DFL 2014 Week 15: And here comes the playoffs!!

What a week this week was!  That is to say, what a crummy, under-performing week this was!  8 teams still left and pretty much nobody came close to projectiosn.  Well, except for Missy, who attacked the week with reckless aplomb, as usual.

Regardless, this week we started on the playoff run.  That means that 4 teams advanced into the semi-finals, with the ultimate goal of bringing home the gold.  And on the flip side?  4 teams were eliminated from the race for the gold.  The good news is that they were all automatically entered into the running for the playoff bitch.

Pictured above, the ending of a perfectly good season.

Of course, before we can really plunge into the games, let's take a look at the pick'ems.  

Ben and Phil both chose conservatively this week and went 3-1.  (Dammit, Dave!  Lose and Ben and I could have had perfect picks this week!)  Thus, keeping the tie for first place alive and well.  Mike, on the other hand, went 2-1 by picking himself over Ben, and completely forgetting to make a pick in the Skoot vs Dave game.  The big news this week is that RA Dave finally broke the dry spell and picked perfectly this week!  You know what we call that???

You bastards don't know how long I've been sitting on this gif.

So, Ben and Phil are untouchable at 58 picks a piece...  But now RA Dave has made it interesting by pulling within 1 pick of Mike.  Who's taking the gold, silver, and bronze here?  Only 8 more games left to pick!!

And now, let's get into the heavy lifting... the playoffs!  We'll start with the top seed and work our way down.

Missy (1) vs Melanie (8).  In the early games, it looked like Melanie might have an outside shot of pulling an upset here.  Manning barely made it into double digits, Foster was held up surprisingly well by the Colts.  And then Missy made the tactical mistake of starting the Buffalo D against Green Bay, in Lambeau, in December.  Some freaking how, this turned out to be brilliant choice, as they shut down the Packers and pulled in 25 point.  Then Gronk went crazy,as did Bryant.  Sadly, nobody on Melanie's team stepped up for this great opportunity.  So, not only did Melanie lose, she also received the beat down of the week.  Or to put it another way:

Missy says "People who sneak into the playoffs don't advance!!!"

Ben (2) vs Mike (7).  Again, this looked like a perfect situation for the upset.  Rodgers went negative, The Eagles D went negative, Jennings touched the ball once.  All that seems fine and dandy for Mike, but then Ben's team turns on the afterburners and Beckham pulls in damn near 30, Murray almost gets 20, and Bell *does* get 20 points.  And those three players were enough to beat all of Mike's team, who could only scrounge 2 player to hit double digits (Colston and Lacey - yay trade!)  So, Ben missed administering his sixth beat down of the week by less than 2 points.  To lesson the blow, Ben told the following joke:  What did the hand say to the face?

SLAP!!

Phil (3) vs Crutch (6).  This was the only game this week where the teams had played each other twice earlier in the season.  The more delicious thing is that the victories were split from the earlier games. So, this would make for a good tie breaker.  Both QBs did very well.And Crutch's Hill was the only other player to blow it up in this game.  However, the rest of Phil's players were slightly less shitty than the rest of Crutch's players.  So, Phil was able to pull out a pretty decisive victory, though not nearly as nicely as was projected.  But a win is a win.  So, moving on.

RA Dave (4) vs Skoot (5).  Dave takes the victory here, making 0 upsets in the first round of playoffs.  Of course, the odd thing is that only Dave picked the non-upset, which of course, screwed more people than not in the Pick'ems.  Thanks Dave!!

Pretty much everyone's reaction to the game, except for RA Dave.

So, where does that leave us?  Well, the Championship bracket looks like this:

Missy (1) vs RA Dave (4).  Projections-wise, this looks to be a pretty one sided game in Missy's favor.  But any given Sunday and all.  

Ben (2) vs Phil (3).  There are a *lot* of injuries here.  Phil's got 3 questionable folks, and Ben's got two himself, plus another that is completely out.  The big question in my mind is how quickly can Murray recover from his surgery for his off hand this week?  They are listing him as questionable, but I'll be really surprised if he doesn't start.  As it stands right now, Ben is projected up by 10 points, and I think that's a little conservative.  This game has the potential to be Ben's 6th beat down of the week.  Dammit.

(And as I predicted a few weeks back, the match up against Missy looks a hell of a lot sweeter than it does against Ben.)

And the consolation bracket has:

Skoot (5) vs Melanie (8).  Currently, this is projected to be within a point of each other.  This might be the game to watch this week!

Crutch (6) vs Mike (7).  Right now, these two are playing for the sweet, sweet 5th seed in next year's draft.  Of course, to get that, they'll need to also accept the title of Playoff Bitch.  Not sure what the target should be?  Yeah, me neither.  It does look like Mike might be heading to 5th seed though.  Not a lot of good match ups this week for him.

And t hat's about it.  Keep slugging away, guys - only two more weeks before we can officially dole out trophies.  Oh, and remember, in addition to the normal Thursday Night Football, the NFL in all of its branding genius, also has two Thursday Night Football games on Saturday this week.  Yeah, I don't get it either.  But make sure to set your line ups accordingly!