Category: LeagueStory

A look at the historical standings of The League and other similar topics, driven by stats & graphs

LeagueStory: Who’s the Most FAAB-ulous Team in the NFL??

Look at this fun little chart! Remember my long chart listing the teams back in Week 4’s Wire and the amounts spent and number of adds and drops? Well, this is just taking a look at that first metric in the form of a Tree Map. Hopefully you’re able to see the dollar amounts, but basically the bigger the logo the more FAAB has been spent on players of that team. Let’s break down the top 6, who account for $275 of the $506 spent so far this season:

Arizona Cardinals: Who would have thought they’d be the top dog in the NFL and right here in The League?? Bids for players of this team only started in Week 3, starting with Rondale Moore ($34) and Cardinals Defense ($10) by Brad and Beans. They played each other that week, you can guess who won. The very next week Brad dropped another $20 on AJ Green and kicked Rondale to the curb. $1 bids for Maxx Williams (Brad, Week 5) and Matt Prater (Abie, Week 7) round things out.

New York Giants: This one was surprising. A brutal loss to the Cowboys in Week 5 got some League members thinking they could get a steal on some G-Men in the following week. The most expensive player from this team was Devontae Booker (Max, $28). He also is currently the worst of all the Big Blue teammates who have been bought this season. Abie grabbed Sterling Shepard for $13 once he was ready to play in Week 2, but now he’s back on the bench and off the 69ers. Toney Tone had an impressive performance in the Cowboys game and still seems kinda viable if the Giants can keep from stinking the rest of the season, so the $8 investment from Beans Corp remains to be fully actualized. Finally, I grabbed Graham Gano for a few weeks and a few bucks. He’s gone now.

Carolina Panthers: Where were you during the Great Scramble for Chuba Hubbard took place? I was still recovering from Gov Ball, where I missed a whole week of games to stand in a parking lot, which was awesome. Our buddy Kris was thinking about how many points he’d need to get in order for the $41 of FAAB he dropped for the CMC back-up to be worthwhile. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been as many as he needs to get back to the domination he enjoyed in prior years, but it was a pretty good move in terms of knowing how much to bid and who to bid on, as we all know Kris is the free agent king. Now that he’s recovering from surgery, he’s got nothing but time… Also I bought the Panthers D for $3, because Panthers D is basically Sex Panther.

San Francisco 49ers: Elijah Mitchell was one of the first big bucks FAAB pick-ups of the year. And Brent immediately trades him, to Max, who also bought Trenton Cannon (-1.6 points on the season) for a buck, woof! In the games that Mitchell has played, he’s played pretty good! But the key phrase here “in the games that he’s played” is crucial. Another big purchase that goes hot and cold and doesn’t do much for your bottom line, aka the win column, aka what you need to win The League. The Niners themselves are having a rocky go of it, we’ll see if calmer seas are ahead for both organizations. Also, just this week, Beans picked up the SF D-Fence for $6 and got a perfect 6 point bang for his FAAB Buck. We love to see that on The Wire.

Las Vegas Raiders: Now for the team with the highest number of players on this Top 6 list, I’ll be listing off the list of players that helped the Raiders make this list, sponsored by Listerine:
Week 3 – Daniel Carlson, 12 points (Kris, $5)
Week 4 – Hunter Renfrow, 13.5 points (Abie, $11)
Week 5 – Raiders D/ST, 4 points (Thomas, $7)
Week 6 – Raiders D/ST, 10 points (Abie, $1)
Week 7 – Derek Carr, 19.02 points (Brendan, $2)
Week 7 – Henry Ruggs III, 5.1 points (Ryan, $11)
The trades made by Kris and Abie resulted in wins, and are pretty clearly the best moves out of the bunch of those.

Cleveland Browns: Here we go, Brownies, here we go, WOOF WOOF! Max got D’Ernest Johnson for $27, which resulted in 23.8 points and a 12.4 point win against Beans. That’s pretty consequential, I would say. I got Demetric Felton for $6, I don’t wanna talk about it. Abie got the Defense in Week 2 for $4, they scored 5 but he won by 20 so it didn’t really matter. Boring team, last one I’m gonna talk about because this has taken way too long already for a little chart.

Bye!

LeagueStory x League Talk

We love to see the synergy, folks. Here’s a little treat for anyone who has listened to the pod. I got working on it as soon as I heard the idea mentioned, thanks roomie! You guys were definitely right in saying that the target score is well above 120 (see also “Distribution of Points with Wins and Losses”), but surprisingly wrong about Max being the one to win by the lowest average points. It’s actually Abie who’s the sneaky guy, who would have thought? Anyway, new Wire coming soon, as well as some other developments regarding the “image” of the brand going forward, Stay tuned…

LeagueStory: Win Margins that Beat a Team’s Score for That Week

Since I won’t be able to bless y’all with The Wire until either tomorrow or Friday, I figured I should sate your ravenous appetite for League content until the pod drops with another amusing table of stats. It’s pretty self explanatory, a team beats another team by a large margin, that margin is bigger than the total score of another team that played that week. Sometimes it includes the team that created the margin itself, and I’m still not sure if this is a testament to the team that won or lost to create such a big margin, but these are the interesting and useless facts you’ve come to expect from us here at Must Be Sunday. Gotta go record, enjoy!

LeagueStory: Here’s Another Fun Little Chart

(this is basically the sentiment of every post in this series)

This is one I’ve wanted to put together for a little while now and it was pretty easy so I’m glad I finally did it. Since we have almost 500 games under the collective belt of this illustrious League, I wanted to see if the frequency of points scored in a game adhered to Normal Distribution and created a Bell Curve (remember stats class?)
…and sure enough, it did 😀

A few things to notice:
-All point totals are rounded to make the chart a bit more readable and increase the frequencies.
-The most common point total is 126, followed by 131 and 117 (for all you betting men).
-Watch out if your point total in a given week rounds to 144 or 161 (you might lose), and don’t feel too bad if your point total only hits 71 (you might still win).

Alright, good quick post. Gotta go try and make up for the 3.5 hours I spent on this crap yesterday, but The Wire Week 2 will be dropping some time today or maybe tomorrow before TNF. Go League!

LeagueStory: Historical Win Grid through Week 2, 2021

Now that everyone has at least one win, I decided to put this little grid together to show who you’ve won against (and conversely, who you’ve lost against).

Some things to notice:
– The only active shutout is held by Kris, with 4 wins against Max and 0 losses. Will we see a continuation of this trend in Week 4? Or will Max break the streak?
For what it’s worth, in the two seasons Lebron was active he was shut out by Brendan (3-0) and myself (2-0), so these things happen. Here’s the chaser, Max:
– The most frequent match-up has been Me vs. Max (9 games), in which I’ve dropped 7 of them. I know for sure one of my 2 wins was in a no-stakes consolation game in the playoffs, but it seems Max always knows how to put another tick in my loss column. Way to go, see ya Week 5.
– The second-most frequent match-up of Abie vs. Brendan is currently neck and neck with 4 games won on each side. This leads me into the handful of other historical match-ups that currently sit at even:
3-3: Max & Vigs
2-2: Me & Brent, Abie & Kris, Vigs & Ryan, Brent & Max

And that’s about all she wrote as of now. I’ll be maintaining this list as I have with everything else in the Must Be Sunday Universe, at the expense of my actual job and CPA exam studying. For now, enjoy looking at and discussing this little piece of LeagueStory, as well as strategizing how you can put that next win in the books!

The Wire: Week 1, 2021

and Introducing… LeagueStory (/ligstÉ™ri/)

Okay before I answer any questions I want to acknowledge the death of Michael K. Williams, as a prominent cast member of the show that this column takes its namesake from, I’d be remiss to not mention the tragic circumstances that led to his early exit from the Earth. Rest in power, Professor Kane (his character in Community, I never saw The Wire). Also would like to say that I’m particularly saddened by the passing of Norm MacDonald, a comedian on and off the field and someone who I try to emulate in many of my not-nearly-as-funny real life observations and so-called “jokes”.

Anyway, let’s get down to it. LeagueStory is my new segment that will be combined sometimes with The Wire but also sometimes separate. It has more to do with historical wins and losses, points for and against, marquee match-ups and narrative throughlines of Our Favorite League. It’s pronounced the same way as “history”, but with “league-” in place of the “hi-“. Here’s a link to the International Phonetic Alphabet if you’re still having trouble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English

I’ve posted a few charts here and there, but at the bottom of this column are a few that I’ve made since getting all the stats entered into my trusty Excel spreadsheet. They’re pretty self-explanatory. Some things to look out for: this isn’t really news but it’s certainly interesting to see how many times Kris has put up numbers that should give you an easy win before SNF begins, only to have his heart ripped out by a handful of ticks on the other side of the ball. Look for it again this year, but maybe he’ll pull it out when it counts. I also love that there is a Vignali showdown highlighted in both the Top 50 and Bottom 50, both with the Commish getting the edge. Lastly, we all remember the infamous Max vs. Ryan race to the bottom of 2020, but not many people know that only three short years ago our reigning champ won in a fluke job against his former Albany roomie. We sure that belt isn’t just gold on the outside?

To put it bluntly, The Wire did not see much action in preseason. I personally wasted $4 FAAB on Todd Gurley off a tip that landed in my IG DMs from none other than Mikey Seligson. Abie also offer a buck for the former RB1, so you’re welcome. Then Max spends $2 on Rashaad Penny, only to drop him a few days later. This week looks much more interesting, I’ll be throwing everything on the spreadsheet tomorrow while fasting for the Yom Kippur holiday and thinking about all the sins I’ve committed in the past year (not drafting Hopkins with my first pick being one of them).

I’m not overexaggerating when I say this: every single waiver pick-up for Week 1 sat on the bench. Every. Single. One. Except two, I started the Dolphins D and Vigs started the Vikings D, both scoring 4 points. Both defenses we dropped did worse than that, so good job to us and better job to me for winning that matchup. None of the guys who were riding the pine could have made a difference in the outcome of the game, aside from Kris leaving 25 points in Gronk out of his final score. If he switched around his RB to sit Aaron Jones and started the season with two tight ends we would have laughed our asses off until he won, then we’d all be very scared. Tommy Bonez had the next best free pick-up with Ty’son Williams. However, those 16.9 points (nice) would not do much to cover the 36 point deficit he lost by in the Battle of the Newbies. We also of course had a ton of free agents and injured guys being added and dropped in the lead up to The Big Day, causing a lot of unnecessary static for yours truly. It’s okay though, it’s my job.

That’s about all I got right now, enjoy the charts below and be on the lookout for more content flowing free from the brains, mouths and fingers of all your favorite League members. This has been The Wire, Go League, sign the petition, and as always: Don’t spend it all in one place.

(Turn your phone sideways for an enhanced viewing experience)

Throwback Tuesday!

Starting in the playoffs in Week 14, instead of +/-1 for a win or loss, I did it in the following way:

Losers’ Bracket = +0.5/-1.5
Winners’ Consolation Bracket = +1.25/-0.75
Winners’ Bracket = +1.5/-0.5
Bye Week = +2
Championship Win = +5

I’ll do it the same way for 2019 and 2020, as well as through the upcoming 2021 season. If you want a personal area chart with only your historical record (or you with a rival), definitely let me know. Enjoy, Go League.