Sorry to interrupt TNF, thought I’d hop on here and give y’all a quick update you can read during halftime.
First thing’s first: In solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, the columnist for The Wire is going on strike effective immediately. If Bill Maher wants to scab and write it himself, he’s more than welcome to. However, LeagueStory will still be active throughout the 2023 season.
Next, I’d like to introduce something new I’m trying out directly related to our podcast, League Talk. I’ll be listening each week and taking down various claims made by our hosts and guests, and checking them against the numbers where possible. Certain requests, such as figuring out if there’s ever been a Week 1 where both teams’ first round picks didn’t play, are grossly outside my purview. However, most questions related to team match-ups, wins, losses, total points and records will be researched to their fullest extent.
Here’s a little taste from this week’s pod: Claim: Brent’s score (162.72) is a top 25 all-time score AND top 5 in the past 3 years. Facts: This is FALSE. See below for the updated table of highest scores:
Note: I wasn’t sure if “last three years” meant 2023-2021 or 2022-2020, so I included both. Even with the most generous option, the Mickey Mouse champ doesn’t crack the top 10 just yet. There’s even a loss 15 spots above this performance, nothing is guaranteed.
Claim: Brendan vs. Jack Week 1 was one of the lowest scoring match-ups (“top 10, maybe top 5”). Fact: This is TRUE. See below once again:
We see that it wasn’t AS BAD as the infamous Ryan vs. Max, but it was close. We actually got a new low in the last week of the regular season last year with Tom vs. Abie, maybe it was mentioned on the podcast but I think many people just forgot about it.
Lastly, I’ll give an update on historical match-ups that many of you have been requesting
The most lopsided record at the start of the 2023 season is Kris & Ryan (8-1)! Andrew certainly does have Brent’s number still with a 8-2 record over him. However, Kris also has Andrew’s number (7-3), so who’s the real hero? Probably Kris because he’s also 7-4 vs. Brent. While our defending champ is trying to even out his record with me from last year (2-6 to 4-6), he’s extending his lead over Max (5-1 to 6-1). I haven’t lost a game to Brent since 2020 (2-2 to 4-2), look it up. I also evened out my record with Max since 2020 (2-7 to 7-7), suck it. Nor has Brent lost to Max since 2020 (2-2 to 5-2). Abie hasn’t lost to Brendan (4-4 to 7-4) or Kris (2-2 to 5-2) since 2020.
Finally, here are all the teams with a tied record as of Week 1 of 2023: Tom & Jack (will be broken in Week 2) Tom & Brent Brad & Kris Tom & Ryan Jack & Max Vigs & Jack Vigs & Brad Vigs & Ryan Brendan & Kris (will be broken in Week 2)
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! If you didn’t see your name as much as you’d like, I take requests and the spreadsheet is always being updated. Bye!
Here’s the part where I tell you “I stand corrected”. I woke up this morning to a GroupMe message from our Commish stating that he though this was the worst season ever for The League through six weeks. I’m thinking to myself, “I’m doing pretty well so far, Herbert didn’t get me as much as I would have liked this week but I still beat Brent. What’s this guy talking about?” I went on to reply with a hilarious GIF from the movie Billy Madison, oh my God that is funny, implying I thought my former roommate was wrong. I crunched the numbers, and it turns out that I’M the one who was wrong. Take a look:
As you can see, we are in fact in the worst season so far, not even cracking 7,000 total points through 6 weeks. What makes it worse is that 2021 was the highest scoring first 6 weeks, so we’re seeing a huge year-to-year drop off. Hopefully this is fixed soon. I wonder how this compares to the NFL total points, will I dive back in for some more research? Stay tuned to find out. If not, the Wire soon come…
EDIT: I crunched the numbers again, thanks to pro-football-reference.com and found that there does happen to be a bit of a correlation here:
The only season out of place is 2020 with the most points through Week 6 and the third-most fantasy points for The League. How fitting, perhaps nearly a year in lockdown made the boys’ brains a little mushy and we weren’t scoring like we should have been, perhaps the points scored were across a wider range of NFL players due to last-minute COVID list substitutions, perhaps more of these points were scored by kickers with less fantasy value. Regardless, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not The League’s owners’ fault that our scores have been so low. It’s the fault of the National Football League, as is most things. Thanks for reading, Go League!
Ohhhhh boy. Ohhhhhhhhhhh God. I don’t even know what to say right now. Should I be upset that the Pod thinks my team is bad? Should I laugh at them for not realizing Breece Hall has been in the top 20 RBs for the past few weeks and is only going up from there? Should I remind you I’ve done this before? Should I give you a history lesson? What should I do?
I guess I will say that I’m glad I didn’t join the Pod last night, if only so that I could come in here again and be right about stuff (which I love). We’ll start with the main two points that were asked for by our gracious hosts.
Biggest Margins of Victory:
As you can see, Brad’s win last week over Abie is in the ballpark of the highest in LeagueStory, but definitely not the top spot. However, it is another entry in the “Margins that are Higher than the Loser’s Score” list, which might have to be updated after 2021…
Highest Scores:
Once again, it looks like we’re all doin a little too much drinkin & smokin to remember the stats. Definitely impressive though for Tommy to crack the Top 20 in his second year in The League when it took me until last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan and Brad made their way up there this year as well, not so sure about Abie as of now 😦 The margins in green are also included in the highest margins table you get the idea.
Lastly, about “history repeating itself”, Mr. Vignali was technically correct but maybe used a bit of framing to make the narrative sound better. While he DID give Brent his first losses of 2021 and 2020, there’s a little more to it… In 2020, he actually went up against The Future Champ in Week 2 and LOST before coming back around in Week *7* and knocking him down just slightly. In 2021, the first loss for Brent came in Week 3, which also saw the first loss for the also previously undefeated HOCKYPRO69…also. This just goes to show that while the letter of the statement (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas) was true, the spirit of the statement (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, God) tells a different story. What does this mean for Week 5 2022? Who the hell knows…
This is long overdue, much like The Wire which will be coming out some time early-ish this week, but I mentioned I would look into the archives and see if anyone has had a worse two week stretch than Beans’ start to the current season. The Corporation scored 151.6 over the course of these two weeks, a total which may not even guarantee you a win if scored in only one week (see the first graph at https://mustbesunday.com/2021/09/15/the-wire-week-1-2021/).
This claim was made by our frequent podcast contributor and Hoboken resident, Tommy Bonez, who can be forgiven for not knowing about the rough patch undergone by The Martian himself, Ryan O’Connell. This skid actually carried over across two seasons as you’ll see below:
If we want to count multi-season streaks (which I usually do) and ignore the fact that the first two games were in the losers bracket of the playoffs (I also usually do), this is most likely the worst 3-Week Run in LeagueStory. The last match-up against Beans also saw the Corp. scoring 164.82, making this one of the widest recorded margins as well. Just when you thought we were done though, there’s one more…
2019 Week 11 (vs. Kris): 95.62 points 2019 Week 12 (vs. Andrew Lebron): 51.5 points 2-Week Total = 147.12 points
This one is certainly more bona fide and comparable to what we see in the current year – no playoffs, no carryover, just a historic collapse at the end of a historically bad season. I’ll further remind everyone that this was the season that gave us the TikTok dance punishment. On the other side of the coin, Ryan has since never scored that low and ended up in the Championship Game of 2021 and is currently a frontrunner for Most Points in 2022. It’s based on this Reversal of Fortunes that I can justify bringing up his past failures, and it just goes to show that the Fantasy Gods giveth as much as they taketh away. Stay humble everybody, and Go League. More content coming soon…
Interesting, interesting, interesting. By GroupMe request, here is everyone’s records through Week 3 (of course using projected results for any match-up that is still to be decided this MNF). Max was correct in that this is his first recorded 0-3 season in The League. Ryan we love to see it. Interesting that nobody went 3-0 in 2018 or 2021. Everyone else’s trajectories are fun to look at as well, and I’ll reiterate that requests like these dealing with records and points and historical match-ups are always welcome and usually don’t take too long to put together. Last but not least, lol Lebron.
Much apologies for not showing up until after the first NFL Sunday of the year. We’ll have Wires and LeagueStories galore once the season gets into full swing, but at the request of a certain Alabama-based League member, I’m back in action.
Things are going well for me so far, barring a Brandon McManus 30-burger I’ll have my first win of the season despite two goose eggs. Anyway, let’s take a look at the grid up top:
Last year I posted something similar (which you can scroll down to, maybe do a little side-by-side action if you want to see how this season went). I wrote about a few interesting matchup records, so now I’ll let you know how they panned out…
Max 7-2 vs. Jack: This was the most lopsided all-time record at the start of last year, but we all know how my season went last year. I picked up wins in both meetings and started to even things out (7-4). Kris 4-0 vs. Max: Basically, Kris was Tom Brady and Max was the Cowboys (sorry Beans). However, these two split their 2021 games and so the shutout ended (5-1). More on these two later… Abie & Brendan are 4-4: Beans Corp didn’t have the best year, dropping two games to Abie. The CEO hopes to even things out in 2022-23 with his only friend D’Andre Swift (6-4). Jack & Brent are 2-2: Even though Brent took home the belt and the top scoring title, the regular season was mine (3-2). Abie & Kris are 2-2: These guys also played each other only once in Week 10. Looking back at The Wire, Abie picked up The Cowboys Defense for $1 and got 22 points out of it and a 13 point win over the Norse Horse (2-3). Vigs & Ryan are 2-2: This was the only match-up record to stay tied, as the two games were split between these two boys from opposite sides of the Congers train tracks (3-3). Vigs & Max are 3-3: Another situation where only one game was played between these two in 2021, with the edge going to the Bama Butts, who were helped out by Jamal Agnew (remember him?) pitching in around 14 points in a 24 point win (3-4). Max & Brent are 2-2: Brent picked up a commanding 40 point win over Max last year, and it seems that he’ll do just about the same this week, so make it 2-4 (2-3).
Whew. That was fun/interesting, right? Now here are some new storylines to look out for in 2022:
Andrew 6-1 vs. Brent: Brent won their only match-up of ’21 by 1.42, I guess that’s why Vigs makes Brent call him “My Commish”. Cheeky. Jack 6-2 vs. Kris: Lopsided match-up so far, can Kris even the score? Max 6-2 vs. Abie: Lopsided match-up so far, can Abie even the score? Kris 6-3 vs. Andrew: Lopsided match-up so far, can Andrew even the score? Kris & Brent are 4-4: This is a tie-break that Kris NEEDS to win to establish himself as a big player in The League and hopefully get back in to the playoff race. Andrew & Ryan are 3-3: Another tie to look out for, Ryan’s unconventional style goes against all the rules of the Commish and might have him rattled? We’ll see Week 5. Jack & Andrew are 3-3: After tonight, you can ignore this one but I had it down from before so there ya go.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:
So as I mentioned at the beginning, Max asked me to write up a little something about all the times he’s scored 125+ points and still lost. I don’t really want to make a cool graphic because it’d be kind of hard to do with lines and bars and I don’t want to put in the effort right now, so here’s the data table:
OK so I wrote the rest of this article but then it was taking forever to autosave so I tried to refresh and it lost all my shit. Basically Max lost twice a year when scoring 125+, but for the most part he was not the second-highest scorer losing to the top scorer like he thought. Most of these wins were pretty bad, but the 2019 Week 15 playoff loss to Lebron probably stung a little more after coming off a bye week. We’ll add another one for Week 1 2022.
There’s one other League member that can complain about this more though:
Wow. Five times just last year and four losses with 150+ points. You don’t see Kris whining about it though, dude keeps his hand in his pocket just waiting to take that belt. Last year’s semi-finals was a true clash of titans that ended in a devastating way for the Norseman. Then the very next week he had to face my ultimately meaningless barrage of points that in another timeline would have won me a championship. Here’s to hoping we both find our way to the playoffs and Brent doesn’t.
The rest of the League had this happen to them a little less frequently:
Beans: 7 (tied w Max) Brent & Andrew: 6 each Me: 5 Tom, Ryan & Abie: 2 each
Well, that’s about it, again… Football is back baby, I’m gonna go watch the Emmys and Rick and Morty. Bye!
I have no idea why I’m straining to remember these terms and shit from high school/college stats right now. Is it because I’m bored? Am I trying to make up for hardly paying attention to this past week of football? Do I need some time to get The Wire together and I’m stalling? Probably all of the above, but you gotta admit this shit looks pretty cool. Who said we’d never use it in the real world?
Just a few things to notice: As I mentioned in the GroupMe, this year was the highest scoring since 2018. This is further shown in the highest average score at the top of the image, but this regular season also had the second lowest standard deviation of the past four years. That means (according to Google) that the scores stayed a bit closer to the mean score than in other years. Sound to me like The League is getting more competitive… You’ll also notice on the charts the trendlines with the R-squared included right on there. Basically, if you don’t remember or weren’t taught this, R-squared is a measure of predictability. In other words, an R-squared of 1 means that 100% of the population’s variances were predictable based on the inputs or the formula that the data follows. Obviously this is fantasy football, so no formula can really predict the outcome each week, no matter how hard ESPN’s AI or algorithms may try. Anyway, based on the results it seems that this season was the second-least predictable, with the least predictable season also being 2018. A highly competitive League where you never know what will happen? Now that sounds pretty perfect to me 😉
Above is a comparison of the current tenants of 149 Sullivan Street in two different years, posted today in order to celebrate my return to the famous apartment following my brief time on the COVID reserve list. I’m just now listening to the pod (and I know I’m quite late again on The Wire) and I forgot about how dominant of a season my man #DaCommish had back in 2019. Looking at the numbers it seems like through 13 weeks, I’ve had higher totals scores and win margins in the current year, but Vigs didn’t pick up his second loss until the last week of the regular season. This makes my 2 game losing streak stand out like an ugly sore thumb, but then again I didn’t lose by almost 80 points. Interestingly our total points were much closer through 12 weeks (I still had a slight edge), but as you can see we had very different performances in Week 13, so that made the true difference up to this point. Will I follow my roommate to the glory of the championship? We’ll find out in time. Thanks for caring!
In the words of Tom Wambsgans, “Buckle up, fuckleheads!” We had quite the week of close games, which have been discussed ad infinitum in the last few days on the Pod and in the Power Rankings. Obviously, I look at things a little differently and have a trove of stats and charts at my disposal, so get ready to relive the highs and lows of Week 9 and maybe learn something along the way…
Max vs. Brad Background: Aw man, are we pulling for a win from Brad. Not just to keep Stand-Up Watch interesting, but so that his inaugural season in The League isn’t so bad that he doesn’t want to come back next year. Hopefully your dynasty league has been going well and you’re already scheming how to come in and fuck shit up next year when no one suspects it. No one expected me to be good this year, it could happen to anyone. I wonder how many times Max and Brad have met in person, I bet you could count them on one hand, or even one finger, but let me know in the GroupMe because I’m genuinely curious. Let’s see how things were going for both teams in the lead-up to this match-up:
As you can see, Max has just been bouncing on the .500 line like he bounces all over the country to do the news like a regular Michael Thompson (from Rick and Morty). Meanwhile, aside from the Week 1 win which is covered by Max’s chart, Brad has been doing his best James Cameron impression (from South Park). If this week goes a different way, Max will get his first glimpse below that line and Brad may finally find bottom and begin the process of raising the bar.
The Match: Looking at The Wire (new location for this week), it once again comes down to the defenses. Max bid $2 less than Vigs for Steelers D/ST (more on that move’s effect on Vigs later). This makes sense because Max only has $16 FAAB left compared to the $80 held by Da Commish. If Max decided to throw $6 instead and started Pittsburgh (4 pts.) over Las Vegas (8 pts.), things would be much closer. Pair that with Brad not dropping Vikings D/ST (6 pts.) and not buying Boston Scott for $10 and keeping the Eagles (-3) on the sidelines, we have an entirely different outcome. Boston Scott actually missed his projection by 5.6 points, brutal. Another missed projection came from Jordan Love, who fell 5.3 points short. You truly hate to see it, even though the projections largely mean dick. Basically, the saviors for Max were Kirk Cousins (11.24 more points than the dropped Derek Carr) and the Raiders Defense (6 points more than dropped Falcons D), although none of this would have mattered if Max just played Elijah Moore (23.9 pts.). You’ll be hearing that last sentence again later…
Analysis: Since Brad has less data to draw conclusions from, see below for some trend lines from this season:
Despite the loss, this was very promising in terms of getting yourself above that line. I know I forgot the apostrophe, sue me.
Points are also trending up after a couple of shitty weeks. Not quite in the range where you’re gonna win a lot, as we know, but there is definitely some green in your portion of the Bell Curve-type chart that I posted back at the beginning of LeagueStory. See that below:
Wins have been pulled off here, but the odds are against ya 😦
Max has surely had some close games in the past, as seen in this chart:
Beans and I gotta remember that if it’s gonna be close between us and Max then we better have an ace up our sleeve, because these are pretty heartbreaking to see.
We live for the nail-biters here, and even when you’re on the losing end it’s still exciting and great for content. Let’s take a look at the one we had this week:
Kris vs. Vigs Background: What more can I say about this historic match-up that hasn’t already been said? It’s like the Packers and the Bears, the Cowboys and the Giants, the Jets and the Jets (or the Mets and the Mets heheh). Similar to those rivalries and mine with Max for an in-League example, Kris has won a hefty majority of the meetings between the two. It got to the point where Vigs made his team name “Everybody Hates Kris” for a whole season, pretty harsh. Let’s see their historical performances:
As you can see, both teams have seen quite a lot of victory over the year, with Andrew on the upswing and Kris in a bit of a middling stage as of late. The way the season has been going, you could possibly think you knew how this would go down. I don’t think anyone expected the absolute stinker that came out on the other side of Monday.
The Match: You all saw the graph at the top of the column, Kris wins by 0.48. Insanity. The second closest game in the history of The League and the lowest scoring game that had a margin of less than a point. We all know it was the Pat Freiermuth game, a phrase which I can’t imagine being uttered ever again, but did any other pick-ups or drops have a large effect? Surprisingly little moves were made by these two owners this week. As mentioned above, Andrew picked up the Steelers D for $5 and dropped the Broncos who scored 3 points more, it was a smart move on paper but the Broncos are an enigma with that weird undefeated start and surprising plays like this even after losing noted Internet Troll, Von Miller. Basically anything going different could have helped the Tank Engines so I won’t ruminate on it too long. One thing that made a huge difference is the benching of Elijah Moore. I think this has happened to Brad before, but it’s gotta sting leaving that many points on the bench especially when it’s from your own hometown team. Maybe you should have let your “Homerism” kick in there… Kris made a bid for Boston Scott but was $4 short, picking up Patty Points was all he needed though. The only other move he could have made to his roster was starting A-Rob over Juice Landry, which I would have done considering I named my team after Mister Robinson II a few years ago. However, as much as it pains me to say it, Justin Fields is not doing that man any favors.
Analysis: Let’s look back at the past close and low-scoring games from these two gentlemen:
I was shocked how many close games Kris has had, and how many he’s won. This includes a tight win against our Commish in the 2018 playoffs. Maybe that was an inspiration for the team name because I can’t think of anything else it could be based on.
I remember that time I blew out the Norse Horses, doubt I was picked to win on the pod too. Also good to see that Andrew can look back on the fond memories of Week 12 of 2019.
This for sure shows that Vigs is less seasoned when it comes to these nail-biters, despite having more of them in the past 2 years. The win against Alex was one of two games to have a margin of less than 2 in 2020, the other being Me beating Abie (ironic) in Week 7 by 1.48.Once again, my roommate does not normally score little, same way he doesn’t win or lose little. That’s why he’s the commish, he does it big or not at all. We know this. I won’t call attention to the brutal loss he took to Kris in Week 2 of 2019, so don’t even think about looking at that.
Listen, you both know how your seasons are going, and you can take this week as a lesson and get ready for the next time you’ll be butting heads. Whether it’s in the playoffs, the losers bracket, or the 2022 season, I’m sure it’ll be a good one.
A few more thoughts before I go. My match-up with Abie was close and I want to say that I’m sooooo thankful that Abie’s genius Wire moves were put on a bye week or something this week. If it was last year, this would be in the Ugly section (for those who are unaware or forgot, I used to format these things in a “Good, Bad, Ugly” manner. Now I’m trying a whole bunch of stuff. It’s fun!) SO basically Abie dropped the Browns defense who scored 18 and Darnell Mooney who scored 19.1. I won by 12.24, you do the math. He also added Adrian Peterson (one of my first fantasy favorites) on a Monday? I didn’t even know you were allowed to do that!? Let’s see if he can keep turning back the clock or if he’ll have to spend more time with his family, not sure which one would be worse for the rest of us…
Unfortunately, Tua Time is over. Luckily I don’t have to feel so bad because Ryan also spend FAAB on a player who goosed it (Bryan Edwards, $3). Live and learn is what I’m gonna say to wrap it up.
Alright, that’s our show! Hope you liked this little investigative piece, it was something different and with the match-ups and results of this week I felt a deeper dive was in order. You wanted to hear about YOUR match-up more? Should have been more exciting I guess. Maybe next time. Later!!
The Big Chart, in a new spot for this week but still as fun as ever!
Who even cares about this one? I’m gonna rework it at some point
Now this one is interesting because those 23.9 points for Andrew were left on the bench. It even puts him ahead of Kris in total Net Points. This is why I decided to put this next one together:
This is a chart showing Gross Points added to a given team in a given week, and whether those points Started or Sat. I’ll apply it retroactively to this season since I started keeping track of Start/Sits in the middle of last year. Stay tuned!
Must Be Sunday 