Week 13 Recap

 Week 13 Recap (And, more!)

One week until the playoffs begin. 7 teams fighting for 6 spots. Unfortunately only the 7 are left alive in this final week. 7-7 is the worst possible playoff record, with 8-6 being much more likely the cutoff. The first two seeds are not locked, any of the teams in the top 4 spots could take them That means Matt, Alex, Gary, or Jake will take the top two seeds. Yuriy, Andrew, and myself are fighting for the last two spots. Points for are the tiebreaker should a tie occur, but this next week is going to be interesting. So this last week should be a fun one to watch.

A couple of reminders regarding the consolation bracket: If you win you get to be the “Captain” of a division next year and choose your mates. Seemed to work well for both Jake and Alex this year. You also get two names in the hat for a better chance of different selections when names are called. Past that, trading ends after this week. I’m open to rule changes being brought up if you have any ideas. I’d still like to propose one keeper, but we would have to agree to that prior to the year beginning. Good luck to everyone. So let’s look at some cool playoff stat stuff.

Positional Ranks on Teams, Do They Matter? What Matters Most?

I went ahead and compiled a list of the best position players on each team that won the championship each year. Positional ranks are not available through ESPN outside of 2021 and 2020, so all stats are gathered through Pro Football Reference based on Draft Kings scoring (which I’m pretty sure is the same as ours). Defense ranks are from fantasypros website. Another potential flaw is that this is based on final rosters, meaning if someone went on IR and was dropped prior to winning I’ll miss that contex. With that out of the way, this is done by hand.

Let’s start with the graph above. The first thing I want to point out is that in 2017 (when I won) it was the only year that someone has had the number one WR, RB, TE, and D/ST. Just kinda cool to see them all converge. What can we get from this information? For the past 6 years the winner of the league has had a top 3 RB on their team. For the past 3 years a top 10 WR was only on Alex’s team last year that was WR6. This reinforces the idea that RBs are more valuable than WRs to an extent, although that’s obviously lacking more context. Defenses also used to be more important, and a strong predictor of championship success. That has seemed to wane in the recent times, likely with the success of streaming defenses. So what does it come down to? In the past there was a higher concentration of top end talent on teams. Two possible reasons I can think of for that: Everyone has gotten better at drafting meaning the talent is more dispersed, or in the past our league traded more frequently. As time has gone by trades have dwindled and we’re seeing less concentration of talent. For fun below I have included the table with all the data this is based on and the names of the players included in the chart.

Points For, Points Against, Playoff Seeding, and Championship Seasons. Is There a Predictor for a Successful Postseason run?

Taking a first look at playoff seeding we have this distribution. It’s missing a key piece, the 5^th seed has never won a championship. Somewhat unsurprising the first and second seeds are overrepresented, they’re typically the best teams and only have to win 2 in a row to win it all. This year however could be different with such parity between the top teams.

Points for champion must always win right?! Right?! Well, not always. It appears the best shot to win the league presents itself at PF position number 2. 1^st is represented in there, but not nearly as strongly. I also really like the 10^th most PF winner, talk about a streak of wildly good luck. My one theory here is based purely on gut: the team that wins most often is second place in points for because they do not come on until late in the season. That means the most important part of a championship is good pickups and good trades. I can’t prove that here, but that’s my feeling about it.

Can there possibly be a correlation between points against and winning the championship? Looking at this I would imagine it’s hard to say there isn’t! The person with the least points scored against them has won 4 times. There has been NO champion in the top-half of points against. There is a very important caveat here (SUPER IMPORTANT): The team with a first round bye in the playoffs gets a whole game off compared to the other playoff teams. Still wouldn’t fully explain no top-half teams but it gets us closer. Moral of the story: get lucky.

The above chart shows what the pie charts represent, but placed together for ease of access. 2018 Jake was a good championship run and one to look for when you think your team is toast early on.

This is the table for all the data is a numerical view if that is easier for you.

And here we have our current ranks. I’ve included 7 because it is so close for the last two spots. So let’s add some reckless speculation. For PF ranks you want to be 1-3 with 2 being the most likely to win. 1-3 is: Jake, Nic, and Alex respectively. Rank 2 being the most common that means Nic wins this category. Points against champs are typically 12^th, 9^th, 7^th, or 8^th. Players with those positions: Alex at 12^th, Andrew at 8^th. The Gomez bros are lucky, but Alex will take this since 12^th is the most likely to win. Now the stats that the winner is never in the top half for points against is super menacing because it’s never been disproven that means that Jake and Nic (the two highest PF) are in a bad spot. Now seeding. This is clearly not the final seeding. But we’ll pretend it is. 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd are all most likely to win. That brings us to Alex, Gary, and Matt. Now the 1^st is slightly favored so we will go with Alex again. So that means, just like my stupid preseason prediction, that Alex is favored to win his second repeat championship. I hope that makes you overconfident. Anyone else see any patterns I can use to disprove that? I would love to hear them. Anyway, onto the Weekly Awards!

WEEKLY AWARDS

Best Manager

Pender of the 5 Yard Fullers and Yuriy of the Goo Backs both set the best lineup they could. One of them won, but that’s not what this award is about.

Worst Manager

D Smith of the Auto Draft Machine. You missed out on 51 points! Your lineup scored 69 points (nice)! You almost could have doubled your score lol. You should rename your team to the overdraft machine.

Biggest Blowout

Football Cream 172.02 vs Colt 49’s 109.72

Ory and Daniel. I feel just so bad about the way things have gone for your team. You guys were looking like things were going to go well and then bam Henry goes down, and bam Mahomes sucks and bam Ceedee misses a few games, and bam Waller is out. I know this has not been a wildly fun year for you. Just remember it and learn from it. Don’t draft Mahomes again, the Chiefs are garbage. Also, please beat my dad and take away his top seed. I can’t stand to think of him drinking his martini pops and watching football without stressing for a week lol. Alex, you get nothing. What do you want me to say, drafting Tom Brady at 60 years old is a good idea? I won’t do it!

Narrow Victory

Fly Boyds 131.2 vs Meyer’s Slayer 134.3

I despise this loss. I was hoping so strongly that Knox wouldn’t catch one damn pass, but here we are. How can the Bengals team that blew me tf out last week look so bad this week? Like I know Higgins did pretty okay for you, but still? Matt, your ragtag bunch doesn’t make sense to me, but I think that’s pretty on brand for you. I mean, did you just actually start Russell Gage on a week where he did well? I find that so hard to believe it’s wild. I know that loss hurt, but I’m gonna need you to do that one more time for me, okay?

Highest Score (and Overachiever)

Football Cream scored 172.02 narrowly beating a couple other teams and accounting for 125.1% of their projected total.

Lowest Score (and Underachiever)

The Auto Draft Machine was stolen from the convenience store, beaten with a crowbar and power drill, and ultimately dropped on a crackhead with the score of 69.420 points (NICE!!!). That accounts for a cool 53.8% of the projected point total.

QB of the Week

Tom Brady of the Football Cream with a creamy 36.62 points. Cream.

RB of the Week

Javonte Williams smoking that Denver herb with the Greenbowl Packers with 29.8 points.

WR of the Week

Justin Jefferson of the Goo Backs turning in the best performance to lose to the worst team. Smooth routes and smooth moves for 35.6 points.

TE of the Week

George Kittle of the Rip Lips taking the place of Deebo, Kittle, and Eli Mitchell and single handedly helping Russell Wilson look good.

QB Benchwarmer

Tuna Tagovailoa of the Fresno Browns Streaks feeling unwanted by the Dolphins and by Cone.

RB Benchwarmer

David Montgomery of the Herb Seasoning showing that there was a reason that I traded all that stuff to get this guy and then bench him for my new waiver wire pickup.

WR Benchwarmer

Tyler Boyd of the Fly Boyds. You would’ve won Matt! You would’ve won! Oh well, play him this week. I dare you.

TE Benchwarmer

Dallas Goedert of the Auto Draft Machines. He’s the one that stole the machine from the convenience store FYI.

POWER RANKINGS

1. Jake (Previously Ranked 3)
2. Alex (Previously Ranked 4)
3. Gary (Previously Ranked 5)
4. Matt (Previously Ranked 1)
5. Nic (Previoulsy Ranked 2)
6. Andrew (Previously Ranked 9)
7. Yuriy (Previously Ranked 6)
8. Val (Previously Ranked 8)
9. Cone (Previously Ranked 7)
10. Pender (Previously Ranked 12)
11. D Smith (Previously Ranked 11)
12. Ory and Daniel (Previously Ranked 10)