 points for the Blizzard (still the points record) and they beat the Holes. In that Week 8 game Jimmy had THREE 30+ scorers and the final was 155-151 Bliz! Jimmy's 151 total was the second-highest score for the season. That's hard to fathom. 

Here's the relevant segment of the November 6, 2015 edition of The Hughes News (WordPress Edition) that discusses that game:

Now that I’m not an owner* (being an unpaid team consultant has it’s rewards) it’s easy for me to look at the sometimes crazy situations brought about by the quirks and heartaches of fantasy sports and, well, not laugh exactly, but think ‘Better you than me, Bro’.

Case One: Week Six, Giants versus Bombers. On the surface a low scoring but otherwise routine 59-54 win for the Bombers. But take a closer look. The Giants got 22 from Ryan Tannehill but the rest of the starters were in single digits. That’s not easy in a PPR league. But checking the bench tells a different tale. Each available bench player (Matt Cassell was on bye) outscored the starters at their spot. Rick had 157 points on his bench and a Potential score of 142 points. Had both teams played their best lineups the Giants win 142-70. Dude.

Case Two: Week Eight, Blizzard versus Holes. Holes score 151 points which sets a team record. It’s five points higher than their previous best of 146 that they scored in Week 7. And they lost. 151 points and they f’ing lost! The Bliz also used that game to set a team record and scored 155. So the Holes score 297 points in a span of about 8 days and come out of it with a 1-1 record.! Better you than me, Jimmy.

That game, by the way, is the highest scoring game in history. The 306 combined points eclipsed the previous record of 299 set in Week Three’s Blizzard versus Strawmenn game.

*= At the time James was running the Flyers day-to-day. My job was to second-guess him. 

Chase's Thursday night performance, under our previous 'full PPR' scoring, would have been a 55-point night and set the all-time Hughes record. As it stands his is the top receiver score in our history. Counterpoint: If Tee Higgins plays there is no way Chase has that much volume. I guess I finally got some benefit from the Year Of The Limping Wideout. 

Probably a good thing, too, because the rest of my crew was rather mediocre. Chase has a 'normal' game and it is a nervous Sunday Night. 

League State... Wins across the board for the Lombardi guys. All hands, even the Legends, are still on deck there. Quick research note: the team that posted (or tied for) the best regular season record has won the Hughes Bowl 13 times in 43 seasons. That is barely 30%. Ask me again why I'm not feeling very confident... looking at the Barenholtz and Kuhlmann there is only one team (the Strawmenn) more than one game away from first place. Every time I've thought a certain team was a 'sure bet' to be the leading title contender they've fallen off the pace. 

One more week before we begin to navigate the second round of division games. I have a feeling I won't have the energy to 

Random thought: The Week 14 byes will play a big factor in who advances to the playoffs and where they land. 

Lineup & Opponents Power Rank Data Update: Through 10 weeks here is the breakdown...

   RB-WR-TE          W-L       PPG

• 1-4-1                 9-5         97.4
• 1-3-1                 0-1         83.0
• 2-2-2                0-4         88.8
• 2-3-1               32-32       99.9
• 3-2-1               19-17       94.4

No team has used 1rb 2wr 3te configuration in the two years we have had the 2 Flex player option. Although I did give it some thought a few weeks back. 

Here is the updated Power Rank for the teams you face down the stretch. Click to expand.

Throwback Week!

Throwback Week!

Whistling Past The Graveyard

 

Alternate Title: "I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good!"

-Dave McNally (and a few others)

It's pretty easy to ignore your team's issues when you win. But when you win with a half-ass total and a bunch of luck you become aware that a shiny record doesn't mean all that much. I'll leave it at that for now. 

(Editor's Note...I typed that last night when it appeared I would slide by with a score in the low 70s. Turns out some late action made the point moot in my case but it still applies as a general fantasy football axiom. Dave will agree as noted below.)

Stuff: I had an idea as I was walking James' dog the other morning. How about finding out every team's strength of schedule for the remainder of the season? I put together a spreadsheet that averages the Power Rank of each club's remaining opponents. 

The MFL system provides two different Power Rank lists but I stuck with the primary one. (You can see their formula here.)Once upon a time, I had my own PR system that I posted in the Hughes News Stat Sheet. It was back in our TD-only scoring days. I know a couple of factors were wins, scoring above or below the League Average, and a few other variables that I can't remember. I need to go back through my archives and dig that up. 

First of all, here is the Power Rank explainer from MFL (click to enlarge, then hit your back button to return):

And here is the current Strength of Schedule for each team for the rest of 2024 (click to enlarge then hit your back button to return). 

It's not sorted in any order besides being grouped by division. And, to be honest, it probably has no real meaning other than to satisfy my curiosity. Bear in mind that a lot of values used to make the PR are influenced by bye weeks. And it doesn't consider players coming and going from injuries. For example, Chris McCaffery, the #1 pick, will be available for the Rbacks soon, maybe this week (until he has another hangnail 🙄). 

So make of that what you will.

League doings and things like that: Speaking of the Rbacks...they probably had their season saved when the MNF game was tied as regulation time dwindled away last night. They were behind the Heroes but the OT gave Kareem Hunt that chance at a TD and he came through for Dave. Falling to 3-6 would have put a crimp in any shot at the playoffs for that bunch...the wide receiver carnage continues unabated...looks like I should have held on to Cade Otten. He's acting like the second coming of John Mackey. Then again, if the Bucs weren't reduced to recruiting wideouts from the stands he wouldn't be all that.

We again have a bit of separation in a couple of divisions as the Lombardi clubs trailing the Flyers fall a game further back. The Pirates broke their losing streak and they and the Bliz are destined for a battle in the remaining weeks. The Giants are 5-4 and just a game back in the Barenholtz despite being last in points scored. Then again they have had the second fewest points scored against them.

The fewest wins by a defending Hughes champ is four, last 'achieved' by the 2007 Sticks. The Strawmenn have a chance to set the new standard. Somewhere on this computer, I have a copy of Fantasy Pros post-draft League Analyser results which had Padilla's crew third IIRC. Just goes to show ya, well, something... I checked scoring versus last season and this year's average team total points is about five points per team higher. I also noticed that the Legends were leading the league in points thru Week 9 of 2023. Redrafting makes results more volatile year-to-year for sure. 

That's all I got. Here are a few tunes I really enjoy. And a few pics of a cutie!

Ellis does library time when she's here with us on Wednesdays. Last week there was a set of twin boys there, Easton and Weston. I kid you not!

Yes, she wears 4th of July dresses in October.