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:
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.
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:
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)
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)
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!
Posted this one last year so you can go back and find what it all means if you can’t figure it out and care enough. We all know this, but RBs SUCK!
The position points are regardless of if you started or sat them, just everyone who has been on your team any given Sunday (so basically add up to your total total and not just PF). Might be good to take a look at if you want to trade with someone,,, Bench points are bench points
Also posted this last year for comparison, had to add the Jags this year for obvious reasons lol.
“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.
Ahh The Wire. It’s good to be back, folks. I’m in a new apartment but it’s still the same deal as last year; I’ll tell you where you went wrong or right while waiting to watch the weekly wonder that is these world-famous warriors rushing and whirling that wobbly ball all over the goddamn place. It’s been about 2 hours in the making so far and I’ve been listening to the end of Season 12 of Family Guy in the background (Chris dating Jerome’s daughter, Peter and Meg bonding on a college trip, Cleveland coming back to Quahog, Stewie using his time machine to be in a British family). So let’s get this thing going!
First week is such a crap shoot, nobody knows who’s doing what and everyone wants to start the guys they drafted for the most part. Basically this should be pretty short. The only FAAB used in the lead up to opening day was from the host of our podcast, League Talk, Brendan “Beans” Cahill. He spent $3 on the Browns D/ST, who scored 8 points compared to the Steelers’ 22. It wouldn’t have saved his week anyway since he lost by more than 40, so it’s not the worst way to spend your FAAB. We’ll call it Week 1 jitters, but it might have been Zyn.
Literally no one made any moves that would have made or broken their week, the closest was Brent swapping Green Bay’s defense for Denver’s and getting a 7 point swing. If Brent had started GB then he would have only won by 4 points, which would have been the closest margin this week, but that’s just a hypothetical. Abie made a good move by grabbing the legend Pat Freiermuth for a quick 10 points, but he won by 28. We’ll see how he pans out if Abie decides to keep him, basically how fantasy football works. Everyone except him and kickers and defense sat out in The League after being acquired by the various managers, so we’re all playing some wait-and-see as should be expected.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I think that’s it. I don’t want to write anymore. Since it’s Week 1 there isn’t really any other graphs and stuff to include. Have a nice Friday, listen to the pod when it drops, Go League.
So last time I covered three weeks in one post, now I’m doing two. Maybe next week I’ll do just one. Who knows? The regular season may be it for this MBS mainstay, as I have important playoff things to worry about. We’ll see, but there will definitely be some more retrospective graphs and charts as we wrap things up and I explore the source of my last LeagueStory post: Flourish. Seems like they’ve got what it takes to give dumb guys like me who can’t code the ability to make nice-looking animated data visualization. Isn’t technology wonderful? Anyway, let’s take a look at the past 2 weeks before it’s Sunday again:
From a cursory look at the trusty chart for Week 13, it looks like this is the highest percentage of players dropped due to being on IR or BYE so far. There were also a few players added who were on BYE , including our most expensive McBackup for the second week this year. Our healthy and fearless Commissioner dropped a quarter of his entire FAAB budget for Chuba Chubs, beating out Tommy by a single buck and Kris and Max by A Few Dollars More (shoutout Clint Eastwood I guess). As I mentioned, the Panthers were on a bye week, which means my analyses of dollars spent to points became even more useless than it already was. On the other side of this transaction was Mike Gesicki, who in the span of one week found himself dropped from Thomas and Friends, then picked up by the REAL Thomas (and Friends), and finally dropped again for Foster “Australian for Beer” Moreau, the man who replaced the injured Waller-by (that’s TWO Australia jokes in one sentence, omfg). It’s safe to say that if Mike G got passed around like that this past week, he’d almost certainly have COVID by now.
So the closest game of Week 13 was Ryan vs. Brad, a slim 3.82 points made the difference. Looking back, the chart seems to show that it didn’t have to be this close. Every Wire move made by Brad helped him out by a little bit, and every move Ryan made resulted in negative net points. It just wasn’t enough to make the difference where it mattered. Something similar happened with the match-up between Brent and Thomas (8 points). There wasn’t one move made by Thomas that would have given him the dub, but if he kept Mike G then he would have lost by 3.9 instead of 8. Pretty funny how the losers of both of these close games played each other in an even CLOSER game the next week.
One game that actually had real Wire consequences in Week 13 was Kris vs. Beans. Both teams are trying to save face after some seriously stinky performances for the bulk of the regular season. I think that deep dive I did into Kris’ long-term performance and close win against Ryan in Week 9 (go back and check it out;)) really whipped the reins against the hide of the Norse Horse, because he’s been running like a madman as of late and actually finished with the third most points in the regular season. This ascension has been complemented by two Week 13 moves that undisputedly gave him the win over the Founder of our humble website. First was bidding on Tevin Coleman in auction (first FAAB spent on a Jet this season!) and getting a 9 point return on a $2 investment. Second was somehow knowing that Sony Michel would return to a form not seen since Week 16 of *2018* (100+ yards and a TD). Those 20 points plus Tevin’s 9 truly made the difference, as Kris ended up winning by 24.42. As we know, Beans is focused on next season, so it’s all good.
Aside from Kris’ return on Tevin, the best auction move was made by me by grabbing the Colts Defense for $10 and 16 points. Aside from the superficial $25 loss Andrew took on Chuba, the worst move was Abie dropping $21 on Matt Breida who only scored 1.3 points. Woof. Moving on…
Week 14, it’s like the leap day of football. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle regular season stats from here on out and comparing them to previous 13-week regular seasons. For the second week in a row, the most expensive auction player for the week was on a BYE, this time in the form of me dropping $13 on Kenny Gains. I’d like to think I was looking to future match-ups, which I think the podcast did mention as a guess for why I did that. Next up was Ryan, who spent $9 on Tevin Coleman (one for each point he scored the previous week heheh). What was wrong with Ty Johnson though? Apparently nothing, because he ended up scoring 7.7 after being dropped from Marzy’s Martians. Max really did have decent amount of opportunities to win against his out-of-this-world opponent and just didn’t take them. The cherry on top was when Max picked up Jermar Jefferson after Jamaal Williams went down (not such a bad trade after all I guess) and Jefferson cracked a nice stinky g00se egg all over Max’s Bama Butt. At least this pick-up of KJ Osborn made it a little less embarrassing for the guy that talks about sports for a living.
Lastly, I just want to talk a little about the insanely close game between Thomas and Brad. It was decided by 0.46 points, the second smallest margin in LeagueStory and it was the two rookies, we truly love to see it. I think everyone was heartbroken that Brad ended up on the losing end of that match-up, even Thomas himself. I’m pretty sure he could have lost and still made playoffs, but I’m not gonna check because this column is getting pretty close to rambling (y’all are thinking “close? it’s been all rambling for the past two years!” it’s okay). Why couldn’t Jaylen Guyton get one more reception, even for 0 yards??? We’ll have to ask him when he comes onto the pod. Why couldn’t Beans bid a few more dollars on the Packers D to sabotage Thomas and help out his buddy at the bottom? Why didn’t Brad pick up Money Mac who scored 11 as opposed to Daniel Carlson’s 2? I could go on, but I won’t. Let the old boy get some rest and start working on those jokes.
So there we go! Thank you as always for reading, it’s really appreciated and I always have a fun time writing about you guys and the players you all decide to go with each week. Since this might be the last edition of The Wire for the season (I’ll still be keeping stats and decide to write something if anything significant happens), I’m thinking about creating a feedback survey to see what you guys like and don’t like about the column and how I can improve. Be brutal, I need it. There will be some kind of incentive too, maybe $5 or something for your time. Can’t wait for the playoffs, see y’all there, Go League!
The only team with no FAAB spent on them this whole season, of course, was the Jaguars
In the immortal words of Tommy Pickles, “Hold onto your diapies, babies. We’re going in!”
Wow, it’s been quite a while hasn’t it? I forget exactly what kept me from doing Weeks 10 on time, possibly work, but then the obvious Thanksgiving break came up for Week 11 and I suddenly found myself with COVID and nearly three weeks behind on my column. I’m really trying to keep this short as we all ease our way back into the content-sphere and gear up for the final weeks of the regular season. You can see every add and drop that went on for almost a month above, so I’ll just run through the highlights of each week. You can look for your name and see if there’s a green (good job) or a red (bad job) if I don’t mention ya below:
Week 10:
The only notes I took on this week were blunders made by Kris is his battle for relevancy against Abie. In retrospect, this game actually had a pretty big impact, as it keeps Abie in the playoff hunt. If only Kris didn’t drop Hunter Henry (17.7 points) and spend $16 FAAB on OBJ (2.8 points) while dropping the Cowboys Defense (22(!) points), that 13 point win margin would be going the other way, and the Norse Horse’s 165 point performance in Week 12 would have been much scarier for folks like me. I actually just remembered that it was Abie himself who took the Boys D on waivers for one measly FAAB buck and got the 22 points himself, so you really hate to see that if you’re Kris. At least that’s only reopening an emotional wound, and hopefully the physical wound from the surgery has been healing up nicely. Just remember, it’s all a game.
Another huge pick-up happened in this week thanks to New England’s favorite boom-or-bust back, Rhamondre Stevenson (Beans Corp., 25.4 points, I spelled that right on the first try). Upon further inspection of the chart above, you could argue that Beans’ pick-ups of Chris Boswell (12 pts.) and Nyheim Hines (3.9 points) also contributed to part of that 14 point win margin. This is in spite of the dropped Robby Anderson scoring 11.7 to Hines’ almost 4, but I think it was probably for the better that the “Hines Game” prediction didn’t materialize. If he beat Brad by a bigger margin then he might have gone even MORE Hollywood in his celebrations, and the fall from grace in the past week would have been that much harder, which none of us want to see. That being said, not having to worry about the playoffs give you time to crank out some more content 😉
Week 11:
The only game that ended up being remotely close in this week was the Week 1 rematch of Bonez vs. Brad (9.92 margin). Tommy made this game closer by dropping Devonta Freeman (17 points) for Jakobi Meyers (3.5 points), who he then dropped for Bryan Edwards (g00se). In the end, it was the pick-up of good ol’ Tua (17.52) that made the difference for the Bonez on the Night Before Gameday. Brad kept it close with a Rashod Bateman pick-up, but Devonta Freeman was right there. Hindsight is definitely 20-20 and this season should be in Brad’s rearview mirror by now, hope you use that last FAAB dollar on something special buddy.
The next closest game was Vigs vs. Ryan (22.16 margin) and none of the pick-ups made by either team made or braid the match-up, but I want to shout out #DaCommish’s top spender status for this week as a good use of FAAB. He grabbed the 49ers Defense for $8 and they scored 12, which is great day for any defense. Add in some help from Graham Gano and the rest of your team and that’s how you stay in the hunt for the illusive 2 seed.
Week 12:
Thank the gods that barely anything happened this week. The closest game was me vs. Andrew, but it wasn’t thanks to anyone from the waiver wire. My second Cordarrelle-related mistake in a row and my negligence in leaving Jamaal Williams in my IR spot and Dalton Schultz in my starting line-up had me singing “this’ll be the day that I die” like a regular Don McLean, but thankfully my roommate’s team pulled just as bad of a stinker. After DK dropped a gooser to T-Lock’s healthy 11, I decided to pretend I got COVID in order to give Andrew a few days to cool down by himself at the apartment. Let me know when I can come back, I’m starting to miss the city.
Two of the guys I discuss above eeking out a win over someone in Week 10 and 11 ended up playing each other in Week 12, and this was our next closest game with some actual Wire consequences. This was of course Abie vs. Tommy. The battle between two guys with an “ee” sound at the end of their names was won by our Rookie of the Year thanks to two deftly made pick-ups: Dontrell Hilliard (17.8, guess he emulated Derrick Henry by having the same initials, that’s gotta sting extra for Abie now that I think about it) and Evan “Money Mac” McPherson (13). Even though this wasn’t the highest scoring match-up, it seems like it was a battle between two chess masters who I often praise in this column. Be prepared for more fantasy genius out of whichever of these two make it far in the post-season, which could be both of them.
Alright, I’d say that was mostly painless. I’m including some analytics treats below to make up for my lack of depth. These are the follow-ups to my charts from back in Week 6 that show i) how many points each position gets you on average per FAAB buck spent and ii) how your share of the total FAAB dollar pie has changed over the course of the season along with your current % share. You’ll have to zoom in on that second one but be sure that this could possibly help you to figure out how to outwit and outbid your opponents in these next few very crucial weeks. I’m not gonna hold your hand, but all of the strategy you could want is there for the taking if you know where to look.
I’m also including a follow-up/improvement on the chart I posted the other week that showed how many of your auction and add/drop players’ points were started or sat in the past 3 weeks. You oughta know by now, but you want to see more green than yellow under your name. I still can’t believe I started -6 points in the Browns defense in Week 10 and still managed to win. If your name isn’t there, then you haven’t made moves of that type in the past 3 weeks.
This has been The Wire. Thanks for being patient, hope you get some insight out of this crap, and don’t spend it all in one place.
(as of Week 12, but who cares)
Looks like Max’s frantic move-making is finally paying off? Kris still almost definitely has the better ratio, with Brad’s and Vigs’ lookin’ pretty swell too.
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!
I’m really gonna try and make this short and sweet because let’s face it, there’s already a ton of content recapping what went down last week and even this week and it’s Friday then, it’s Saturday Sunday WHAT.
In terms of close match-ups, there was only one in Week 8: Kris vs. Brent. As always, it was a good showing from both sides, with Brent edging out the victory. This was thanks in part to Cousin Greg Josephs (12 points) and Joe Burrow ($3, 20.26 points). Kris was actually beat out by one measly FAAB dollar for Ohio’s native son, although Josh Allen’s near-30-burger was pretty much all you can ask for. Still, there’s been situations in the past where someone’s picked up a player that another team needs just to keep their opponent that week from having them. Who’s to say that if Kris outbid the reigning champ, Matt Ryan would be making a start for the Flandrews and only dropped 6 points? We’d be singing quite a different tune, and Joey B wouldn’t be my starter for Week 9. It’d still be Tua Time, a simpler time… Further, Kris made another savvy move by picking up Cole Beasley for an 11 point surplus ($5, 16 points, you know the drill).
We had something fun/rare happen this week that not many people would notice, but I did. If you check out the chart above, there’s one line where the added and dropped player have no color filling their cell. This means this is the first time the added player has been added (MVS) and the first time the dropped player has been dropped (Curtis Samuel). Shout-out to Ryan for that little treat, because the rest of the FAAB moves my guy made were pretty awful. Every player that Ryan shelled out a few bucks for (MVS for $3, Gallup for $2 and Kalif Raymond for $2) threw up a goose egg, either due to injury or just being plain bad. Not sure about the logic of spending money on hurt players when you could get them for free, but my guy’s always got a master plan none of us can see. C.J. Uzomah is definitely somewhat viable as a TD-vulture, but DeVante Parker scored 12.5 compared the the Bengals TE’s 5.3. Better luck with your pick-ups this week, Marz.
Tommy Bonez was the high roller of the week with a modest $13 on Bobby Tonyan. Definitely not the biggest dollars-to-points deficit we’ve seen here (-6.6) and Buffalo pulled out a solid win against Max Trade-room over here, so we’ll take it in stride. This guy’s a contender.
Zero moves by Brad this week, must have been busy getting his Randy Marsh costume together. I appreciated the hell out of that, Tegridy Farms is on par (if not at times better) than South Park and it deserves its respect.
Beanso ALWAYS knows just how much to spend on defenses, he’s like Rain Man in that respect. He can probably do it without even knowing the match-up. I haven’t seen the movie so I’m guess that’s about where the comparisons end, but the 49ers costed $6 and spat out 6 points in return. This was also the most sought-after acquisition of the week, with 3 other teams making offers that didn’t quite cut it. Randall Cobb was a solid grab, David Johnson not so much.
Lastly, I’d like to give a big “fuck you” to reddit user newtya (a Lions fan, like the animal from the circus, what a joke) for sticking his nose in places it doesn’t belong. A different reddit user, AlbuquerqueAardvarks, called me terrible for “confirming that you’re trying to collude with another owner and then using that publicity to push your blog” and I responded with a sarcastic comment. This idiot Lions fans calls me a dick and says “I’m never clicking that link”. Can people not just leave things alone on the internet anymore? That’s another joke for ya. Obviously I didn’t know I was colluding if I’m making a post about it, and then when everyone tells me it’s collusion I’m not lashing out at every single comment (I already did that in the GroupMe discussion), but when you start attacking my character I’ll play along and feed into your anger over whatever it is you’re projecting onto me. As for pushing the blog once I realized I’d get a lot of views on my post, you’re clearly mad you didn’t think of that for whatever little creative thing you’re trying to push. Otherwise, why would you care? I literally say “damn, this is doing numbers”, the most generic jokey shit you put in an edit or reply post, after getting like 5 upvotes and 12 comments, big whoop. You’re looking at it and we’re talking about it, I win.
Goddamn. This has been The Wire, enjoy the weekend folks. Go League.
Must Be Sunday 