Author: Jack

Yoooooo, I missed last week because I was running around getting ready to go away, so here’s a quick two-fer. Lots of transactions Week 7 but not much action on The Wire, probably even less in Week 8. Gotta put together a LeagueStory to run through some of the overarching trends of the season so far, but that’s for another time:

WEEK 7:
1) Real close game here between Beans and Kris, with Kris squeaking out a win by 4.46. Brendan dropped Darnell Mooney for Isiah Pacheco, who scored 6.8 points. If you saw the auction report and noted that Beans also got Michael Gallup on auction for $5 FAAB and started him, you’ll probably want to know that Pacheco’s 6.8 points is exactly 6.8 points more than Gallup’s output that week. A few other gentlemen who rode the bench put up the points needed to keep the Beans Corp. comeback alive, but Kris is in a bit of a comeback era himself, and there can only be one in this situation. Better luck next time Beans, but as you’ll see this is a “next time” in week 9, not week 8…
2) If you turn now in your history books to the Battle of 1017, you’ll see it was a hard fought affair won by Commissioner Andrew I by a margin of 11.44 over Lord Thomas of the House of Bones. The Commissioner made a few very beneficial strategic moves before battle, acquiring a cavalry of Colts (9 pts.) and soliciting the services of a great Hunter named Renfrow (7 pts.), which surely turned the tide of this great battle. Less deft however was the choice made by the Lord of Bones, by keeping his newly acquired Panther, Chuba Hubbard (14.3 pts.), chained in his castle and unable to ravage his opponent with its razor sharp claws and teeth. These medieval/animal puns doing anything for you?

WEEK 8:
Before I get into match-ups I do want to mention this. I noticed Abie dropped Russell Wilson on Tuesday before the waiver transactions went through. This does happen every now and again and I don’t usually pay much attention to it, but this week I thought it was funny that he didn’t get either of the auctioned players he bid on and basically dropped the guy anticipating an add that never happened. Anyway, let’s keep going.
1) Beans, Beans, Beans. Guy can’t catch a break on The Wire. This week he drops TWO players who would have erased his -5.4 point loss margin, in Romeo Doubs (14.2) and Rondale Moore (19.9), while purchasing Wan’Dale Robinson for $5 FAAB and only getting 2.5 points in return. This was a bad game for the New York Football Giants, but still don’t be surprised if you see Wan’Dale in the Dropped column next week. That’s what you get for trusting your rivals (Giants) to beat your other rival (Brent).
2) Tommy Bones redeemed himself this week in the eyes of The Wire by grabbing Jason Meyers for 11 points and defeating Max by a 6.68 point margin. However, Max would like me to inform you all that he slept through the start of the 1pm games and was therefore unable to swap Darren Waller out for Mike Gesicki after Waller was ruled out. I haven’t listened to this week’s Pod yet so I’m not sure if he called in and mentioned that already.

And those are all the games that had stakes related to add/drops and auctions. It’s a skimpy article, but it’s here and that’s what matters. Now, here’s BenchBooms:

In descending order for both weeks…
5 BBs – Ryan (Mecole Hardman, 26 pts.) & Brent (D’Onta Foreman, 31.8 pts.)
4 BBs – Beans (Juju, 21.9 pts.) & Brent (Tua, 29.18 pts.)
3 BBs – Abie (Eno Benjamin, 21.3) & Tom (Jamaal Williams, 21.1)
2 BBs – Vigs (Gus Edwards, 18.6 pts.) & Beans (Geno Steaks, 19.08)
1 BB – Yours Truly (Parris Campbell, 18 pts.) & Brad (Matt Stafford, 17.38 pts.)

A nice variety of Boomers! Max has still not cracked the Top 5 benched players which is probably good but he better keep it up if he wants to stay out of last place where it really counts. Kris has 2, pretty impressive.

That’s pretty much it, LeagueStory coming soon maybe, keep an eye out for fun charts and graphs there 🙂

Now THIS, this is the Wire I like to see folks. Three of five games were close enough that these roster moves could be said to have made (almost) all of the difference between a sweet dub and a lowly L.

Before we get into it, I wanted to use my platform to say my piece on the Taysom Hill debate: The fact of the matter is that half of The League bid on this player, and because of this it’s hard for any of them to deny that whoever won the auction would not have played him in the TE spot. After all, that’s the only spot ESPN is allowing him to be played in. It’s also worth repeating that there was no talk of him being “ineligible” until after Ryan had already spent the money, which is unfair to him and anyone else who might have won the auction had different offers been made. I don’t know if it’s easy to manually adjust FAAB, but if Andrew as the Commish is using executive power to disallow Ryan from slotting Hill in the TE spot then he should definitely be compensated the amount he spent. I personally think he should be allowed to play him, the Saints are kind of a mess so if you want to take that risk then go for it. That’s why I didn’t bid. I applaud Ryan for making a smart move with his FAAB in a season where he’s already a favorite for the belt, hope we can all level up like that.

Anyway, with that meaningless opinion out of the way, here are the games we’re breaking down on The Wire:

Kris vs. Ryan: 3.4 point win by Kris
While the big debate among us (lol) was over a guy Ryan picked up, we should have been paying attention to Kris and his game of Musical Kickers. From Matt Gay to Greg Josephs, finally landing on Jason Meyers got him a very solid 13 points. Ryan was hoping for some defensive action Monday night, but Kris hung on for the 3.4 point victory thanks to the Seattle leg man. Guys, I said this last week but Kris is coming for blood. We’re getting to that point in the season and I for one am kind of scared. Spooky season.

Tom vs. Brendan: 11.9 point win by Brendan
This one was a matter of defenses, as many of these are, but there’s a bit more to it than just picking up the right guy. Bonez bid $4 on the Rams defense, but woke up to an empty bench on Wednesday of last week when he found out that his roommate had stolen Aaron Donald from right under his nose for just a dollar more. Tommy eventually landed on the Bengals, who unfortunately hit him with a goose egg while the Buffalo Bonez lost one to Beans Corp. (a company whose stock was recently upgraded by Jim Cramer from a “Sell” to a “Don’t Buy”) by 11.9. While those 10 points wouldn’t have put Tommy in the win column, it certainly would have made things much closer. Last piece of the puzzle is surprisingly Brent, who picked up the Patriots defense (13 points) but didn’t start them? Did Brent know something and, wanting to throw Beans a bone, stash this defense on purpose? I just asking questions here, folks. Beanso also spent $25 on Geno Smith and $4 on Rondale Moore who contributed to his win, hopefully that FAAB was worth spending because you now have the lease amount in The League

Brad vs. Andrew: 3.4 point win by Brad
After keeping Thomas from having the Rams defense and a 1.9 point loss margin instead of an 11.9 point one, Vigs hit the free agency pool and grabbed Kirk Cousins for free, who scored 16.5 on Sunday. He opted instead to keep in the slowly disintegrating Tom Brady, who got himself a 13.72 between berating his linemen and bloodletting so he can look his very best. At the end of the week, buddy ended up losing to Brad by a slim 3.92. Cousins would have needed to start and get at least 1.15 more points somehow to make it a win, so it wasn’t a game-losing mistake by any means. You can’t blame the guy for not going for Cousins, he’s not a Targaryen for Seven’s sake! Nah but really, when Barstool has a tier in their power rankings called “Kirk Cousins” that’s between D & F tier, you’re probably not going to start him over the guy with the rings. That’s all good and fine, but the REAL mistake is on all of us letting Brad get hot! We all knew he had the power inside him, and quite soon last season will be a distant memory because the hits keep on coming. Juuuust before kickoff on Sunday, the South Jersey Devil scooped up Deon Jackson who went off for a 23.1 point payday. That’s a very nice look and something we love to see on The Wire.

I almost forgot, BenchBooms!

As you can see, Buffalo Bonez still has a commanding lead which only got bigger thanks to Brandon Aiyuk (24.3). There was a tie for second place this week due to Andrew having the third most (Cousins, see above) and fifth most (Allen Robinson II, 14.8) bench points. Tying with fellow Hoboken resident and local silly boy Brendan Cahill, who benched Juju with 19.8. I think I’m starting to see a bit of a pattern of who’s doing this more than others… We’ll see how it pans out at the end, but only one person can receive The Golden Bench.

I’ll hopefully be joining League Talk tomorrow, so I might throw in a few other tidbits I’ve collected in my research. Be sure to listen in, and start leaving the show some reviews huh? We’ll generate some more engagements for the algorithm, and that’s good for all of us. Go Yanks.

Mfw it is Wednesday my dudes:

We had some fun this week fellas, and by we I mean me because I didn’t lose to Owen. There were two games that were pretty close that we’re gonna talk about but first I’ll reiterate something that was said on the podcast last week: Almost everyone got who they bid on, so y’all spent too much again. There was one competitive bid after the initial Tuesday-Wednesday rush that could have had some big implications on the week, let’s get into it.

Andrew vs. Ryan: 18.32 point win by Ryan
If you check the #4 slot of The Wire chart there, you’ll see that our Commish grabbed the Dolphins defense for $3 (too much) and actually LOST a point. Dude basically paid to get his ass kicked. I’ll have to look up how many times that’s happened. He dropped the Broncos D which by the rules of The League means they go to Waivers. None other than his opponent, King Marzy, steps up to bat and delivers a perfect bid of $3 to beat out Owen’s $2, relishing in the 13 points of glory come Thursday. Even though it was the Colts D who were dropped and they themselves ended up scoring 12 points in Free Agency Land, this meant a 14 point swing for Andrew, accounting for over 75% of his loss Margin. Say you decided to give Kenneth Walker III a shot instead of Diontae Johnson at Flex, your prophecy would be halfway to becoming true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Pittsburgh is not a reliable team for fantasy players. Just my two cents.

Brent vs. Kris: 4.42 point win by Kris
I saw something on the board yesterday while putting everything together that made me go “oof”, as they usually do when I think I can write something about the transaction. You can see above that this was a close game, but you might be wondering where the fire is in relation to the moves made on The Wire. Brent didn’t make any moves, and Kris sat all the players he spent (too much) money on or picked up? Well, you have a good eye my friend. Nothing that happened on The Wire would have affected the outcome of this matchup. I mistakenly thought that Kris had picked up and started Derek Carr (17.94) over the dropped Carson Wentz (21.86, [+3.92]) and then LOST to Brent by that 4.42 margin! Instead, Kris lengthened his winning streak and is low-key on the rise! Apologies for my unconscious mind assuming that Brent had won, I was still recovering from the gallon of vodka and IPAs that I had on Saturday.

Now even in that scenario with everything else happening exactly the same, the margin of win would have still been half a point. In real life, Brent is probably equally pissed whether it was half a point or 4.42 points. Even with Kelce hitting a 30-burger, it wasn’t enough to overcome the margin from Sunday and Daniel Carlson’s impressive 16. I hope Brent didn’t see that tweet that was like “Some fantasy managers’ already going into MNF were ‘I can still win if Kelce gets 4 TDs’.” Not In This League. Either way there was a path for Brent that would have had him sitting pretty by Sunday night and floating across the GWB come Monday. However, instead he decided to have some… BENCHBOOMS!

Yes, that’s right folks! Welcome back to BenchBooms. The Back to Back Champ did make this comment in the GroupMe and I mistakenly dismissed it, but it’s true. With a combined total of 45.5 points between Tyler Lockett and Jacobi Meyers, Brent is officially the winner of Week 5’s Golden Bench. These 7 BenchBooms bring his overall score to 13, but he’s still runner-up to Tommy Bonez (17) after Gabe Davis’ outstanding outing while sitting out. And if you’re wondering, players that score points while in the IR slot ARE still considered BenchBooms.

Lastly, all this talk of wins and losses further leads me into a tiny little section where I revisit some of the Historical Matchup Records of The League and let you know how things are going. If you remember my preseason column, there were three overall records that were tied going into 2022. Here are the outcomes so far:

Kris vs. Brent: 4-4 (now 5-4)
Is the Champ on a decline? Can he trade his way out of it? It looks like the scales may be tipping a bit…

Ryan vs. Andrew: 3-3 (now 4-3)
This isn’t that shocking to anyone paying attention, Ryan is really good.

Jack vs. Andrew: 3-3 (now 4-3)
This match-up was so bad back in Week 1, let’s not remember it.

As of right now, 8 of the 45 possible match-ups are in a stalemate. I won’t say which, although some are related to Tom & Brad since they just got here. Keep your eyes peeled though, you may have an important week coming up…

That’s my spiel! A little different but I like talking about different things and they waiver players doesn’t really stand up on its own. As always I love to hear suggestions for graphics and things you want to know about related to the stats so say it on the Pod or in the GroupMe or slide into my DMs! Consider me the Amazon Web Services of The League. Hope you liked it!

Alrighty, I’ve got a lot to go over and some new stuff to talk about so we’re keeping the Wire talk pretty brief. In Week 3, everyone got who they bid on except for me who wanted the Saints Defense. It would not have mattered because I got whooped by Ryan the fantasy football Gawd. This is to say that aside from Brent and anyone who bid only $1 and got their guy, y’all spent TOO MUCH. We’ll see if that comes back to bit ya later in the season.

The only transaction in the above table that even remotely matters it Kris, who paid $1 for a Chargers defense that took 6 points from his total and got rid of the Broncos’ 17 point payday. For the math geniuses out there, that’s a 23 point swing and Kris lost to Tommy by around 26. A few potential roster moves and things would be looking a little better for the “Someone Call 911″(?)s. I might need Kris to explain that one if I ever see him around Hoboken Town…

Onto Week 4. It’s so crazy because this column/format doesn’t really make sense to talk about unless games are close AND roster moves that are made in the week leading up have a effect as big as those close game margins. Max has lost two weeks in a row by less than 3, yet there were no roster moves by either teams that week where the player started and had any effect on the match-up. So that’s just great. Instead, let’s talk about myself.

Remember I said Kris made a bad move last week and lost? Well this week I made two bad moves and Kris won. I spent FAAB on David Njoku, which wasn’t a bad move in itself, but I dropped Donovan Peoples-Jones who outscored Amari Cooper 9.6 to 1.4. I lost by 6, so you can see it clearly would have gone another way if there was a single lead pass-catcher in Cleveland. Also, Devonta Smith! What’s up with this guy? I picked Rachaad White back up to handcuff Playoff Lenny and dropped Rex Burkhead to make room. Either ones of these guys in the RB/WR spot over Smith would have won me the week, womp womp.

Lastly, I want to mention that Brendan was a madman on the Wire this week. Jared Goff? More like Jared Godd with the 33-burger, plus Romeo Doubs putting up a respectable 11.20. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough to best The Commish (as I’m sure they’ll discuss on League Talk), but a valiant effort I wanted to mention nonetheless.

NOW… I’d like to introduce a new feature of The Wire that is currently in beta stages. As of now I’m calling it “BenchBooms”. Basically in an effort to more seamlessly put these Wire and LeagueStory articles together I have begun fully importing the starting and bench players of every team into the Excel, which affords some fun opportunities to compare many different things. One of the things I thought would be interesting would be to see who left the players with the most points on the bench each week. So that’s what this is; I assign the Top 5 benched players of the week a point value from 5 to 1, and the team who has the most points at the end of the season will receive The Golden Bench. Through four weeks, here are the current teams in the running:

1. Buffalo Bonez (12 points)
   Week 1 Kareem Hunt – 21 pts. (4) [i.e. 2nd highest benched player of the week]
   Week 3 Jamaal Williams – 23.7 pts. (4)
   Week 4 Clyde Edwards-Helaire – 21.9 pts. (4)
2. South Jersey 4th ‘n’ Schlong (10 points)
   Week 1 Michael Thomas – 20.2 pts. (3)
   Week 2 Jaylen Waddle – 34.6 pts. (5)
   Week 3 Devin Singletary – 19.6 pts. (2)
3. Beans Corp. (9 points)
   Week 1 Cordarrelle Patterson – 21.1 pts. (5)
   Week 1 James Robinson – 19.4 pts. (2)
   Week 1(!!) Kirk Cousins – 19.08 pts. (1)
   Week 2 Curtis Samuel – 19.4 pts. (1)

So that’s my new thing I’m doing because The Wire is getting Boring! If you’ve made it this far, please let me know how you like it, also if you think we should keep track of the Top 10 benched players and give them Golden Bench points accordingly instead of just 5. I’m gonna put a poll in the group with vague options so you have to read the above to know what I’m asking.

Last of all, here’s a few little charts through four weeks as a treat for me missing a week. Enjoy!

“Are you sure?”? Fuck yes I am, you kidding? Idk what my company thinks this is, but everyone needs a PASSION PROJECT. One that’ll eventually get them fat stacks of cash and a private jet, but we can keep that on the down low. For now, let’s get back into the swing of things:

Ahhhhhhh, the board has never looked better and all the familiar name and faces are showing up. We all remember the rules; names shaded blue have been added and dropped at least once, red border means multiple times added, orange border means multiple times dropped, we compare FAAB spent to point for that week (for some reason) and then the points of the added player vs. the dropped player, as well as whether that difference could have changed the outcome of your match-up.

I’ll keep this brief because I have to go record the pod soon. If you look closely at the table you’ll see two match-ups that were quite close, we’ll discuss them both right here…

Abie vs. Brent: Now, Abie himself alluded to this in the GroupMe on Sunday, but if you missed it you won’t find it on the table. You might see his add of the Rams Defense and how they scored a respectable 11 points in a walk-on job that was easy peasy because they were playing the Falcons. However, you take a look at that W/L column and still see an L. How could that be? Abie’s got all the moves down to a science, you think. That is until you take a look at Abie’s bench from that very same week and notice that the Bucs ended up with a whopping 22 points against the Saints in a crazy real-life game that would have saved the Hockeypro’s fantasy week. Based on the Saints’ performance in Week 1, I probably would have done the same thing. Not sure if that says something bad about you or good about me, I won this week but it was an ugly, and I mean ugly win. But I’m not here to talk about that. On we go.

Vigs vs. Max: I think Max might have released Beetlejuice or Candyman or whatever demon controls fantasy football bad luck because holy cow. I’m not going to rehash the most recent LeagueStory column, but it’s looking worse and worse for Max. The Commish must have been pretty happy to see his team hang on after a Josh Allen 30-burger on Monday Night. Everyone pitched in for this win, take a look at the box score and you’ll understand that depth is what really counts in fantasy, next-man-up mentality at its finest. This week, no one proved that more than Tyler Higbee (or Higsby), who replaced Cole Kmet (lol) and scored 10.6 to put Vigs ahead by 5.52 when all the dust settled. There is quite certainly a bizarro world where our friend Andwoo thought “y’know, the Bears had a bit of a fluke game Week 1. Plus Cole Kmet has two consecutive consonants in his last name, just like me! Based on those two vague notions alone, I’m gonna give him a second chance.” In this timeline, Max probably goes on to win The League, and gloats about it so much on the air that he gets a standing invitation for a seat at the FOX NFL Sunday Countdown table. I guess we’ll never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Lastly, I’ll just say this now and probably again on the podcast: Yes, I picked up and started Rex Burkhead this past week. No, I didn’t listen to the advice from the podcast. Yes, he only scored 1.9 points. Yes, I still got the win and have now beaten the two main hosts of the podcast this year and Tommy has not beaten me since joining The League. As Erica Sinclair from Stranger Things says, “just the facts”.

Anyway, here are those other tables I keep track of, the one with the amount of times you Add/Drop and the net amount of points that come out of it, and the tracking of your budgets for Week 2.

After that flop of a FAAB buy in Week 1, Beans seems too be biding his time. So is Ryan, who’s in a tight race with Brad for most points. That’s a sentence I’d laugh at a year ago today, but now they’re the ones laughing. Like I said before, Abie’s got the moves, and he’s starting most of those points. Let’s see if he can keep it up or if someone else finds a diamond in the rough. Once again, pound-for-pound Kris is looking scary good at picking and choosing, so it’s quite possibly going to be him. On the FAAB side, I’m not as sure about Kris since he blew $27 in one week, but we’ll see if scarcity can breed some innovation. Let’s trick Brent into spending some maybe, even though he’s pretty occupied with trades right now…

With that, I bid you all farewell, good night, and don’t spend it all in one place. Go League.