Tuesday, September 26, 2017

All Hail the King

It's Brady's world, and we're all just living in it.  After a furious comeback by my team, Brady squeaked out a win by 1.34 point to remain the only undefeated team.  Personally, I'm pissed my team let me down, but it never really should have been that close since Brady's TE got him 0 and his defense got him -4.  As someone who enjoys the history of the league, I am interested to see how long this will go on.  Brady hasn't started this hot before, and there are no other 3-0 teams competing for the top spot this week.  He plays Jordan next week, which is no easy to task, but it is still a winnable game.

As for the rest of the week 3 review, only two other games were within 20 -- so there weren't really any exciting finishes that had people sweating it out.  Hopefully that changes next week.  Maybe it will change if we all get better at starting the right people, but who knows.  All the games are currently projected to be within 10 points, but we all know that NFL.com projections are the worst.

The most interesting game of the week will be Brady (3-0) vs Jordan (2-1) and Chad (2-1) vs TJ (2-1).  All the other match-ups feature at least one time with a losing record.  I know they still matter early in the seasons, but I can't pick every game as interesting, and there are only 6 games from which I can choose.  Best of luck to everyone but Ren this week.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Week 1 and 2 Review

I wanted to write about week 1, but I was traveling to New York that Sunday for work, and because of all the mishaps during travel (the flight was an hour and a half late, so I missed my connection, which meant I had to get rerouted through Columbus and then got to New York at 9 AM eastern time with maybe an hour of sleep) I went to bed early (9 pm) that Monday night.

There was only one close game week 1.  Chad would have won had Andy Dalton gotten hurt on the first play and ended up with no points.  Instead, Andy Dalton got -3 points, and Chad lost by 2.98 points.

Week 2 was a little better, as there were two close games (both decided by less than 4 points), but overall, the competition has been lacking.

That isn't to say that the results/standings haven't been interesting.  I decided to go back and look at how many teams started 2-0 and how many of said teams made the playoffs.  I don't know why it has worked out this way, but we consistently have three 2-0 teams each year (one from each division).  There have been 2 years (2010, 2016) where we have only had two 2-0 teams, and we had one year (2013) where we had four 2-0 teams.  I would like to see how a season plays out where there are no 2-0 teams, or six 2-0 teams, but those aren't very likely to happen.

My "research" (looking quickly through the history) showed that of the 20 teams to start 2-0, 14 (70%) of them make the playoffs.  I don't want to jinx Brady, but the only time he has made the playoffs, he started 2-0 -- this might be the year he gets back in.  The 6 teams to miss the playoffs after starting 2-0 were Trevor (2016), Trevor (2013),  Kyle (2012), Chad (2011), Konner (2011), and Trevor (2010).  I learned two things from that list.  The first thing I learned is that we have gotten better over the years as a league. Four of the instances of teams missing the playoffs happened in the first 3 years of data/post-missions.  The second thing I learned is that Trevor has a hard time handling a good start as he accounts for half of the instances of people starting 2-0 and missing the playoffs.

I also looked at teams that start 0-2 to see how they do with making the playoffs.  Only 6 out of 20 of them make the playoffs.  There is a pretty good correlation of the 0-2's making it the year 2-0's don't but it's not perfect every year, so no need to despair quite yet if you started 0-2.  In 2013, two teams who started 0-2 played in the championship game.

We all know that the projections are garbage, but at least at the moment, no one is projected to win by more than 9 points.  So hopefully we get some close games this week and have a little bit more anxiety on Sunday night.