Sunday, November 29, 2015

One Week Left

So this was a crazy week with a lot of close scores. Here are the current playoff scenarios with 4 of the games final, and the other 2 basically being done.

Kyle will stay in first place after this week.  He will have a one game lead over everyone and even if he loses next week, he should likely get the bye because of his point total.

I move up into second place, and my record is tied with Chad (3rd place) and Trevor (4th place), but I have the tie-breaker on points.  If only one of us win next week, that person will get the other first round bye.  If I win (no matter what Chad or Trevor do) I should get the bye because I have the most points.  If Chad wants the bye, he needs to win, and he either needs me to lose, or he needs to outscore me by a lot.  If Trevor wants the bye, he needs me and Chad to lose, or he needs to outscore us by a lot as well.

If we all lost and TJ won, the four of us would be tied on record, and even if he scored 1000 points more than us next week and had the points for the tie-breaker, he still wouldn't get the first round bye because two people can't get it in the same division.

Rob could also win and tie us on record (in the same scenarios as TJ) but he is significantly behind everyone on points, so he would not get any help from the tie breaker.  Point of this story, Trevor will  win his division.

Assuming Matt or Tyler (as long as Duke Johnson doesn't get less than -4) win this week, Geoff will officially be eliminated from the playoffs.  He has had a good run to get where he is, but he should be done.  I really liked his team at the beginning of the year too --  real bummer.

So Kyle, Skyler, Chad, and Trevor are in, and the last two seeds have 4 teams battling it out the last week.

If TJ and Rob win next week, Matt and Tyler will be eliminated.  The same is also true if Matt and Tyler lose.  If TJ and Rob lose and Matt and Tyler win, they will all be tied at 7 wins.  If that happens, the last two spots would go to TJ and Matt based on tie-breakers.  If Rob wins, TJ loses, and Matt and Tyler win, TJ should have a big enough lead on tie-breakers to keep the 6 seed.  So the best bet for Matt to get in is win and then have Rob lose, and the best bet for Tyler is have both Rob and Matt lose, and then he would also have to outscore Rob by around 15 to get in.

There you have it.  That's all the playoff implications from this week.  So really, the only people who don't have anything to play for are Kyle, Brady, Geoff, Ren, and Jordan, but they are all playing someone who has something to play for.  So every game matters, which is awesome.  That's all for now.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Two Weeks to Go Until the Playoffs

Week 11 is mostly in the books.  We are back to the all important divisional games, and after tonight all of the division winners may be decided.  We will go in order of most likely decided, and then the playoff scenarios.

The South Division:  Trevor will win and Rob will lose this week.  That gives Trevor a two game lead over Rob.  Going off of the projections for tonight, Trevor should also have a 120 point lead in the tie breaker.  So In order for Rob to take the division he would have to win both of his games, Trevor would have to lose both of his games, and Rob would have to outscore Trevor by about 62 per week.  The winning out and losing out could maybe happen, but I definitely don't see him out scoring Trevor by that much in back to back weeks.

The West Division: With Kyle's win and TJ's loss miracle comeback, Kyle should win his division only has a one game lead in his division.  Kyle will have an 80 point lead in the tie breaker of total points though.  Three weeks ago I would have said TJ could be the team to comeback from this, but the injury bug has not been kind to him the last two weeks he somehow won tonight and Jordan's team is terrible.  If they both win next week (week 12), TJ would need to beat Kyle head to head in week 13 by around 80 to win the division.  As long as Kyle wins next week, he should win the division

The North Division: This is the hardest division to look at, and it's not because I did anything important tonight.  I will likely lose lost because Eifert is dumb, but the hard part is what will happen with Brady and Chad's game.  Chad is projected to win by 1.5, but Brady still has a person going right now, so who knows.  If Chad wins, he will have a two game lead over me, but I would still have a 50 point lead on him.  I would need to win out, and he would need to lose out, but outscoring him isn't a big concern since I already have the lead.  Basically Chad needs to lose tonight or I'm mostly hosed.

If Chad were to lose tomorrow, he would only have a one game lead.   We play each other next week, so if he won that matchup he would win the division by having a two game lead.  If I won, it would be tied going into the last week, and anything could happen there.

Now for the wild card playoff spots.  I have a one game lead for the 4 seed and TJ is tied with me record wise, but I have the tie breaker at points, so he has the 5 seed, while Rob has the 6 seed.  He only have a one game lead over Matt and Tyler for that spots.  In terms of point tie breakers though, Matt should have a 90 point lead over Rob, and Rob should only have a 25 point lead over Hukill.  So if Matt can get another win with Rob getting another loss, Matt would move into the 6 seed.  And yes, I am writing off Geoff, Brady, Ren and Jordan.  Though after tonight Geoff will be one game behind Matt and Tyler, and Ren will be 1 game behind Geoff, and hopefully Brady wins and he will also be one game behind Geoff.  Not that he will make the playoffs, but I need him to beat Chad.

Anyway, that is all at the moment about the playoffs.  Other than I really hate Eifert.  Sanu (my guy) scored a TD that was called back, and then Eifert scored like the next play or two. That was around a 14 point swing, and that would have likely got me the win.  Ugh.  Oh well.

**Edits to make up for the fact that TJ came from behind to win after I had written his section and to complain more about Tyler Eifert**

Monday, November 9, 2015

First Recap of the Season...Two and Half Months Late

I haven’t blogged about fantasy football for most of the season.  I’m sure most of you are ok with it, but I know TJ was semi looking forward to it since he became a member of the league this year.  So here is your shout out TJ.  Anyway, I have been slacking because of school. I only have class on Monday and Wednesday, meaning I do homework Sundays and Tuesdays because I believe in procrastination.  Now that playoff implications are getting clearer though, I decided I would blog again.

The first caveat of all of the scenarios that are about to be mentioned, is that there will be no ties.  I don’t think they have happened in our league, and I don’t think they ever will.  That’s the perk of going to two decimals.  The second caveat is that I am working off of the projections, so someone might actually win tonight, but it’s not shown in this writing.

There are 4 tiers of teams based on record.  People can move tiers pretty easily, but here are the current tiers.  The 7-win tier is Chad and Trevor, the 6-win Tier is Kyle, Tyler and me, next tier at 4 or 5 wins is made up of Rob, Tyler, and Matt, and the most likely to miss the playoff tier is Geoff, Brady, Ren and Jordan.

So we are going to start from the bottom up.  The loser of Jordan/Ren (projected to be Jordan) will be eliminated from the playoffs.  In all likelihood neither of them (or Brady) will make the playoffs, but there is the chance that if they win out and things bounce the right way, they could sneak in as a 5-win team that holds tie-breakers over the other 5 win teams.  So Jordan will not be able to catch Chad, Me, Trevor, Kyle, or TJ after tonight’s loss.

Ren and Brady could win out to be 6-7, which would still put them behind Chad, Trevor, the winner of me and TJ in week 10, and then the winner of Kyle and TJ in week 13 in the best case scenario. And they would be tied with the loser of me and TJ, and the loser of Kyle and TJ, and probably Rob and Tyler assuming Rob and Tyler manage to win at least one more game. So while those 3 aren’t eliminated, let’s just agree they aren’t making the playoffs.  If Geoff were to win out, he (in the best case scenario) could end up tied at 7-6, and he would not be able to catch Chad, Trevor, or the winner of Kyle and TJ.  He probably would want those 3 teams to win out which would hurt the teams he is trying to catch.  So while it is possible he could move up into the playoffs, it still isn’t likely.

One of the problems with a potential comeback for any of these teams is that we have five teams who have 6+ wins after 9 weeks.  Going back through the league history, the most 6+ win teams we have ever had at week 9 is four.  In the past 5 years, we have had four 6+ team wins twice, and in the other 3 years, we only had three such teams.  Only one team has had 6+ wins at 9 weeks and still missed the playoffs.  So with 5 of us at that level, there is a chance one of us doesn’t make the playoffs, but it would be for someone like Tyler or Rob who are at 5 wins, and not the lowest tier of teams.

The top two tiers are all teams who have a solid shot at winning their division.  Trevor is up 2 games in his division, Chad is up 1, and Kyle and TJ are tied atop their division, and Tyler is only one game behind them.  If they keep beating up on each other, their division winner will likely not get the bye week in the playoffs, which makes the division race for the North and South a little more important.  Given the 120-point difference between Trevor and Rob (after week 9 is over), Rob’s best bet to win his division is to end up with more wins than Trevor, which means Trevor needs to tank.  If Trevor wins two more games, that will effectively end Rob’s attempt to win the division, unless Rob averages about 30 points per game more than Trevor over the next 4 weeks.

If the predicted scores from tonight happen, I will be 40 points ahead of Chad, but he will be a game ahead of me, so this division race will be close.  At the moment, it’s a little too close to speculate what could happen, though I have to play TJ next week, and Chad plays Matt next week – which favors Chad more than it favors me.


So what have we learned?  Not much that wasn’t likely to be guessed by quickly glancing at the records.  Four weeks is still a long time to go, so making too many guesses this early is hard.  However, the positive to me writing all of this is that I look busy taking notes during my boring classes, so that’s nice.  Hopefully at this point next week, things will be a little clearer, though it’s not likely that they will be.