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.