DFL 2016 Week 16 Semi-finals: This game is stupid and I hate it.

So, I'm not sure how many people are actually at their own places this week, but I know that I'm not.  Currently, I'm sitting in my sister's den, on a computer which I "am fixing" for my mother. So, I'm definitely on borrowed time.  That being said, this is going to be a hella short update this week, in stealth mode.

Really, only two games that people are interested in this week:

Patrick vs Mike.  Ouch.  HUGE upset here.  And the beat down of the week.  I don't have the numbers in front of me (again - on borrowed time here - AND I was just tapped to go to the grocery store because my hostess is making lasagna and doesn't have any ricotta cheese.  I mean, really.  What is this?  Amateur hour?  Sorry - digression...), but I'm pretty sure that Patrick has hands down the biggest beat downs this season.  PAtrick had 3 20+ point players and another 15 pointer to boot!  And one of the 20+ers was Carr, who didn't even play the whole game.  Which could spell trouble for Patrick going into championship week, without a QB...

This guy is still available, if you're interested.

Ben vs Phil.  Well, the upset bracket kept true to itself this week. Ben won against a higher seed.  Again.  And freaking Luck did it to me.  I can't be too upset considering that Wilson also went into crazy points mode, but still.  Nobody on my team could compete with Ben's thorough ass-kickery.  So, congrats, Ben on sliding up into the finals.  Well done, you silly sod.  

So, that means that we will be getting a Mike vs Phil rematch in week 17.  Sadly, it's in the consolation bracket.  Fighting for bronze is as exciting as fighting for golden when the pugilists are as bad ass as Mike and Phil, right?

Yeah, it's going to be an epic fight!

Oh, yeah, and I guess that Patrick will face off against Ben this week too.  So, good luck, fellas!

And since we're here, let's not forget about the pick'ems.  (You thought that I had forgotten about that, didn't you?)  Only two people making picks this week:  Phil (@ 2-2) and Mike (@ 1-3).  So, yay for upsets, right?

This leaves us with:

Player  Overall    Playoffs
Phil         53             5-3
Mike       45             4-4
Terry       43             0-0
Dave       43             1-3
....
Kookie     0              0-1

OK, Dave and Terri - Time to step up and win that bronze!  One more week to go. Let's end strong!

(And now, I'm being tapped to unload a car.  Some of them are presents, but I'm outta time.  See y'all next week.)

DFL 2016 Week 15: Here come the playoffs! (RISE UP!)

Not sure if you were watching the playoffs this weekend, but if you did you might have been all like:

And I'd be all like:

Yeah, the top bracket went as expected, but the bottom bracket was solid upsets.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Pick'ems.   It's the play offs and I don't know whether we should restart the counting or keep it going or what.... so, I'm going to keep track of both!  4 people made picks on the 4 games this week.  Phil and Mike both went 3-1 (Thanks, Kookie for killing the dream of a bingo this week!)  And RA Dave went 1-3.  But wait!  Didn't I say that there was one more pick?  Yeah, Kookie did it again.  He only made one pick and he picked himself, and he picked wrong.  So, the outlooks is this:

Player  Overall    Playoffs
Phil         51             3-1
Mike       44             3-1
Terry       43             0-0
Dave       43             1-3
....
Kookie     0              0-1

Overall, it looks like it's a battle for second place at this point.  As long as I can make 2 picks correctly I'll put myself out of striking distance from anyone else.  But for race for silver and bronze is still on.  Have at it!

OK, not quite, but it's close.

OK, *now* we can talk about the games.  High score down to low score.  And here we go!

Ben vs. Kookie.  Yeah, Ben was a full 10+ points higher than anyone else this week. AND HE SAT TWO PLAYERS doing it.   (Or as he calls it "Victory Formation".)  He had beaten Kookie by 10 points going into Monday night, so he  decided to play it safe.  Had he actually played all 8 starters, he would have easily cleared triple digits.  But at this point in the season a win is a win.  Smart move, sir.  Smart move.  As for Kookie, this sucks not only because he was the 2 seed, but also because he totally Ben'ed this game.  Second highest point total of the week, and he happened to play the highest point total.  It'll happen every season, you just hate to see it in the post season.  O well, Kookie, start playing for honor at this point.  This kinda feels like how Kookie's season has treated him:

Phil vs. McClennen.  This was the other seeding upset.  Phil's running backs carried this victory with a little help from Wilson.  Though the real reason that Phil was able to snag the beat down of the week this week is that McClennen's team just imploded.  *ONE* of McClennen's starters high double digits.  And that was his kicker.  After such an impressive regular season, it's hard to watch a team just shit its pants right out of the gate in the post season.

Mike vs Crutch.  Finally... The universe has corrected itself with Mike throwing the phantom Crutch out of the playoffs.  Crutch hasn't touched his line up since September and he just kept winning.  Well, Mike put an end to that tomfoolery this week.  OK, really Drew Brees put an end it that this week, but the rest of Mike's team helped too.  I mean, I guess that his team could have put up more points, you know, had they not been thrown out for PUNCHING THEIR OPPONENTS IN THE FACE WHILE THEY WERE STILL WEARING THEIR HELMETS.

Mike started Jordan Reed, on the far right.  I guess that you can't expect
too much thinking from TEs, considering how much respect they get. BEN.

Patrick vs RA Dave.  I mean, someone had to win this, right?  When Carr is on, he's really on, but when he's not... he's just barely good enough to pull out a W, right?  Dave Johnson was really the biggest player on the field in this match up, and his 20 points were enough to give Patrick the victory, in this overly sad and underly scoring game.  So, well done, Patrick.  Keep your groove on, however sad it might be.

So, that leaves us with these match ups for the semi-finals this week:
Mike (1) vs Patrick (5)
Phil (6) vs Ben (7)

So, this means that if the victories go as the seeding would go, we might just get a rematch of the Mike vs Phil Championship that nobody really wanted.  Well, nobody except maybe Mike.  But I am getting ahead of myself, and seeding predictions haven't exactly been all that rock solid, so I'm not saying that anything is set in stone right now.

Anyways, good luck everyone (except Ben)!  Enjoy the last few weeks of fantasy football for the next 8 months!

DFL 2016 Week 14: That's that for the regular season!

And what a week it was!  Didja see the scores?  Because they were....  well, not so good.

 NOBODY cracked triple digits. Heck, half of the league didn't even break 60.  Plus, we have a new all time low score.  I don't want to tip my hand too far, but it's by the current first place team.

But we'll get to that in a minute.

First off, pick 'ems.  Well, the insanity that was the NFL this week didn't stop the 4 usuals from making their picks.  Phil was top dog going 5-1, which also landed him in first place.  RA Dave made some great picks as well, going 4-2.  This jumped him up to 3rd place over Mike.  Mike went 2-4,and Terri just got the touch of death this week getting a miserable 1-5.  So, this means that the regular season picks end like this:

Phil 48
Terri 43
RA Dave 42
Mike 41
Skoot 8
Ben 6

We'll definitely continue this on into the post season, but with Phil pulling ahead and the limited number of games, there's not a lot of hope for an 11th hour upset.

We'll make this pretty quick here, starting at the high score and working our way down.

Kookie vs Crutch.  Well, well, well.  Kookie breaks his 4 game losing streak at just the right time.  Kookie was the high score of the week at 89 points.  It's a bit of a hallow number, considering that he left *70* points on the bench.  And Crutch, yeah, he took the beating and still was able to sneak into the playoffs with an 8 seed.  I asked him last night if this means that he's going to actually look at his roster, what with this being the post season.  His response "Eh, not looking has been working for me so far..."  I think that we can all say this about Crutch's uncanny luck this season:

Ben vs. Skoot.  Well, Skoot did it.  He won out.  This was his 4th win in a row.  And considering that this record was 5-9, well, you get the idea...   His starter's performance ranged from abysmal to Le'Veon Bell.  Yeah, Bell outscore two of the teams in the league this week with 38 points.  Ben's team did perfectly respectable, knocking out 73 points himself, but it just wasn't enough.  So, Ben barely slips to 7th seed.  One other fall of from this game is that Skoot was able to climb out of 11th place.

Skoot celebrating his win.

Missy vs. Melanie  IT was the bitterest of rivalries, the stuff of legends... This is the game that people will be talking about for 10,000 years... Nah.. I'm just kidding.  This was the 10th place team (Missy) knocking the stuffing out of the dead last place team (Melanie).  The big surprise of this game is that Bilal Powell ranked up an impressive 26 points.  He's so obscure that you'd think that he was on Patrick's team.  But at the end of the day, this game didn't amount to a hill of beans.  So, no more ink on this one...

McClennen vs. Terri.  Well, McClennen is riding high.  This marks the *6th* straight win for him.  (Yes, that's easily the longest running streak in the league.  And who could question it, what with such a stud as Cousins as his QB.  (And speaking of QBs, what happened to Big Ben? I mean -2 points?  Sure, it was snowing pretty bad in his game, but ouch!)  So, it's official.  McClennen did NOT misname his team....

RA Dave vs. Patrick.  Once again, RA Dave shows complete disregard for favorites here and manhandles Patrick.  Going in, not only was Patrick ranked higher, he was supposed to beat RA Dave like a red-headed step child.  (The only vote that RA Dave pulled in this week from Pick'ems was cast by himself.)  But that's not to worry.  Because of the outcome of this game, you two get to play each other NEXT week too!!!

Phil vs. Mike.  I know what you're thinking.... we were doing the teams in descending order of the number of points scored.   AND I haven't yet talked about the beat down of the week.  That's because, though I scored the least winning points, I also administered the beat down of the week.  Not only that, but  Mike set a record for the lowest score in the league EVER!  (That would be 13.19 points.)  Yes, that beats the previous lowest score, set by Skoot last year in the championship game.  Skoot had an impressive 27.19 points.  So, congrats for cutting that score in half.

Pictured above:  A graphical representation of the Phil v Mike game.

So, yeah.  That's it.  Playoffs are locked in, and we're ready to start the post season insanity.  The top two seeds have been on a crazy losing streak recently, and the bottom half o the playoff participants are just at .500. So, who knows?  This could be another crazy upset like last year.

As a side note from last year, I do feel that I have to mention that this is Terri's second year reigning as Queen of the losers, having finished in 9th place.

DFL 2016 Week 13: Well isn't this ... Interesting?

SNL does not sanction this post.

Man, will you look at that! Things are definitely tighter than they are in most years.  One week left in the regular season and there are 3 (count 'em THREE) teams locked in to the post season.

And before any of you boring-ass Negative Nellies tell me that Patrick is so far ahead in points that he's pretty much in by default, save your freaking breath.  Ben's already pointed that out.   The fun has already been sucked out of that drama.

Pictured above, Ben in his natural state of sucking the fun out of things.

So, yeah, week 14 is going to be wild with 6 people (OK 5 really) vying for 5 (yeah yeah yeah 4) slots.  But before we get into that...

Pick 'ems.  Well, this is also heating up.  I was thinking that it was going to be a 2-3 person race going into last week.  Well, fate intervened and it looks like there's a shot that 4 people could win it.  Big man on campus was RA Dave, going 5-1 this week, and putting himself just barely into 4th place.  Right behind him was Phil going 4-2.  This rocketed me into first place (barely).  Next was Mike, who had a paltry 2-4.  Sadder still was Terri who only got 1-5.  But lest we forget the real winner here.  Kookie tried to sneak in a vote for himself this week, which blew up in his face.  SO here's were we stand now:

Phil:  43
Terri:  42
Mike:  39
RA Dave:  38

Fun fact.  We had one game where ever chose correctly :  Scott (who eeked out a win against Melanie).  And we also had one game where every chose wrong:  Ben (who just barely lost to Crutch, who as far as I can tell still isn't actually playing).  So, there go you.  Thanks for messing up our picks, Ben.

Before we jump into the games this week, lemme just say that this was a pretty conservative week.  Nobody even got close to triple digit score and the beat down of the week was less than 23 points.  Always good to see tight games.

And we'll start with the beat down of the week.  Phil vs. Kookie.  Somehow Kookie is continuing his losing streak.  This time, Phil picks up the win and delivers the aforementioned 23 point beat down of the week.  I'm not even sure what went wrong. Of course, having a butt ton of the patriots injured sure didn't help Brady, and Vinatieri sure didn't get the note to slow down.  But still, everyone else on Kookie's team was just kinda ho-hum, leaving Kookie looking like this:

Patrick vs. Terri.  Patrick pulled in the high score of the week this week with 87 points.  Terri put up a respectable 70 points, which I might remind all of you hosers, would have beaten most of y'all this week.  That lands Terri in 9th place this week, o so close to a playoff berth.

RA Dave vs. Missy.  Well, this was hands down the lowest scoring game of the week.  Dave pulled in a win on this one against Missy who had the low score of the week.Oddly enough, Missy did hit line up Nirvana this week, even with her sadly under performing starters.  That's mostly because the sum total of her bench was a big ol' goose egg.  So, Dave pulls out a W, even with a goose egg of his own, and his D left wishing for a goose egg.

I solemnly swear, no more egg references for the rest of the write up.

McClennen vs. Mike.  In what has to be the most painful, least impactful game of the week, Mike loses this one against McClennen.  And it's pretty much down to Drew Brees getting completely shut down, resulting in net negative points.  Sure it hurts, but really didn't do much, outside of extend McClennen's massive winning streak to 5.  Mike was first and still is, McClennen was third, still is.

Crutch vs. Ben.  OK, this was probably the most straight up painful game to watch this week.  Crutch is still completely on autopilot and this game is crucial for both Ben and Crutch to get into the playoffs.   Crutch is even nice enough to spot Ben a player.  And what happens?  Crutch goes and wins the game straight up.  Meanwhile, Ben is left watching Andy Luck on his bench, coming off a BYE, and more than tripling his actual starting QB, Manning the Lesser.

Ben at the post game interview.

Skoot vs. Melanie.  Yeah, this is definitely a "Wait, they are still playing game?"  Yep, both this week and next week, both of these teams are still playing.  Though next week, they will be playing the part of spoiler really.  :)  Anyways, Skoot pulled the victory here, but that's mostly because this was the most interesting thing about the game:

Yeah, I don't know either.

And that's about it.  Melanie, Missy, and Skoot.  This is officially the end of your post season run.  But you've got one more game to play spoiler in.  Embrace that and mess up your opponents this week.  (Especially you, Skoot.  I'm not forgetting that you snaked Prescott away from me off the waiver wire.  Really put him to good use this week,)

Mike, Kookie, and McClennen...  You're set and pretty much the seeding is done.  So... enjoy a practice week.  Except for you, Mike.  You can just go ahead and bench your players this week.  That'll keep em nice and rested for next week.  :)

Everyone else?  Get hungry for the win and go get it.