Wild Card - The Beginning Of The End

“I was surprised. It wasn’t something I expected.”

- Colin Kaepernick on being benched after one of the worst QB performances in history

Stop everything you're doing and watch this video

Well, it’s finally over. We’re through the regular season and only 6 remain, congrats guys if you lose now it wasn’t worth it.

Hopefully, you enjoyed watching players wear all kinds of super special cleats to support their favorite charity. Whether it be Yeezy:

Or LifeAlert:

Or the Rams

Somebody help the Rams they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing:

Rams' Jeff Fisher gets extension; GM also extended

Stop rewarding incompetence!

Just when I start to say that Colin Kaepernick might have shit figured out

The Dolphins joined in on the fun too

Shouts out to Eric Berry for beating cancer and still outscoring those teams all by himself… First ever player with a pick six and pick 2 in a game btw.

Such a Falcons way to lose, no chance at playoffs…. Inb4 annual ATL December implosion

The Jets made sure to keep the suck going into Monday Night

Kevin Harlan once again brought us the highlight of the night

Flashback to week 1, when he gave us similar commentary gold:

END OF SEASON AWARDS:

We’ve got a few end of the regular season awards to hand out:

SEC Strength of Schedule Award

WINNER:

Genderfluid Nonbinary

May need to be renamed the B1G Strength of Schedule Award amirite? This goes to the owner who had the worst luck in having to face the most points being scored against them this season. Last season, Brian won this award over Joe by 4 points and both teams missed the playoffs. This season, Joe made sure to win the award handily. Even more impressive is that Joe overcame this schedule to make the playoffs and be the top seed in Wild Card Weekend. Joe faced 1,502.4 points against him this season, the only player to face scoring over the 1,500 mark.

Birdperson Memorial Trophy

WINNER:

Skittle Monster

Pat won this division on the back of an 8 game win streak that stretches from week 3 to week 10. In those 8 weeks, Pat averaged 132 points per game. He ultimately won the division by 3 games (more than the margin for the entire Wubalubadubdub) with a record of 10-3 and a winning percentage of .769.

Show Me What You Got

WINNER:

Is it December 16th Yet?

Charlie pretty much went wire-to-wire with this one. He and I were tied for first in the division after week one, he never gave up control of first place from there on out. Ultimately 7-6 and a win percentage of .538 were enough to show us what he’s got and take home the divisional crown this season. Charlie had the 4th most points for in the division and faced the most points against but amazingly was able to show complete divisional dominance across the season.

The Blue Crab Bowl

WINNER:

Skittle Monster

The Blue Crab Bowl goes to the team with the best record at the end of the regular season. Last season I won on a tiebreaker over Jacob at 9-5. This season Pat clinched the blue crab bowl a week before the season even ended. Capturing the first 10-win regular season in league history. He will look to defend his regular season crown in 2 weeks when he begins post-season play in the playoff semis.

Get Buckets

WINNER:

Skittle Monster

The Uncle Drew Get Buckets award goes to the league’s scoring leader. This season Pat took home the award with 1603 points. Though he was shy of the league record 1653.7, he did have a higher per game scoring average. Pat won the scoring title by just 14.8 points over Brian (last year’s margin was 63.4). Both times, the winner of this trophy has been the only team to go over 1600 points for the season.

UPCOMING AWARDS:

Once the Playoffs come to an end, we will give out a few more season awards. As always the Ricky Bobby First Loser award the Parrot Demerit and of course Jimbo Slice Footnugget Cup will be given out; but this year we will add a few more, all of these trophies will be renamed in the coming days to something less generic.

The League MVP Award will go to the team with the player who scored the most points in the fantasy season.

The League Flex MVP will go to the team with non-QB player who scored the most points in the fantasy season (since MVP is just gonna go to a [waiver added] QB every year for the rest of time)

Best Waiver Move/Most Active Owner. TBD which of these two its gonna be. Maybe I'll do both. If we do best waiver move ill open up voting between all the waiver moves of the week. Most Active Owner will go to the owner with the most roster transactions (which Pat and I will have to discuss a solid definition for). Very possible both of these get handed out in 3 weeks.

Owner of the Year is going to be just like College Coach of the year in that we’re gonna vote for who did the most impressive job this year. That could be generating the best record, or making the best waiver moves, or overcoming the biggest odds to do something good. This award is whatever you decide it is with your vote. We’re going to each nominate 2 people (since you’re all gonna probably nominate yourselves anyways) and eliminate our way down to 2 or 3 final choices from there which we will decide on as the season ends.

PLAYOFF PREVIEW:

Pat and Charlie both claim first round byes, as winners of their divisions.

Our Wild Card round will consist of Sam taking on Nick and Joe taking on Brian.

There is a nice visual above to help you follow the playoff so that I don’t have to talk very much about how I’m not in it… 3 of last years 4 playoff teams did not make a return trip… Pat, Jacob and I get to have violent fun in the consolation ladder to avoid last place, but soon enough….. soon enough the revenge tour begins… We will not forget in 2017.

Speaking of the Consolation Bracket. Although week one doesn’t matter, eventually four teams will whittle down to ONE BIG ULTIMATE LOSER!

We haven’t discussed a punishment for last place, but I’d like to toss out “giving away the naming rights to your team to the consensus of the league next year (or a portion of the year)” as an option.

This Thursday we may somehow be treated to an actually watchable football game. Kansas City and Oakland are competing for first place in a tough division and will actually have to care about this one. Color Rush is back once again and actually looking good. KC will be rocking all reds

While Oakland busts out the cleanest looking white uniform of the year… Silver on white will undeniably look fly.

Plenty of talent to go to waste on a short week of rest and preparation.

Without further ado.

Week 13 Review

Dicks Out For Harambe 105.4 @ Can I Play Baseball Now? 116.4

Pat came up just a bit short in his quest to turn 0-4 into playoff magic. Midway through last week you would’ve expected the winner of Pat vs Me to take a serious stab at first in the division…. Now we both rest on the bottom of the ocean floor. I looked at the rosters last Tuesday and I seriously thought Sam was dead in the water. He was forced to go to waivers for an RB and come Sunday morning they were going to be incredibly thin, more so than they already are… Sunday comes along and whaddayaknow there's a 2TD back left sitting around on the wire and Sam went out and hunted him down like a bloodhound

Tell me how you really feel Pat (minus the autocorrect):

Skittle Monster 136.9 @ Harrisonburg 21-16 91.8

Jacob fought hard, but someone had to lose the division and miss the playoffs. Pat finally had enough of me saying he was human and decided to put out another 130+ showing to remind us all who he is before the playoffs begin. Pat had every single position go for 10 plus points… Jacob pretty much had the opposite output. Jordan Howard did his best but just couldn’t keep the season alive. Pat actually could’ve done himself some favors here by throwing the game to keep Brian out of the postseason and out of his half of the bracket but hey… I like the honor.

Pat aint takin no more of anyones shit:

Genderfluid Nonbinary 94.6 @ Kings of Leon 80.8

Nick has limped to the finish line after a strong middle of the season, but he’s still made the second season (and honestly drawn a solid matchup getting to play cross-division). A very manageable path to the finals exists if he can muster the scoring he had weeks 6 through 11. Devonta Freeman (go Noles) finally pulled through for Joe, as he capped out his up and down year by making a jump into the divisional second seed in week 13. His inner division performances gave him a huge lead in the seeding tiebreakers. He gets to play Brian as a reward.

Joe came back to steal the division 2 spot:

What A Time To Be Alive 89.7 @ Is it December 16th yet? 100

Well, Charlie pulled it off. Wire-to-wire on fire number 1 in the division. Gotta give him complete props because I was the one saying all season long his team was primed for early success and a late slide… guess who was wrong. Don’t look now but AP is taking reps at practice again and all the sudden Charlie’s team might be a powerhouse after a week on the bye. Rodgers and Big Ben will have to continue carrying, but the WRs showed again this week they can step up and provide wins too.

At least someone from Wisconsin is getting a conference title this week:

Red Wedding 149.2 @ Mister Meeseeks 119.6

This one was rough to watch. Phil put together a hell of a November to be where he was entering the weekend. He even posted the top score in the division to close the season… Unfortunately, he drew the short straw of putting those points up out of conference this week and facing the league’s second best team. Brian managed to put up a ridiculous 150 points with just 7 players offering meaningful contributions. Riding the hot hand into the playoffs has worked in the past.

Phil was a nice underdog story, Brian didn’t give a fuck:

The Last Power Rankings

*as of 12/8 10:53 AM

Pat closes out the season on top of the Power Rankings. He claims this year’s Blue Crab Bowl with an almost perfect ranking score. Have your trophy

Joining him in Tier 1 is Brian, who capped out an incredibly high scoring season in high scoring fashion.

Joe holds firm in 3rd place, finishing his up and down regular season on an up. He still has the best special teams in the league, and it has made all the difference

Sam rises 2 spots in the power rankings to 4th. His big win last week jumped him over Pat in the division as well.

Charlie held his ground and defended his claim for the conference title… can relate

Nick has defied the metrics and made his way into the postseason. Now at 6th in the rankings, he looks to prove that despite how things look, he can still deliver a beating

Jacob came so close, but in the end, just couldn’t quite get there.

After a big final stretch, Mister Meeseeks has finished with some very solid stats, ranking top 5 in all points categories. Despite a tough loss, Phil’s surprisingly strong season allowed him to slide by PBut in the rankings.

In a tie for 9th (I swear to god I didn’t tinker to avoid outright last) Pat’s tough season comes to an end. Despite being held back (by injury and suspension) he had some decent moments

It’s been a long 365 days since I claimed the Blue Crab Bowl… gonna take a lot to turn around that turnaround… think I know who to call.

Wild Card Round Preview

Game 1

Kings of Leon (7-6)

Can I Play Baseball Now? (6-7)

Line: Kings of Leon -0.8

Very interesting playoff scenario here, as both team perhaps benefit from not being the high seed this week in that they didn’t draw Brian’s high-scoring wildcard team.

However, the benefit comes with a "down the road" trade off of having to face P-Lo if you pull through in round 1.

Nick has ridden the efforts of Julio Jones, Matt Forte and a QB rotation of Wilson and Rivers. He followed an interesting path to the playoffs, scoring the least amount of points in the league but also facing the least number of points scored.

It remains to be seen how the return of Charles Sims will impact Doug Martin, and the WR/FLEX alternatives will have to maintain consistency, but Nick is still in good shape to claim a playoff win on the season. Nick’s team will face a tough test in the league’s 3rd best scoring team.

For a while, Sam’s season had been an inverse of Nick’s –high point production but low win total. Ultimately, he won when it mattered and put himself into the second season.

The trio of Murray, Beckham and Taylor has done the bulk of the work for Sam this year. But several auxiliary players such as Mark Ingram and Michael Crabtree had critical performances down the stretch in support.

Overall, these starting rosters are very comparable, matching star for star, player for player. When they played back in week 3, Sam won 106 to 61.5

We should have a much tighter competition this time around, with the chance to play spoiler to Pat’s season next week on the line.

This game is being played at 7:00PM Saturday night now that there isn’t any College Football to compete with.

Game 2

Red Wedding (7-6)

Genderfluid Nonbinary (7-6)

Line: Red Wedding -12

A very impressive rebound season for Joe has lead to a top seed wild-card weekend playoff berth. Joe rode his roller-coaster season to a top 4 points finish and the league’s 2nd best record.

As a reward, he gets to face Brian’s juggernaut-esque squad. He boasts the league’s second most productive and overall most consistent team this year. These two teams met twice this season with Joe winning both bouts by a combined 16.7 points (8.35 Avg MoV).

Drew Brees has been THE GUY for Joe this year scoring 24% of Joe’s points on the season, beating out the next biggest contributor (T.Y.Hilton) by 11.6 percentage points.

By comparison, David Johnson was the second biggest team contributor, scoring 21.12% of Brian’s points (league average was 19% for top contributors). While Brady had the next largest margin over second on his team, out-contributing Edelman by 11.6 percentage points (average gap in the league between 1 and 2 was 4.9 percentage points). Essentially, Brees carried Joe’s team more than any other player in the league.

The rest of Joe’s team has been so bad that Antonio Brown is still his 4th leading scorer (Freeman is still 5th for Jacob btw). If Joe wants to go deep in the playoffs Big Daddy Drew Brees will have to continue to be a goddam stud.

What Drew Brees has been for Joe, David Johnson has been for Brian.

He’s currently the top scoring non-QB by 40.2 points of Zeke Elliot. His lead grows to 100 points by the time you get to LeVeon Bell in 9th place…. My god.

You can’t even leave the top 10 non-QBs without being 100 points less productive than David Johnson. In fact, he’s doing so well that he’s the 2nd leading scorer in the league (the only non-QB in the top 8), just 7.4 points back of Aaron Rodgers. Brian and Pat have essentially been able to start 2/3 QBs a week and that’s why they’re trashing the league in points.

If last week was any preview of things to come, teams better be touching 150 to have a shot at sending Brian home.

This game is being played on Sunday at 1, why not, keep it classic, these are all fake and I‘m running out of jokes.

Hunger Foul

Dicks Out For Harambe : 77.2 Points

A really rough week to take home the hunger foul, because not only could Cameron Brate have saved the win he would’ve saved the playoffs… Tight End woes continued for a second week straight (flashbacks to Clive Walford and the boys weeks 1-4). Ebron's second straight poor showing was enough to get him dropped from Pat’s roster. This misery of this award is heavily compounded by the next award I'm going to hand out on the week.

Waiver Move of the Week

Can I Play Baseball Now?

Drop QB Carson Palmer, Add RB Mike Gillislee

SCALE 1 to 10:

This waiver move was god level. Sam’s entire season hinged upon his lineup last week, and with 2 of his 3 RBs on bye he had to hit the thinnest waiver wire of all time last weekend to try and find points. Mike Gillislee came through big time with not one but TWO goal line vulture TDs! It looks like Mike saved up all his week 12 points to use in week 13, maybe that’s what Sam saw too. When Mark Ingram came out of Sunday afternoon with just 7 points, Gillislee had no choice but to pick up the slack and find double digit points. His rare double vulture day was the culmination of Sam’s playoff run.

Bad Luck of the Week

Consolation Bracket

Missing the Playoffs

I was already eliminated entering the week (1 fucking point) but all three of the teams that joined me in the consolation ladder still had a breath of life come Thursday. 50% of fantasy (at least) is luck. Had Jacob been in a different division (which pretty much came down to how we broke up certain performers from previous years) he likely would’ve found an extra win on the schedule. Phil was 3rd in overall wins… meaning he pretty much beat all but 2/3 teams every week in scoring. Had his schedule aligned just a bit differently he probably makes the playoffs. Pat’s best player was suspended by a rule system that is 100% broken. His other best player is a big target at one of the league’s most physical positions and is literally broken now. One more week of Gronk or Brady could’ve put Pat in the playoffs. And I’m still gonna maintain that it Woodhead and Allen don’t go down in weeks 1 and 2 I’m probably in as well.

the point here is we can do this with any team… there’s always an excuse as to why someone is really better than someone else. Sports are lucky, good luck next year.

Consolation At A Glance

What do the consolation playoffs mean…

Though it isn’t necessarily true this week, the consolation bracket does have an impact. Aside from determining which team really got last place, it will also have an impact on the draft order heading into next season. Your real goal here is to win your game in week 2 of the playoffs and avoid the last place game altogether. However, since week 1 simply leads to a reshuffling before week 2, it has no ultimate determining effect on the consolation playoffs. The week one winners will play in week 2, the week one losers play in week 2; the same pattern applies to week 2 and 3 respectively. If you win week one and lose week 2, you’ll still be in the last place game, you’ll just have lost to a better team the week before. Additionally, the winner of the Consolation bracket will receive the Mr. Irrelevant award, for all their hard work.

TLDR; Consolation matters, but not this week.

As a result, only 4 teams out of 10 have a reason to care this weekend. Because of this, I’m instituting the Karlos Dansby Wild Card Weekend High Score Challenge.

In 2009, the Cardinals beat the Packers in the highest scoring Wild Card (and playoff) game of all time. The winning TD was a ridiculous fumble recovery off of Aaron Rodgers foot, taken to the house by Karlos Dansby.

Read about it here:

NFC: Arizona Cardinals 51, Green Bay Packers 45 (OT)

We’ve named this trophy to honor his incredible play and that incredible game that I hope some of you also remember watching… seriously it was fucking wild (It was also the last day McNabb ever played for the Eagles… but I digress)

This award will go to whichever of the 6 non-incentivized teams (the 6 not playing a meaningful wild card game) scores the most points this weekend. Pretty straight forward, since we don’t have anyone to really compete against we’re 6 all gonna compete against each other AT THE SAME TIME!

Week 14 At A Glance

Skittle Monster (10-3) vs. Is it December 16th yet? (7-6) vs. Harrisonburg 21-16 (6-7) vs. Dicks Out For Harambe (6-7) vs. Mister Meeseeks (5-8) vs. What A Time To Be Alive (4-9)

I'm expecting the excitement levels on this to reach that of any other 6 man cage fight… If you need some examples:

So real quick, I watched that whole 20-minute fight to capture those gifs and the ending was maybe the best part. Context: it’s a 6-man cage fight where the objective is simply to escape the cage… the last man in the cage GETS FUCKING FIRED!!!! The guy who lost this fight was playing the role of the proud Russian. This is basically the WWE of Mexico though, so they’re mad broke so the actor playing the Russian (and the ones playing his Russian girlfriends) is Hispanic as fuck, which leads to some great post-fight moments.

Love when she raises up the Russia poster like “GO TEAM!”

Couldn't they think of anything else? Anything within the confines of the budget? Hey, you’re gonna be a Russian who gets people fired up (because I guess hating Russians and the ensuing stereotypes is a thing there too). He could’ve been anything, but nope, we’re going with the Russian storyline and we’re even gonna sell branding