DFL 2018 Week 15: It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times...

... Oh who am I kidding?  It was only the blurst of times!  I mean did you see those games???

via GIPHY

Yeah, it's going to be a bitter blog post.  So get ready....

via GIPHY

So, the good news is that we have only 2/3 the number of games this week as we did last.  And next week we'll only have half of that number... well, only half that count at least....  So, we'll do the quick, quick version of the write up from here on out

This kid gets it.

Pick ems!  OK this was kind of a gimme.  All of the games were slated to be blow outs.  So, everyone, except the Ben bot (who made his selections too soon) bingo'ed this week.  The playoff totals?

Phil:  4-0

Crutch:  4-0

Josh:  4-0

Ben:  3-1

Which brings the total for the season to:

Phil:  60

Crutch: 51

Josh:  49

Mike:  45

Ben:  45

Terri:  27

And .. the games:

Ben (3rd seed: 86.99) vs Kyle (6th seed: 46.16).  Really the only blow out of the week.  And accordingly, Ben pulls in the beat down of the week this week. On Ben's side of the ball, everything was coming up Aces.  Prerry much everyone but Ebron and Houston D met or blew away expectations.  And even better news for Ben is that pretty much nobody on his team is on the injury report...  Looking good, Ben...  Kyle, on the other hand... made all the right choices, and none of them panned out.  Just a really bad time to go belly up, really.

Patrick (1st seed: 65.67) vs D (8th seed: 62.36).  This should have been lambs to the slaughter.  Patrick was estimated to blow the barn doors off, and he *barely* eeked out a win here.  And that was only on Monday night.  When McCaffery threw a touch down.  O man... What a nail biter.  D - Yeah...  your team just stunk it up.  Except for Hopkins and Fairbairn, who carried you.  But, man wouldn't it have been great for another 8 seed to advance??

Mike (2nd seed:  60.99) vs Crutch (7th seed: 56.51).  Well, this was pretty much the battle of good QBs doing badly.  :( Running backs kicked ass, and Kickers kicked ass... everyone else... kinda eh.  I would be whole-heartedly cheering for Mike here, but he was only using 1 TE this week.  I mean, his other TE didn't actually score, so it would have cost him the game, but I do like a little razzle dazzle.

Josh (5th seed: 55.54) vs Phil (4th seed: 52.35).  OK, if you've seen my Facebook feed today you know that I'm pretty much in hate with Alvin Kamara right now.  Yes, he was the top scorer on my team, but he also screwed me pretty hard in not 1 but 2 (and maybe 3) leagues.  Outside of Allen leaving the game on his first attempted pass, Josh's team did pretty well across the board.  This was the only upset this week. So, well done, Josh!  Go kick some ass.

And that's it!  Kyle, D, Crutch, and I now compete to avoid being playoff bitch.  And Ben, Patrick, Mike, and Josh are all still vying for the gold.  Good luck everyone! See you next week!

DFL 2017 Week 15: Here comes the playoffs

Well, they playoffs are upon us and they are just kicking everyone in the nuts aren't they?

Ok, so technically, it's only kicking HALF of the people's nuts who played this week, and really that's only like two thirds of the league overall....  YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!!  DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH YOUR MATH LEARNING!

Before the games, let's take a peek at the Pick'ems.  FFS, those even kicked people in the nuts.  The people in particular being Ben, Crutch, and myself, who all went 2-2. Which means that... we might have all of just not picked. 

On the plus side, Crutch does get a "YOU'RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR!" award for not getting any votes, but still getting the win.  Congrats, you salty bastard!

Man, I've missed these...

Phil vs. Ben.  Motherfucker.  I was slated to win. I went into Sunday up THIRTY DAMN POINTS!!  And I could have won it all, should I have gone another way.  (I hemmed and hawed over putting Olsen in, but decided against it, which cost me the game.)  But really, this does kind of sum up my season.  Plus, I Ben'ed it this week, AGAINST Ben, which is frustrating. 

Well done, Ben. Enjoy your extra time in the playoffs, you jerk face.

Josh vs. Kerry.  Ugh... well, if this doesn't hurt, I don't know what does.Josh laid down the beat down of the week.  He was projected to do so, but the way that it went down was nothing less than spectacular.  In one of Josh's more restrained scoring outing, he scored the third highest points of the week, with no huge superstars to speak of.  Kerry, ont eh other hand just imploded like I've not seen before.  Wilson shit the bed (against the RAMS? Really?) Jackson, Henry, and Fournette were hurt early in the games,   And, again, the Seattle D was pummeled by the freaking Rams. 

Heck of a way to end your rookie season, Kerry.  Sorry to see it go down like that....

Crutch vs. Patrick.  Crutch went into this game as a 4 point underdog.  Yet somehow, he pulled out a win with 5 points to spare.  Both teams played well, it's just that Crutch somehow played a little better than Patrick.  The real kicker for Patrick is that his ace in the hole is Elliott who is coming back NEXT week.  Just in time for it not to matter..  Well done pulling the upset, Crutch.  Good luck.  You sure as hell are going to need it moving forward.

D vs Kyle.  Another upset!  This game was actually projected within a point, but id didn't quite get there.  Each team had their QB and a Flex player post decent numbers.  But D was able to take this one to the bank with his superior TE.  (Yay, Ertz!)  Everyone else on the field was just kinda ho-hum.  Crongrats to D for advancing to the  next round.  ( I do believe that this might be the farthest that he has ever gotten.  I don't want to jinx it, but congratulations, good sir!

So, that means that in the semi-final round, we have
Ben vs. D
Josh vs Crutch

And in the consolation bracket:
Phil vs. Kyle
Patrick vs. Kerry

Good luck, guys!  Only two games left!

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 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!

DFL 2013 Week 15: It's Post Season time!!

What would the average man on the street in Denver say if I were to tell him that Peyton "Gold Boy" Manning would do his best Tony Romo impression in week 15, and make pretty much the entire fantasy football playing world cry out in pain?  I bet that it would look a little something like this:

Yeah, that's how this week went.  Lots of close games and a bunch of upsets.  But before we get into that, let's take a look at the pick'ems!

It seems like now that there are less games, we've got more picks.  Half the league jumped into the pick'em pool this week.  Phil took top spot, with 3-1 and Skoot took bottom spot with 1-3. Everyone else... well they didn't figure on any upsets and went 2-2.  So, that means, with a scan 8 games left in the season, Crutch is *barely* hanging on with 51 correct picks, Phil and Ben are tied with 50 picks, and Skoot theoretically still has a shot with 47 picks.  Terri and Mike are slugging it out for 5th place.  She has 42 picks, and he has 41 picks.  It's really coming down to the wire for this one...

We'll start at the top of the deck and work our way down....

Ben vs Phil:  Part 2, Electric Boogaloo.
Yep, fates be damned, after eeking out a victory against Ben last week, Ben and I had to face off again this week.  (And had the game gone the other way in week 14, then we still would have faced off, as his seeding would have gone up one, and mine down one.)  So, Ben scored the second most points last week and lost.  This week, he scored the third most points and lost.  So, just for those of you keeping score out there, that means that Ben had the second most points in the league (by like 35 points), he barely snuck into the playoffs, and he was eliminated right off the bat by playing the team with the highest points in the week.  I just have one thing to say about that.  Tell 'em, Mal:

Yeah... there are no words.  I fully expect Ben to take Bitch of the Playoffs by having the worst possible opponents week to week.  You know, Ben, when you are the commish, you get to set the match ups week to week.  Maybe you should take a look into that position next year.  :)

Skoot vs McClennnen:  Upset of the year!
You know it, I know it.  Somehow McClennen got Reggie Bush to outscore Megatron and then some this week.  I have no Earthly idea what happened here. Now what you might not know is that Skoot and I were discussing the match ups the day before the matches were set.  I was super stoked because I thought that I was going to be facing McClennen, what with his sub-70 point projection.  So, what happened?  Well, pretty much the entirety of Skoot's team had their appendices burst simultaneously, leaving then far below point projections.  (I mean Brees being shut down in St Louis?  Johnson being pretty much shut out?  What other explanation could there be??)  Meanwhile, all of McClennen's players somehow turned it on just enough to rack up 3 more points than Skoot.  You know that's gotta hurt..  Well, congrats, McClennen.  Now, let's see if you can set your line up before Thursday.  I'm just sayin'...

One final note.  I got a quote from Skoot on how he thought that the game went:

Or, the more family-friently version:  Any given Sunday, man.  Any given Sunday...

Terri vs Mike:  The G Bowl.
This game wasn't nearly so tight...  20 point margin of victory and the scrappy underdog pulls it out in the end.  Well play, Mike G!  Who would have thought that Nick Foles would have outscored Peyton Manning by over 10 points?  With Terri playing Manning the greater and Mike playing the Defense against Manning the lesser, it was definitely not a game that Archie Manning would have wanted to bet on.  Nevertheless, here is a pic of the Manning boys from this weekend:

That sums it up nicely, doesn't it?

Finally, we look at Patrick vs Missy
This was hands down the tightest game of the week.  I hesitated to write this column, in fear that there may be a stat correction.  Doesn't look like there are any coming, so we'll call it Patrick beating Missy by a scant 1.6 points... But how can this be?  Over half of Patrick's starters scored less than 5 points.  And two more didn't hit double digits.  Oh, right.  That's because Patrick's got a standing deal with the devil to start players who got apeshit crazy out of nowhere.  I assume that y'all remember Patrick starting Brandon Marshall a few years ago when he scored 63 points on his own.  Well, it's happened again.  Jamaal Charles pulled in 43 by himself.  And to a lesser extent, Jennings also doubled expectations. So, if we ignore the KC @ Oakland game, Patrick got whooped thoroughly.

I'm out of funny relevant pics for the week. I hope that this suffices...

So, where does that leave us?  Well, first and foremost, this is the first semi-finals in a long time without a lady present.  (OK, excluding Patrick.  We all know that he identifies as a woman, but he still has to tuck, so technically, he's still a dude.)  Next up, is the semi finals.  Patrick versus Phil, and McClennen versus Mike G.  Yeah, and a consolation bracket, too  And they are fighting not to be bitch of the playoffs.  So, I guess worth a mention:  Ben versus Missy, and Skoot versus Terri (both were projected to win this week, so someone's gotta win next week.)

Good luck to everyone!  (Except Patrick.  We hate Patrick so very ... very much.)

DFL Week 15: Are you ready for some Playoffs???

The playoffs are in full swing and we definitely are keeping things interesting this year.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say, I'm about as surprised as this kid:

Coupla upsets and a slumbering giant wakes up?  Hells yeah, we're ending this season right.

However, before we get into the good bad and ugly of it, I wanted to let you know that there is a new highlight player this year.  Veterans of the league may remember one "Noname McPeePeePants", whose real name escapes me a the moment.  See, I was playing Kookie a few years ago and it came down to Monday night.  He had just Tony FUCKING Romo and one receiver (McPeePeePants) left to play.  Dallas was sucking eggs the first half, so I thought that it was a no-brainer to win it.  Well, turns out Romo turned it on in the second half and McPeePeePants got the game winning touch down, which gave Kookie the win.

Why am I telling this story?  Well, in my other league, in the semi-finals, I had a 9 point lead going into the Monday night game.  Only Chris Buthole (Johnson) remained.  I figured that I  had a decent shot to win.  Butthole did nothing that night.  25 yards of rushing the entire night.  O wait.  There was on highlight in that entire game.  Butthole running 95 freaking yards to score a touchdown.  Must have been a trick play, right?  Only if you go to the Joe Paterno school of play calling which states that no matter what down, no matter location o the field, the most surprising play is to take your stuf RB and run him up the middle.  Which is what Butthole did.  Son of a ....  (Ironically, the guy that I was playing also had Tony FUCKING Romo on his team, but I was raging so hard at Butthole, that I hardly even noticed.  But it bears saying Tony FUCKING Romo.)

(And don't give me too hard of a time when I wander... I only have 2/3 of the games that I normally have to write about this week.  I get paid by the word.)

OK enough of that.  I'm back in this league.  So, the games were pretty exciting, no?  We'll get to that in a minute.  First off, let's talk about pick'ems.  Gentlemen, we have a dark horse emerging coming down the stretch.  Crutch, going 3-1 picks managed to tie Kookie for 1st place.  (Kookie only went 2-2.)  (Technically, the tie breaker goes to Kookie since he's got a higher correct percentage, though I don't really agree with that.) By going 2-2, I put some distance between myself and Ben (who went 1-3).  Also, high picks were Mike and Melanie with 3-1, and RA Dave lost a position by only going 2-2 this week.  Only 8 picks left and it's definitely coming down to the wire!  Keep 'em up, boys!  (And girls, of course...)  (Technically, And an I are still in it for first, but it's a long shot.)

We'll start at the top and work down...

First off, the 1 vs 8 seed:   Melanie versus Mike G.  Though Mike put up some pretty good bravado last week, he failed to knock Melanie out of the playoffs.  With only a 14 point spread, it was a lot closer than Yahoo! suggessted.  Both teams had solid starting line ups, though it probably is worth mentioning that Frank Gore, who was benched on Mike's team, also go an asterisk this week for recovering a fumble in the end zone.  (What's up with these asterisks?  Two in as many weeks!)

Next:  4 versus 5 seed: Patrick Versus Ben.  Patrick *finally* snaps his losing streak this week to advance to the semi-finals.  Everyone except his DEF performed admirably, though his DEF was going up against the #1 ranked Atlanta Falcons, who were charged up from last week's loss the the Panthers.  Ben finally got bitten for starting a Detroit QB, and the rest of the team just did "eh".  (To add insult to injury, Ben's benched kicker scored 20 points.  Sadly, even if Ben hit line up Nirvana, he wouldn't have beaten Patrick this week,e even if Patrick went the opposite and started his worst line up.)  Oddly, the 40 point beating wasn't the beat down of the week.

Beat down of the week came in the closest projected game of the week:  3 Seed versus 6 seed:  RA Dave versus Missy.  Missy quietly destroyed RA Dave by just her entire team going buck wild.  Dave's team just went "Bleh".  And speaking as the person who will be playing the winner of this game, let me say "Thank you, Missy" for taking Tony FUCKING Romo out of my path to the playoffs.  What's that?  She's got Butthole on her team?  DAMMIT!!!

Finally, The 2 seed versus the 7 seed:  Joy versus me:  I did it...  I took down the reigning champ.  After getting destroyed by her in our first match up, eeking out a 1 point victory in our second, I laid into her for a 30 point walloping.  What happened?  Well, BOTH of our QBs hit -1 points.  BOTH of our DEFs had around 30 points.  The real difference was my Kicker went buck wild (Joy's was shut out) and Andre Johnson decided to actually play.

Looking forward, in the Semi-finals, we've got Melanie versus Patrick (both higher seeds in the quarter finals), and Missy versus Phil (both lower seeds in the quarter finals).  Couple of things to mention:
1 - Yes, yes, yes, there are two other games going on in the consolation bracket.  However, I'm guessing that the managers playing them probably wont'be putting too much work in this week, so I'm not going to  hype it too much.  (Yes, I will still include them in the write up this season.)
2 - Missy versus Phil is the same match up that we had in the championship game a few years back.  Missy won because Akers missed a 40+ yard field goal.  LACES OUT, DAN!!!
3 - My winning streak against all odds is still rolling.  Come on inertia principle of luck!  (I think that if I win this week, I'll be tied for the longest win streak of the season.  You don't want to stand in front of that, do you, Missy?)
4 - At least we have more guys still in contention than we usually do at this point.  Go Patrick and Phil!
5 - On the plus side, Melanie versus Patrick looks like it's going to be a pretty tight game.  ON the minus side, Missy is set to give me one hell of a beating.  Do I get bonus points for knocking the back to back champ out of the playoffs against all odds?  Yeah, I didn't think so...

Good luck to everyone still in it.  But mostly to me.  :-)

(Also, as a heads up this week, due to the holidays, there are neither Thursday night nor Monday night games this week.  There is one Saturday night game though...)