The Assistant Commissioner

Numbers do not lie. 

Lowest weekly score recorded for both the 2014 and 2015 season

 

Power Rankings

1) Brent
He is legit. I am getting tired talking about him, but the guy is out to prove that it was no auto-draft team that won last year.

2) Sean
He is hanging ever so tightly and narrowly to this spot. The improvement year over year for him and Cameron is pretty awesome.

3) Cameron
May be at this spot due to the outrageous numbers he put up this week, but when you can do that to someone, you deserve to be in the conversation.

4) Ben
Brent did not destroy Ben, who put up a decent fight. Ben has had the toughest schedule to date with opponents averaging 109 a game.

5) Scott H

WEEK SEVEN

Biggest gap this year... Thanks in part to Jesse not trying.

Yuhhhh! Wataaaaah! went off! Danngggg boi! 172.7 points. Let me remind you that the all time record is 175.6, set by Steve Jim back in week 13 of last year. This is cray, yo! CRAY CRAY. Wow. Looks like Wataaaaah! actually needed some MillerTime, as in Lamar Miller, who had a ridiculous 44.90 points!!!!! He had just one player score below 10. The best part is that I was on the receiving end of that *_____*. Hats off to Cameron, who will definitely move up in the power rankings. Geez. That's a big win, putting Cameron at 4-3 and very much in the mix.

The nail bitter was between second place Kaeptivating and third place Rolling Gazelems. In Dan's losses he has lost by a combined (meaning I totaled all the margins of his defeats... a sum... I am trying to make a point here with this stat. You can appreciate that right?) 8.08 points. His worst loss - 5.2 in week 1 and is averaging a league low of 2.7. Talk about a game of tenths of points! This was a big bounce back week for Kaep, who got his doors just blown off by the league leading Mustache Salad.

How pitiful is this? C'mon, man. Dude. Just. I don't know. Ugh. I give so much to this league and it just wears on me to see the lack of effort. Moving on...

At least Scott K is trying. He has just been dealt a bad hand.

I haveta, I gotsta talk about the Behemoth Mustache Salad. The guy is bringing it week in and week out. Its like watching Randy Orton RKO peeps! Couple stats: over the last three games he is averaging 127 pts/game. Thats pretty nice. Over the season he is leading with almost 123 pts/game. What a season. And this last win he did it again Ben who is hotter than HOT. Shoot he is HOT HOT HEAT. He is averaging approx. 142 pts/game. This was a big time win for Brent in a week that I thought we may see a rare loss for him. His team is so far and above the rest of everyone we can only hope to catch him on an off night... He is taking his six game winning streak against the unpredictable In Russ We Trust squad.

What will week 8 bring?

This is what a rebound looks like from week 4 - which was still a 105 pt output

It will take a truly special effort to beat Salad. It will take a team that can score big.  Scott H may be able to - he has scored over 120 three times. Ben has done it four times.... No other team in the league has done it multiple times, outside of those already mentioned and... guess... yes, Brent. He has done it five times. The funny thing is we haven't really seen a let down. His biggest let downs were in week 1 and 4, and he still scored over 100.

One team that I had really high hopes for this season was Mokes-a-lot. She just hasn't been able to dial it in and her team has had more let downs that explosions... I don't like regressions and trending downwards.

Rooks

The biggest question coming into this season was, could Brent repeat? The second question after that was, would RGIII last a full season? The third question, was of course, was would the NFL continue to wear pink in support of breast cancer? And then finally, how will the rookies preform? In order to really understand how the rookies are doing we need a benchmark. Our bogie will be the performance of the Rookies last year...  Ben, Brent, Sean. That is quite the lineup, as Brent won the championship and Ben was the Rookie of the year. Sean.... he didn't do so well.

First lets average: last year's rookie's win %, score, margin of victory, margin of loss

Rookies last year through week six
Avg. win % - .500
   - Best record: Ben 4-2
   - Worst record: Sean 2-4
**What I glean from this is that you need start strong. Rarely do teams turn it completely around.

Avg. score - 102
   - Best: Ben 115
   - Worst: Sean 92

Avg. margin win - 22
   - B: Ben 32
   - W: Sean 13
Avg. margin loss - (16)
   - B: Brent (12)
   - W: Ben (24)
**I find it interesting that Ben was blowing people out, but was also blown out in losses. Brent was able to keep things closer in losses, as his margins of loss was about half of Ben's margin of loss.... Brent also had a margin of victory of 22. While Ben was explosive, he was also unpredictable  - his standard deviation in scores over the first six weeks was 20. The swings in scoring was too much for Ben to win it all. While Brent had a standard deviation of 10.

Rookies this year through week six (Jamie, Dan, Scott K)
Avg. win % - .500
   - B: Jamie/Dan 4-2
   - W: Scott K 1-5
**CAPTAIN OBVIOUS ALERT: Jamie and Dan are in a good spot... Scott K, there is no hope for you.

Avg. score - 95
   - B: Dan 103
   - W: Scott K 82

Avg. margin win - 30
   - B: Jamie 32
   - W: Dan 29
**Scott K lone win was a big one in week 1 and basically an outlier.
Avg. margin loss - (15)
   - B: Dan (4)
   - W: Scott (27)
**Despite the low scores (the league only averaged ~99 a game) Dan and Jamie are blowing out teams and they both have been able to keep it close (Jamie losses by ~14 a game).

What does this all really mean? Does it even matter? Am I just wasting time? Yes, yes I am.

• Points are more difficult to come by this year. This is probably due to fact that we added two other managers to the league. 
• Despite the lower scores rookies are winning by a greater margin. 
• The first six week set the tone for the rest of the season and is replicated in the next six weeks, as we will see...

Looking at last year's rookies records AFTER week 7...

Win % - .444
Avg. Score - 99
Avg. margin win - 23
Avg margin loss - (24)

Brent and Ben replicated their win/loss record over the next six games as their first six (3-3 and 4-2), while Sean's got even worse and went 1-5.

Brent had a really crazy outlying week 9 last year, where he scored 172 points... If we will remove this week from the sample size our average score goes down to 95 and margin of victory to 12.

• The ability to win by a decent margin of victory is better indicator of future performance than the score, if that makes sense. You need to be winning big, not just squeaking by. 
• Teams taper off in high scores over the next six weeks- which correlates with the real NFL league's factors such as: fatigue, teams having more time information and film to use to prepare, injury, etc. 
• No team outscored their opponents by more in the weeks 7-12 than 1-6 (this is excluding Brent's massive week 9 win and score)
• You'll most likely get what you got....

So Danny and Jaime will go 4-2 again and will sit at 8-4, a perfect position to make the playoffs...

Power Rankings Revisited

I have got it all wrong. I have to have. I have been thinking about my power rankings and it just doesn't feel right. It was missing something... crucial. Margin in victories. For a team to really stand apart is them crushing other teams. Let's pick on me for a second.

Do you really think my team is that good? I'm 4-2, but I am one of the worst teams scoring and have one of the easiest schedule (see below tables), yet I am in the top five in both yahoo and my joke of a power ranking... PLEASE. That is a sham! It as much of a sham as was Mark May lying to us. Oh, Mark, you thought I forgot?! You friggin liar!

	Top Five Scoring	Worst Five Scoring
1	Brent	Jesse
2	Ben	Scott K
3	Sean	Caleb
4	Dan	Steven
5	Christie	David

	Toughest Schedule	Easiest Schedule
1	John	Jamie
2	Cameron	Dan
3	Scott H	David
4	Jesse	Steven
5	Ben	Sean

Incorporating the margin of victory will surely enhance the power rankings. As a brief reminder, the power rankings includes: average points scored, margin of victory, number of times scored over 100 points, wins, beating projections, and average points against. 

1) Brent

2) Sean

3) Ben 

4) Dan

5) Jamie

As you can see, adding in that margin of victory really shook it up with Ben and Jamie moving up. Is it perfect? No. Hell, no. But I think its helluva lot closer. I'll keep tinkering.

Division Comparison

	High Desert	Sierra
Win %	48%	52%
High Score	129.28	158.52
Average Score	95.50	104.09

Without Jesse: 

	High Desert	Sierra
Win %	56%	52%
High Score	129.28	158.52
Average Score	99.61	104.09

Power Rankings

1) Brent
2) Sean
3) Dan - moved up 3 spots, despite the weak win, but put up a decent score
4) Myself - numbers don't lie, but the equation might suck...
5) Cameron
5) Ben - moved up three spots with the MONSTER win

Biggest drop was Scott, who now sits at #7.

Week 6

This was the second best week overall. Teams averaged almost 103 pts/game this week. A slight increase over last week. The average delta in wins were almost 32 pts/game, which was a significant change over last week. Last week just one team outscored their projected score by 20, this week there was 3. For context the high was Week 3 - there were seven that week. I would say that this week was a bit more normalized as far a overall points scored.

As far as the teams... 

Can anyone stop Brent? Its going to be extremely hard. He has scored over 120 4 x's and has never scored below 100.  He's scored 70 more total points than then next highest... averages 121.20 pts/game... crushing it. We covered the Devonta story in a previous post, but the other shiny tool in this dude's toolbox is his defense (and his QB/WR duo... two x two). The Broncos are legit. They've scored over 18 points in all of their games, but one. Let's see if high scoring, but erratic, Ben can take him down this week.

If Ben could get some consistency he could be really dangerous, as he is the only player in the league to score over 130 2x's and is averaging +48 pts when he wins... he is also averaging -28 in losses... #blowouts

Just as Scott was getting warmed up, he laid a total egg.

I called out Jamie for not using Gates and Hurns. I still believe that Graham isn't going to put up big numbers week in and out, but he did out preform Gates this week by 5. A guy can get it wrong once... It is crazy that Rivers threw for over 500 YARDS and Gates didn't get more of them yards! Ultimately, neither of those guys were the difference maker. I just didn't have enough gas in the tank and I am floundering... When your opponent outscores their projected score by 28 points its going to be tough. Just ask Cameron and Caleb.

John is mounting a comeback of a season - over the last four week he has averaged almost 112 pts/game.

His Name is Devonta Freeman

Standing 5'8" and weighing just over 205 lbs, Devonta Freeman isn't an intimidating man, he's below average for a starting RB in the NFL. He played both his High School and College playing days in Florida. He was a four star High School recruit. It wasn't probably until his Senior year at FSU that you heard of him;, In 2013, he helped the Seminoles win the national championship. But never was he nationally known; he wasn't a Heisman candidate, he wasn't leading the nation in running, he wasn't Tim Tebow, he was just Devonta Freeman. Who, statistically, was the 51st best running in the country, but was Fist-Team All-ACC. I mean, he was good. He was solid, but he wasn't a once in a generation type of guy. His combine was solid and was given a grade of 5.57, which meant he could be an NFL starter. In combine profile it had the ambiguous promise that he, "[He] [c]ould prove to be a better pro than college player." How many guys get that in their writeup?

Ultimately, he was drafted as the 103rd pick in the fourth round by the Falcons. It seemed to be a solid pick up, but nothing revelatory.

Coming into his second year in the NFL he was supposed to be just a part of the running back rotation. I mean, he hadn't scored his first touchdown in his Rookie year until Week 15 against the Saints. It was going to be a running by committee type of offense for the Falcons this year- as has been the trend in NFL recently. He was not going to be the feature back. There was no hype on the guy.

It wasn't until Week 3 of this season that he caught the attention of people, where he had 141 yards rushing and 3 TDs.

The activity surrounding Freeman in our own league is very interesting. He was picked up in the NINTH round by Persian Lives Matter. Which makes total sense as Freeman hadn't really done anything spectacular in his pro career. No one knew he would be the Forsett of this year. How could we? How could Persia?!

Plus, Persia looked like he had a drafted a solid RB crew as he had C.J Anderson, Frank Gore, Ameer Abdulah (I guess?).  Why would you need another dude in backfield taking up a valuable roster spot? So, he dropped him before the first game.

The interesting part here is who Persia dropped him for...Antonio Gates. Perhaps Persia realized (no, he still hasn't) that Jimmy Graham wouldn't have the season he had in Nola? Who knows. Persia will take that reason to his grave.

But Freeman's journey was just getting started. On September 11, Wataaaaah! dropped Roy Helu Jr. for Devonta Freeman. Wataaaaah! sat him, rightfully so (his starters out preformed him) as he scored just five points. Wataaaaah! would beat Mustache Salad in Week 1 as well.

Reports were that Freeman was causing trouble on the roster and Wataaaaah! had zero tolerance for his behavior. He let him go for Terrance Williams, a WR, on Sept 16, just before the Week 2 game. This would look like a smart move as Williams was extremely motivated to be on a team and to be paid. He would score 17.8 pts, helping Wataaaaah! defeat Bayo'wolf by just a tenth of a point. Freeman scored just 12.3 points. Wataaaaah! made a smart move for that week...

I can't really put either Jamie or Cameron in the dog house for their moves. It made sense for what they did. It was rational good managerial decision making. Brent was acting in the same manner when he took Freeman.

In Week 1 Brent had poor results from his DEF and dropped Cleveland for Tavon Austin, as he was probably looking to improve his WRs, and already had a solid DEF on the bench in Denver.

 In Week 2 Tavon didn't do big things, but Mustache hit the panic button as his RBs put up a combined whopping 12 points! This happened with a highly sought after Eddie Lacy and solid RB in Mark Ingram. Side note, he also had Todd Gurley on the bench, who has turned into a monster as well. Feeling the pressue, Brent picked up Freeman who had a solid, but not crazy Week 2 with 12+ points.

In Week 3 Brent showed he was willing to gamble. Facing a tough team in In Russ we Trust, Mustache Salad decided to SIT Mark Ingram and PLAY Devonta Freeman. Ingram would score 16.40 points that week. But Freeman would explode for 38.80 points. Mustache Salad would win by a mere 4.58 points. This pickup would win him the next two games. Without Freeman it is conceivable that Mustache Salad would be 1-4 right now. See below:

Week 3 vs In Russ we Trust - wins by 4.58 points. Freeman scores 38.80 points.
Week 4 vs Bayo'wolf - wins by 9.68 points. Freeman scores 34.40 points.
Week 5 vs Quiddity of Luck - wins by 29.40 points. Freeman scores exactly 29.40.
Week 6 vs Kaeptivating - projected to win. Freeman scores 29.40.

Now, this has been quite a run for Freeman and Mustache. I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again, I can't see Freeman keeping this up. I did however think we wouldn't see it four weeks in a row. The scary thing is the depth that Mustache Salad has at the RB position. Gurley looks very promising, despite the small sample set. Ingram has been Mr. Consistent, putting up 10+ in all of his games but one (he still did 7 points). And Eddie Lacy has yet to really get it going, but we know what he is capable of.

Division Comparison

The margin change was due to the one cross divisional game, Bayo'wolf vs Luchesse's Cousin.

	High Desert	Sierra
Win %	49%	51%
High Score	129.28	158.52
Average Score	94.35	103.99

Power Rankings

1. Brent 4-1 - yahoo ranking #1
• He is averaging a league high 119.73 pts/game
• Has beaten his projections every week by an average 17.82 pts/game
• Four game winning streak in which has has beaten teams by 22.16 pts/game
2. Sean 4-1 - yahoo ranking #2 
• Second in scoring at 110.48 pts/game
• Beaten his projections every week by an average 8.02
• Has had the fifth easiest schedule 
3. Scott H 3-2 - yahoo ranking #4
• big win for Scott who moves from #5 to #2 with the win. 
• Has the second most difficult schedule
• Third best in scoring at 108.92 pts/game
• In his wins he has beaten his opponent by an average margin of 27.45
4. Myself 4-1 - yahoo ranking #3
• Replaced Jaime. 
• Just lucky 
• Third easiest schedule 
5. Cameron - yahoo ranking #6
• dropped from #2 in last weeks rankings.  
• 
  

Dropping out of the rankings was Jaime who now has the easiest schedule after week 5. 

Week 5

This is probably best viewed on desktop....but whatevs..

Wow, where has the time gone! We are 38% done with the regular season (38% is the rating given to X-Men Origins... how? I have no idea... again, how?!). The league as a whole bounced back after last weeks shoddy performance, as shown by the above graphs. The league average score was up 35% over last week at almost 102 pts/team and there were seven teams that beat their projected score by 10% or more (week 3 was the best at eight teams). The highest score this year was recorded by Ben at 158.52, who beat his projected score by 55.04 points or 153.19%, and improved by ~82% over last week. But it was more a separation week for those on top, with Mustache Salad and Kaeptivating flexing their strength and brains. Let us all start with the games of the week.

Wataaaaah! v In Russ We Trust
Tip of the cap to In Russ We Trust who picked up Rawls back on October 9 and knew Lynch would not be ready to play this week. Was Rawls 28.90 pts out of the ordinary? In a word, yes. His previous outings he tailed 4.80 and 11.40, respectively and Cincy has given up the 13th fewest fantasy points vs the running back position. Obviously an ideal matchup for Rawls to show his powers, like Deadpool vs a group of diamond smugglers. Wataaaah! will be sure to put his trust in Bell, who ripped off 20+, but as he has serious issues at the QB position and too much inconsistency at the WR position to really feel good about this week or the next... It was a big win for In Russ We Trust who moves 3-2 and breaks his losing streak.

Rolling Gazelems v Persian Lives Matter 
Was awfully close, but it came down to team management. Rhetorical question: If you had a player that scored 16+ the last two weeks and was going up against the Tampa Bay Bucs, who aren't exactly known for shutting people down, would you sit him? Or would you play him? Use Persia as your example of what to do - you should play him. Play Hurns. Play him. And another thing, Jimmy Graham isn't going to be the monster he was in New Orleans. The Seahawks threw the ball 200 x's LESS than the Saints last year. Throwing the ball a ton isn't the Seahawks offense, which is unfortunate for Jimmy. The great thing here for Persia is that Gates is back (and yes, I think Gates will ROLL as well as the experts)!

With the win Rolling Gazelems improves to 2-0 against the other Rookies and will look to continue his winning ways as hosts Luchesse's Cousin next week. Persian Lives Matter will face off against myself and will be looking to break up my improbably win streak.

Let me break from the action for a minute. I know all of you are veraciously reading every word I write, so I hope this doesn't distract you from the rest of the column. I watched the MNF game between my Niners and the Giants. I had gone all in on the Giants manhandling my team. I had Vereen and Donell starting. Shoot, in another league I picked up the Giants DEF. Then the Niners took the lead in the fourth quarter and looked as if they might win. I on the other hand was losing to Christie at this point. I needed just a few more points. The Giants would utilize Vereen on short throws to get into the redzone. It was then I realized that my team was more than likely going to lose, but here I was hoping that Vareen or Donell would score so I could beat Christie... I was a very weird experience. Rooting for, even betting, that your team will lose. 

Mustache Salad v Quiddity of Luck
I do not want to play Mustache Salad (and I won't) as he has two of the hottest players in fantasy right now - Devonta Freeman and Denver's DEF. Freeman is averaging 34+ over the past three games and Denver's DEF having scored below 10 all year and are averaging 19.5 pts/game. Quiddity of Luck couldn't get his WRs to show up in this matchup, but the bright pickup for Luck is Barnidge, who went for 20+ this year, topping his performance from last week of 14+. Luck has missed his projected score the past two weeks.

Bayo'wolf v Luchesse's Cousin
So.... as Jesse played two players that had bye's, I'm going to take a bye here and not comment further on this game.... other than saying, abysmal.

Cobra Kai v All Day Some Days
Cobra made a big statement by blowing the doors off of All Day Some Days (formerly Tuesdays with Megatron - teams are now 2-1 in the first week after changing their name). This was truly uncharacteristic of Cobra who had huge games from his QB (33) WR2 (19), RBs (18 and 35) and TE (21). The mighty hamster, Doug Martin, backed up his performance last week and put up 333% more than his projected score. It was also nice to see that DeMarco Murray finally got involved in the offense in Philly. This was all after All Day Some Days beat his projected score by 15 pts (his second week in a row of beating his projected score by 15).

Kaeptivating v StraitOuttaGronkton
These two teams are a stark contrast from each other. Its like looking at a diamond against a black velvet backdrop. Kaep shines bright against the saggy Gronkton team. Gronkton is the second worst scoring team in the league, averaging 80.81 pts/game, has beaten his projected score just once, and has scored over 100 just once. This is going to be a rough year for Gronk...

However, Gronk doesn't need to look farther than his opponent of week five to see where he can go! The recent successes are new to Kaeptivating, who just matched his total wins last year with the win over Gronk this week and is now 8-13 since 2014.

Division Comparisons

When selecting how managers should be split up I consider their fantasy experience and previous performance. It is more of an eyeball test than a set formula. What I couldn't foresee was the turn around many teams would make. Cameron is a prime example of this; he has already won more game this year, through four, than he did all of last year. Or take for instance Ben who started 3-1 last years and is 1-3 this year. Rookies are always hard to predict where they will be. Scott K seemed to have a lot of promise as his brother Brent is the reigning champ. This yet to be proven as Scott K is 1-3. Finally, Jesse boast some of the most experience in the league, started last year 3-1 and would finish 9-7.

I want it to be competitive in both divisions, however, it looks like Sierra League teams will have a harder road to the playoffs.

	High Desert	Sierra
Win %	50%	50%
High Score	129.28	146.12
Average Score	94.16	102.78

The biggest difference is that the High Desert League has two of the worst teams that average ~80 pts/game.

Week 5 Game(s) of The Week

John, I texted you about this...help yourself

There aren't many matchups that appear to be close in competition this week. However, there are two that I will have my eyes on. Wataaaaaah! v In Russ we Trust and Rolling Gazelems v Persian Lives Matter. The game that no one should care about it Cobra Kai v Tuesdays w/Megatron. TwM is displaying some of the worst team management this league has ever seen. You don't know what I mean? Look at his line up. At this hour he has three of his starters in his lineup with byes... What a joke.

However, Wataaaaah! v In Russ we Trust and Rolling Gazelems v Persian Lives Matter are interesting because:

1. Projected to be close games
2. Implications of winning a losing are huge, but I do a poor job of explaining why.  

Both Wataaaaah! and Persia are sitting in the top - wether by my rankings or yahoos - while In Russ We Trust and Rolling Gazelems sit just outside of the top five in the yahoo rankings; I know better and have In Russ We Trust at four in my power rankings

What is means for Wataaaaah! and Persia: A loss sets them back in standings (not completely obvious to a person who isn't too familiar with sports), but also moral of the team and managers. Who knows what the hell they will do at 3-2? Drop their best player? Start eating battery acid? It could get ugly.... Do note that Wataaaaah! has had the fifth hardest schedule, so he has earned his wins. I feel he can bounce back, but Persia has had the second easiest schedule. When it gets tough, wins will be hard to come by. So what is my point? I don't even know! Just wanted to to read some useless garbage.

What it means for Russ and Rolling: A win for both of these teams put them right back into contention, with 3-2 records, which will be most of the win/loss records (of teams that matter) after this week.

What it means for the league: Mustache Salad and Kaeptivating are looking to further distance themselves from the pack. If Russ and Rolling win, then they further themselves from the pack as most records will be 3-2 while they move to 4-1. However, if Wataaaaah! and Persia hold on and win, they will be just a game back. Thats a big difference. One to two. Huge. 

Top Five Power Rankings

Ya'll have been hounding me about it. Countless texts that go like this, "Dave, where are the power rankings?" or "Dude, DAVID I NEED POWER RANKINGS!" I know how you feel. Yahoo sucks. It basically just takes your record and wins and mashes it together (it probably does a little more than that, but Marissa Mayer wouldn't open up the backdoor and let me take a look). So, what did we do at Hyde Labs? We did some simple math. Thanks, Steven for helping me with the post. Also, take a watch of clip from the movie Top Five, which features one of the top five rappers and comedians OF ALL TIME. Its all about fives. Give me a five next time you see me if you like this post.

TOP FIVE TEAMS:
1) Brent
2) Cameron
3) Sean
4) Jamie
5) Scott H

You'll notice that Yahoo has it like this:
1) Brent
2) Sean
3) Cameron
4) Jamie
5) Myself

I felt some validation that my top five was pretty darn close to what Yahoo has. So here is whats behind the calculation... Average Pts Scored, Beating Projections, Wins, Average Pts Against, Number of times scored over 100. Each one is weighted and added together. Here is the actual calculation: (Average Pts Scored/High*.45)+(Beating Projections/High*.2)+(Wins*Average Pts Against*.05)+(Number of times scored over 100/High*.3).  The high is the max of the sample set. So lets say someone scored over 100 4 x's, then that is the max. And yes, we tried to correlate pts against and wins... I didn't want to award someone for getting their butt kicked! LOLZ

Look, you can't argue with my order of operations. I have done my work.

Week 4

It was a close week for many teams in the NFL, with low scores. The same was true for our league. Weird how that correlates. There were seven games that were decided by 3 points or less, (Vikings v Broncos, Rams v Cardinals, Browns v Chargers, Jaguars v Colts, Eagles v Redskins, Raiders v Bears, Lions v Seahawks) with only one winning team hitting 30 points (Chargers). Last week in the NFL there was just one game that was decided by 3 pts or less (Colts v Titans), but the winning team scored 35.

Individual highs/lows vs league average

*After a monstrous Week 3, where eight teams beat their previous weeks score by at least 10%, only two did it this week. The league average score from Week 3 to Week 4 dropped by over 50%, from 109.53 to 87.33. The firepower that many teams enjoyed just didn't last. Only one team scored over 110 pts (John), a first time for this season.

Fours in Week 4: 

• Four teams missed their projected score by 20+ or more
• Steven -37.25, Scott H -35.89, Scott K -22.1, and Christie -20.6
• Jesse has would have beaten four other teams with his score of 80.4
• Jesse remains 0-4. He has lost be an average of 34.05 pts/game
• Sean and Brent are the only teams to beat their projected score four times aka every week
• Sean beat his by 4.01 this week
• Brent is the only manager to score of 100 in ALL four games 
• With this week's score, he moves ahead of Scott H as the league leader in scoring

Actual Average Pts v Average Projected Pts

The two games of the week I had my eyes on was Brent v Caleb and Ben v Cameron.... B v C.... British v Colonials...

Caleb made a lot of noise last week after his unexpected season high of 132.68. While Caleb had strong showings from all of his team (except Matt Stafford - 10 pts for a QB ain't going to cut it), he didn't have the breakout player that Brent had. Devonta Freeman scored a whopping 34.4 pts (he scored 38.8 last week). Freeman is playing outside of his mind. From ESPN: "According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Freeman is the first player since the merger to rush for three TDs in each of his first two career starts." This type of production cannot last, but Mustache Salad moves to 3-1 on the year and jumps into first place. And what is even scarier is the RBs on Mustache's bench - Ingram has been solid this year posting double digit scores every week and Gurley looked really good against a tough Arizona Defense.

• Both teams look to have favorable matchups this next week. Mustache faces an unpredicable Quiddity of Luck and Bayo'wolf has his homecoming against Luchess's Cousin. 

Ben made a strong move after losing his starting QB and picked up Bortles, but the fall of Big Ben would prove to only help Cameron, who has Le'Veon Bell (22.7) on his team. The RB and DEF would prove the difference in the family affair. Cameron only need bel and Carolina forced 5 turn overs and scored a TD. The real villain is Doug Martin (21.8), who I think is a total sham and ruined me last year, had himself a game for Cobra Kai. He, unfortunately, was on the bench. 

The rest of the league games were... well, kind a blah. Sure, you had the solid performance by John, but the fact that Steven one with a score of 68.76 pts v Scott K tells you all you need to know about this week. I beat Danny (unless there is a friggin stat correction of some kind) by only scoring 86 pts. I mean, Scott H score dropped by almost 60% from last week (138 to 59).  Christie went M.I.A as well (dropped by ~31%). This was a bad week for the league. However, I think we will bounce back. In 2014 we had three weeks (3, 11,15) where we averaged ~87+ pts a team, the following week after we improved by at least 8% or 6 pts. I think the low score also speaks to how difficult this league is. I commend each of you on your efforts. The road ahead is long and difficult and probably not worth it. 

I do want to point out a few managers who look tough: 

• I have mentioned Brent enough up above, but he is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
• Sean. He has never scored below 100, averages almost 110 pts/game, has the lowest st. dev., and is 3-1.
• Jaime. He hasn't said a word. Won't do a manager spotlight. I don't know if he even read this, but he looks tough. I look at few things: scoring over 100, avg score, consistency ie standard deviation, and of course record. He has lit up the score just once (120.42), scored over 100 twice, but is averaging 100 pts a game, and has one of the lowest standard deviations in the league at 14.32 (the low for context is Sean at 8.5). Most importantly he is 3-1. 
• I think Scott has a lot of firepower... He just had a rough week.

* As stat corrections happen on Oct 8, the figures provided in this post may be a little off.