Week 12

The race for the final playoff spots is HEATING UP. This week was quirky as we saw the league's worst, Luchesse's Cousin almost beat mokes-a-lot, which would have ended her hopes of getting into the playoffs. Cobra Kai kept his playoff hopes alive with a crucial win over All Day Some Days.

Did I mention that Jesse almost won? It was his best score of the season! Huzzah! Amazing.

Current Playoff picture:

1. Brent 11-1 
2. Sean 9-3
3. Dan 8-4
4. Jamie 8-5
5. Scott 7-5
6. David 7-5

I emphasize that the number 5 and 6 seeds are open..sorta. 

Hanging around at 6-6 are: 

• Ben - faces Cameron, who, uh, well.... Ben can totally make the playoffs 
• John - faces Scott, who does not want to lose this last week. Both teams will have to pull out all the stops! 
• Christie - YES! Remember when she had the inside lane at getting into the playoffs? Well, she is back here to do the impossible! And who does she face? Yours truly! 

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO

the top six lose and donald trump becomes president

Brent - doesn't matter... he has the number one seed locked up.
Sean - also really doesn't matter, despite going to 9-4 where other teams could match him in record, but he has put up enough points to stay ahead of the curve, i.e. the teams that have scored above him have worse records. Remember, total points scored is the first tie breaker. Then it is pistols at dawn.
Dan - if he were to lose he goes to 8-5 and would drop in the seeding, however, he has the playoffs locked up.
Jamie- goes to 8-5 as well, but this record is sufficient to make the playoffs.

This is where things get interesting... sorta

Scott and Me - are in similar situations. Both must win out to stay in the hunt for the greatest of all hardware. If they win out (8-5 record), its game over, but going to 7-6 will open up the gates for the 6-6 teams, mentioned above. The key difference is that Scott has a significant point advantage over John - XX right now. So, Scott could miss the playoffs by losing to John AND by losing by > than XX. Something stupid like that.

My situation is much more delicate. If I were to lose, I would almost certainly be out. I do hold a scoring advantage over Christie, who also happens to be my matchup this week (by XX points). It is not likely that she would replace me, but it could happen. Me losing would most likely give Ben the final spot as he has the most favorable matchup this week.

What will probably happen:

Brent wins, because why wouldn't he?

Sean pulls out a close win over Dan

Jamie somehow plays the wrong guy again (he has had guys go for 30+ on his bench the past two weeks) and loses to Caleb. Goes (8-5).

Scott beats John, who decided to call me out and will suffer the consequences of his actions.

My hot streak ends at the hands of my lone sister. Ben beats Cameron and captures the sixth seed.

Ben getting in is a huge win for us in the consolation bracket!

_________________________________________________________________________________

I want to note that we will be having an award ceremony forthcoming. Please pay Brent the $10 for awards. We will have numerous awards based on the regular seasons performance and playoff finishes.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Week 11

"... To tell you the truth, I don't know if you are special. Only you gunna know that, when your time is right. But, you gotta work hard. I swear to God, if you're not going to do it, I'm out." - Rocky, Creed 

This week was one of the worst performing weeks. We had three teams score below 60 points this week. Dismal. I'm chalking up this due to Thanksgiving, traveling, and moving... AND I'm moving on... Not quitting on you yet.

The most competitive game of the week was Ben v Scott, which was decided by just 1.68 points. It was a battle of RBs, with Scott's Rawls exploded for 43+ and Ben's Martin 30+. Luckily for Scott his WRs picked up the slack for his other players... something that I had not predicted - "Scott's biggest challenge comes in week 11 vs Ben. I don't think he can win that game as he will face WR issues then."  Ben didn't have that same kind of support...The road for Ben to the playoffs for is uphill, but is still possible and very doable. He has rising John and a falling Cameron to close out this season.

Of some intrigue is John taking over the 6th spot with a win over Steven. His final two games will not be as easy.. He faces Ben (as stated above - just want to make sure you got that) and Scott. Neither Yahoo nor I think he can win out and secure a playoff seed. Prove us wrong, John.

Finally, in the battle of the Rookie's, Jamie got the better of Dan in a less than competitive match... They have split their meetings, but could meet each other in the playoffs for a illustrious rubber match (it won't be a Morales v Barrera type of trilogy). I am sure everyone will be watching for this...

Playoff Watch: 

A reminder, I had the following projections for the playoffs:
1) Brent (12-1)
2) Jamie (10-3)
3) Dan (9-4)
4) Sean (9-4)
5) Ben (8-5)
6) Scott (8-5)

Obviously, I didn't get it all right... After this week Yahoo projects it to be:
1) Brent (12-1)
2) Sean (10-3)
3) Scott (9-4)
4) Jamie (8-5)
5) Dan (8-5)
6) Ben (7-6)

Heard from around the league:

"I don't want to get into why my team is underperforming... We have had a very difficult stretch here" - Steven. It's true, his team has had the toughest schedule in Q3. His team missed their projected score by 24+ points or just ~77% of what they were supposed to do.

"I lost? Hmmm. Don't care! I'm breathing in the Hong Kong air!" - Danny. He didn't bother to sub in Sproles for an injured Lynch. Who, btw, will be out for a minute. Lynch has been a disappointment this year, only scoring 10+ in four of his nine appearances. 

"Manning? %$&* Peyton Manning!" - Christie. Manning isn't your only problem... you had two dudes in your lineup that were on byes. Her team is the second worst team scoring in Q3 - she has scored < 90 the past three weeks. 

"Brent's time is coming... and I will be the one to take him down." - Scott H. No love loss in this intense rivalry... Looks like there will be some quotes to put up in the locker room for Brent. Scott's confidence is at an all time high - he is enjoying his most productive stretch all year and is averaging 129 pts/game. 

"Jesse told me this league was difficult. Well, it hasn't really been that way. I will win this league." - Jamie. He has the lowest average projected score of teams currently in the playoff picture, with just over 95, and has only beaten that mark significantly (> 10 pts) three times. John, who has averaged a projected score of 98.39 has beaten his projected scores by a significant margin five times.

What if Luck had been last year's Luck?

Since I am playing StraitOuttaGronkton this week, I thought it would be interesting to play the 'what if game'. What if Andrew Luck was the Andrew Luck of last year? My original thesis was that S.O.G. would have benefited greatly. I was dead wrong...Lets take a look at the numbers.

Last year, Andrew Luck scored 418.29 fantasy points over 14 weeks, which averages out to be just over 29 pts/game. That is solid work. Unfortunately for S.O.G. and the rest of the world, no one can predict injuries, which Luck has sustained this year. However, lets ignore that fact and pretend that Luck was healthy all year and put up around 29 a game, regardless of the opponent. I recognize that this is a simplistic approach, but it could shed a light on how much impact one player has on a team.

Week 1: S.O.G. won easily. Changing Luck's score would have just increased the win margin.

Week 2: Loss 74.9 to 105.6. Luck scored 15.5. Giving back the delta of last year's average and this years score wouldn't have changed the outcome of this game either.

Week 3: Even if Luck scored the 29, it still would have been a loss.

Week 4: Luck is injured this week and the backup puts up 16 pts. S.O.G. loses by just over 2 points. Giving back the Luck average of last year would have resulted in a win.

Week 5: His starter, Flacco, puts up 28. He lost 30 points...

Week 6: Luck does score 32 points this week... but is on the bench. His starter, Flacco, scored 25. However, even if Luck was in, S.O.G. would have lost.

Week 7: Luck scores over 29... still loses.

Week 8: Even if Luck scores 29, he loses.

Week 9: See week 8 comment.

Week 10: Flacco scores over 29, he wins.

His record would have changed by just one win (3-7). He would not have benefited greatly from Luck being the old Luck.

What I did notice was the major inconsistencies of the rest of his team. Aside from his QB play, which has actually been pretty consistent, and Odell Beckham Jr., this team can't put up points. One week Watkins would have 0 and the next 14+. Bernard would score just over 5 and then the following week score 10+.  You have gotta have your other players give support.

The issues with this team go far beyond just one position.

Power Rankings

Yahoo's*

* Power Rankings based on projected points for the remainder of the season. 


Mine**
1) Brent
2) Sean
3) Scott H
4) Dan
5) Ben

**Performance as of, with no projections...

Week 10

Upset week was upon us: 

Four teams in the top ten college football rankings lost this week. 

Holly Holms destroyed the favorite Ronda Rousey.

Would it be the same for our fierce league of try hards? Almost.

If there ever was a week to shake things up the playoff race, this was the week. Just two teams managed to score over 120 pts. It also so happened that those two teams were playing each other. This was the worst week in the league since week four, as teams averaged just over 90 points a game. The past five weeks teams have been averaging 100+ a game. We hit an all time low as Jesse managed to score just over 23 pts.... 23 points.

The Upsets

There were epic upsets, most notably Scott K defeating Jamie, to break his eight game losing streak. I totally did not see this coming as I stated in last week's post, "He [Jamie] will easily dispatch Scott K (only one team hasn't)" Scott beat his projected score by ~25 points; his only other time he beat his projected scores by 20+ was his week 1 win. This was also his only other time where he eclipsed the century mark in points. While Jamie is still projected to make the playoffs (yahoo has him going 1-2 over the next three games) if he were to finish 0-3 it could knock him out of the picture. This loss could set in motion the fate already decided for him, his team, and his country.... or he will still make the playoffs. He will most likely, as stated previously in the week 9 post, and after Dan's most recent outing, beat Dan this week.

The other upset was Ben taking down Sean. I did see this coming! Finally, a correct prediction, "Sean's lack of explosive play will cost him when he plays the enigmatic Ben in week 10." I tried to warn you Sean. Should have taken my trade... Ben still has to face the hottest team in the league right now next week in Scott H, who is averaging 112 pts/game, with a weighted average 130+ pts/game. GEEZ. Call the fireman! I see my prediction of Ben finishing 4-0 being broken up this week...

The ALMOST UPSETS

We were all watching Brent and Cameron. We held our breaths. We bit our nails. Cameron is the only team to have defeated Brent and for just a brief moment it looked like it would happen again. Brent's solid players put up decent numbers, but his Denver Defense put up their worst performance of the year. However, Brent made a promise a lot time ago that Cameron didn't make. Brent made a bet - no a promise - - no an oath - no a covenant!!! that he would not bet against his Seattle Seahawks. He wouldn't do it now, not ever. He would not play Carson Palmer (ignore the fact that he did play Fitzgerald), but he played Kirk "YOU LIKE THAT?!" Cousins, who not only torched the New Orleans Saint Defense, he got Rex Ryan's brother fired!

Cameron on the other hand bet against the Hawks and didn't play Wilson. Sure, Wilson has struggled, even sucked in fantasy, but when you are playing against Brent, you gotta play Brent the way that Brent would play. You've got to cut your hand open and let the blood poor over the jersey of your favorite Seattle Seahawk - Bosworth. I think that is what it takes. So I am told.

Now, while this is a win now, we have seen close games be flipped with the stat corrections that come out on Thursday. Cameron did this to Caleb and I must note that Brent is only the winner by .84 - his lowest margin of victory.

-- UPDATE -- 

I just checked the "Stat Corrections" section and see nothing for Cameron to hold out for... Sorry.

Then you had the high scoring battle between the dead in the water holding on to hope, but she let you go Jack - Steven vs. the high flying, almost crashing into the ground, what is going to happen next? will they flame out now? its gotta be this week! Scott H. What has got to be so frustrating for Steven is that he played his best game since week 3. He rallied his troops, had a smart game plan, but didn't execute for four quarters! You gotta FINISH STEVEN! And you have to time it better... You would have been anyone else this week BESIDES Scott. Come on man, know your opponent.

I gotta commend Steven on his pick ups - his RBs specifically - C. West and J. Langford with 30+ pts a piece. Tip of the cap as well to Scott who has stayed the course with his lineup and never doubted.

I wouldn't say that Dan beating Christie was an upset, as I think Dan has the better team, but she was in the playoff picture. It was the sixth seed, which isn't sexy, but heck its the playoffs. Anything can happen in the playoffs! And this was her week to remain in the playoff hunt. It would have been hard, but after this loss? Forget about it... Dan put up his worst score of the year ~76 or whatever... Christie mustered up 36. Dang, man. Dang.

And you could have won. You should have won. Let me tell you again, Manning is done. He is toast. He is over. Drop him now. I don't care what you have to do, get that ugly mug off your roster. Any walking, breathing, starting QB is better than him. I told you he was a bad choice from day one. No one will pick that dude up off the waiver wire. No one would touch him with a ten foot pole! Secondly, if a dude is putting up solid numbers week after week - IE Michael Floyd - put him in. Now with Edleman out you don't have much of a choice... Better get hunting...

Playoff Race
Top Six, in order: Brent (9-1), Sean (7-3), Dan (7-3), Jamie (7-3), Scott (6-4), Ben (5-5).

The only team to have their playoff spot locked it Brent. The other teams above could fall out of the race. While I don't foresee that happening, it could happen. Anything could happen, right?

Ben and Scott face off this week. If Ben loses, his grasp on that final spot will be in serious trouble, with a number of teams sitting at 5-5 (John, Christie, Myself) and would have to win his way back in the picture.

Scotts's path is difficult as he plays Ben and two playoff hopeful teams the following weeks: John and Myself.

Jamie faces off against Dan this week and will then faces Sean. Who ever came up with the scheduling is awesome. The battle for the playoff seeding begins!

Sean has his homecoming week this week against Jesse, but then finishes with Jamie and Dan.

Brent? Cupcakes for his last three games. Resting his players and getting ready for the playoffs.

You wasted all this time on google sheets for.....?

YOU! I did it for you, mostly. But I really want you to be able to leverage the data provided. To better understand what is going on with your team. It will give you a high level understanding, but you will have to understand the details, and within the details comes the wins, and with the wins come the glory that you all hunger for, because the devil is in the details.

Lets use Christie's team as an example of how to leverage this worksheet.

First, if you see something that looks wrong or if you have suggestions, let me know. Also, this best viewed on desktop.

You'll notice you have your own individual spreadsheet that has a few metrics that should help you what is currently happening with your team. I am going to take you chart by chart, excluding the win loss record for your team. If you can't figure that out you have more serious problems.

Figure 1

The chart to the left (Figure 1) shows the actual weekly score for your team vs the: moving average, weighted moving average and projected points.

The moving averages (requires four week intervals) can be used to understand the scoring trend for your team. It smooths out the weekly scoring figure, which is subject to some real highs and lows - i.e. high standard deviations.

The projected score can help you better understand if you are performing at or above what Yahoo thinks your team is doing. You can see from Christie's scoring chart she is all over the map and is trending downwards. She has not be able to really keep her team consistent in scoring. She also has more often than not been meeting her Yahoo projected scores. In other words, she has an unpredictable and underperforming team.

Figure 2

 Figure 2 shows a good breakdown of how this team stacks up to the rest of the league, performance in wins/losses, total +/- of points on the year, and how difficult the overall schedule has been.

The power rankings can be better understood in this post. Christie is a 9 out 14. This is not good.

In her victories she is beating teams by 14 points and is losing by just ~12. These are close games. She is neither blowing out teams, nor being blown out. This can be further seen in the 'Total Season +/-" figure. This is simply the delta of the total points scored on the year and total points scored against.

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows the average pts scored again, the weekly moving average pts, weighted moving average pts, and the total standard deviation. Again, the moving averages show us the trend. The standard deviation shows the the variation of the scores. This better helps us understand if her scores are really ALL over the map. A 13 standard deviation is actually pretty good, but also shows us that she has never really exploded on offense.

Just like in real football, fantasy football takes four quarters. The charts to the right (Figure 4) gives us a quarter by quarter look for Christie's team. As QTR 3 has just begun, you have to take these figures with a grain of salt.

Figure 4

You can see that her team has slowed down quarter over quarter, but so has her competition, allowing her to keep at that .500 level. The trending lines also help in visualizing this change.

But how does this all compare to the competition? You can see that in the middle chart, which shows she started pretty well over the first four games, as she was 4th overall in scoring and had a reasonable schedule.

The final chart in Figure 4 further shows the percentage growth. Again, as Q3 isn't finalized the Q2-Q3 isn't finalized and can't be really looked at.

This chart helps us really understand where her team is compared to other teams, over intervals of four games. Christie has been, at best, a middle of pack team to a lower end team.

Figure 5

The final charts further compare Christie's team to the other teams in the league. As a rule of thumb you want to see green not red in the delta column. The delta column is simply the difference between Christie's metrics vs the league's average/median/leader...

I wanted to provide the league medians, in addition to the averages, to further show how her team is doing. This comparison shows how far she is truly from the middle of the pack.

Of course, you must compare yourself against the league leader. You can see that she has big gap between her scores and the leader.

Finally, the last section of Figure 5 helps understand if the team is doing better than the rest of the league in beating its Yahoo projections and how well, or how poorly, they are doing comparatively.

Look, I hope this helps. It is pretty hard to predict the outcome of any game, but these metrics can help you determining whether your down week was just a blip in the road, or if it is time to hit the panic button.

Week 9

This could be yours, maybe... or another one.

This was a super interesting week...Brent continues his dominance, Caleb decided he didn't need to set his lineup, the Brady boys rebounded, Christie ekes out a win, my 108 threshold was busted by Steven, and Scott H and Dan stayed hot. With four games left, the chase for the ultimate prize of useless pride and ring is on!

But first...just when I was about to enter promo code: 'Belly' this happened. Maybe this will put an end to all those annoying ads? Oh, you haven't seen the ads? Take a look here. And here. And here. And here. And here. OR just watch any live sporting event. Interesting that Outside the Lines did this report on the "industry" over a year ago and highlighted the amount of money being exchanged and the potential downfall of the marketplace. 

Lets get back to our league, where pain is temporary but pride is forever. 

Controversy

Brent is number one. His team is number one. His moves are number one. His luck is number one. Or was this week's victory some family colluding? Hard to say. Here are the facts: 

1) Brent had his number one WR & QB combo on byes this week - Palmer and Fitzgerald

2) His back ups were Golden Tate and T.Y. Hilton

3) Tate was also on a bye this week as well, while Hilton was considered questionable and was even expected not to play

4) Brent and Scott K executed a trade on Nov 7, which I approved, where Brent would get Watkins in exchange for Tate

5) Sammy Watkins was also battling injuries, but was expected to play

6) Tate has put up ~8 pts on a good week, but is scoring consistently

7) Watkins has scored in just three of his games this year

8) Watkins had a career game this week and put up 28.60 points

9) Had Brent not made that trade, and played Hilton, he would have lost this week to John, 119.22 to 115.28

10) Had Scott not made that trade he would have won this week against Christie

11) Christie would have been 4-4 and not in the #6 spot, but John would be in the #6 spot at 5-4

12) Brent would have had his second loss, but still remained in first and in control.

13) Scott's season is over. He's won one game..

Got all that? 

I have reached out to both Brent and Scott and have voiced my concern over what transpired. That this was an indeed honest trade and the integrity of the managers are intact. I have been reassured that this was a legit trade. That being said, the trade was a real gamble for Brent as Watkins topped out 12.60 in week 2 of this year. He has been spotty at best. I should reiterate that I approved the trade and the only reason this has drawn my attention is that Brent benefited greatly from this trade, even a win. Brent is one dammed lucky guy. 

It wouldn't be a great season without some controversy.

-- UPDATE as of 11/17/15 -- 

Sammy Watkins put up a whopping 1.70 fantasy points in week 10.
Golden Tate scored 7.70 fantasy points in week 10.
Brent is one lucky SOB.

-- -- --

Playoff Race

Currently the top six are, in order: Brent, Sean, Jamie, Dan, Scott H, and Christie.

Speaking of Christie, this week's win was huge for her and puts her on the outside lane to make it to the playoffs. While she is the #6 seed now, she faces a grueling schedule ahead. She faces Dan next week who has rebounded from injuries and is putting up over 126 pts a game over the last four weeks, with a weighted moving average of 130. She then will face Brent, Jesse, and Myself. I can see her best case scenario going 2-2 (toss up between myself and her) and worst case going 1-3 (she will most likely beat Jesse). Bold prediction: she goes 1-3 and finishes the season 6-7 and will miss the playoffs. 

Continuing to move backwards up the current seeding chain. Scott H put an absolute beating on Caleb, who has pretty much thrown in the towel. #creed. Better luck next year, right? Scott's biggest challenge comes in week 11 vs Ben. I don't think he can win that game as he will face WR issues then. He will finish the season 3-1, beating Steven, Myself, and John, but losing to Ben. Final record 8-5; seed #6. 

Dan is really coming into his own, who has won the last four of his five. His victory over Cameron put him into the playoff picture even more so and crushed Cameron's dreams of glory. That trend will continue as he will beat Christie, lose to Jamie due to Brees' bye, but beat Scott K and Sean. His receiving core looks to be very strong and Lynch will finally break out. Final record 9-4; seed #3.

I'm really high on Jamie right now. I dig unisex names and am digging the way he has played this season. Coming off his bye week to finish the rest of his season, the tune will go something like this - W, W, L, and W. He will easily dispatch Scott K (only one team hasn't), will squeeze by Dan, but fall to Sean, and then end with destroying a flailing Caleb. Final record 10-3; seed #2. 

That's right, Sean will be replaced as the second seed in the tourney. Sean's lack of explosive play will cost him when he plays the enigmatic Ben in week 10. He faces Jesse in week 11, aka a win. While he might not have the firepower, his consistency will save him in Week 12 against Jamie - as well as having Tom Brady's favorite endzone target in Gronk (Jaime will probably play Brady against the Broncos), but will cost him in week 13. So, I have it L, W, W, L. Final record 9-4; seed #4. 

As stated, oh, I dunno, like a thousand times, the #1 seed is locked up by Brent. He will finish with four straight wins against Cameron, Christie, Caleb, and Steven. Final record 12-1; seed #1. 

"But, David?," you say, "Aren't you forgetting the number five seed?" Correct you are, my astute reader. The fifth seed will be Ben. His rebound this week restored my confidence in him. He has been white hot the past four of five games. I have him finishing the season 4-0, against Sean, Scott H, John, and Cameron. Final record 8-5; seed #5. 

Here is how I think the playoff race will shake out. I see both Dan and Ben coming back down to earth after successful campaigns in the final weeks of the season. It will be a top seeded battle in the end, after a narrow win for Jamie over Scott. In the end, Brent's depth will prove to be too much. 

1	Brent
		Brent
	Bye
			Brent
4	Sean
		Sean
5	Ben
				Brent: 2x Champ
3	Dan
		Scott
6	Scott
			Jamie
2	Jamie
		Jamie
	Bye

Please note that all of these "projections" were done late at night and that's all they are... projections. Which is as good as sandpaper in an outhouse. You can use it, but you'd rather not. Here is the other disclaimer, these are all subject to change. One injury could really screw up a team. 

Data, Charts, Etc.

First off, please Venmo (or pay him in person, send a Western Union, whatever) Brent your league fee of $10 if you haven't already. The season is rapidly coming to a close and the awards team would like to get started.

Secondly, I am excited to share this google sheet that I have been putting together for some time. See it here. I have been trying to get it to a place where you guys can get a feel of where you stand. 

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback. Thanks!

Contenders

Knowing what we know from the last post, that scoring > 108 = winning (most of the time), we are able to identify teams that will more than likely be in the playoffs. There are only a handful of teams that are scoring above that threshold. Additionally, there are an even smaller amount of teams that are scoring above the threshold to beat Brent, > 138.

A true contender is a team that is putting up high marks multiple times. I am going to put aside the standard deviation metric in this post, because explosive teams tend to have a higher standard deviation as they fall back down to earth. For simplicity's sake lets look at the multitude of times a team is hitting high marks.

There are six teams that have scored > 110 more than three times, Brent with 6x's; Ben and Scott H with 4x's; Sean, Jamie, and Dan with 3x's.

Please see the table below:

Pts Scored	110	120	130	140	150
Caleb	1	1	1	0	0
Steven	1	1	1	1	0
Ben	4	4	2	2	1
Scott H	4	3	2	0	0
Sean	3	2	0	0	0
Jesse	0	0	0	0	0
Christie	1	0	0	0	0
Brent	6	6	3	1	0
David	2	1	0	0	0
Cameron	2	1	1	1	1
Jamie	3	2	1	0	0
Dan	3	1	1	1	1
Scott K	1	0	0	0	0
John	2	1	0	0	0

Brent has scored above this mark the past four weeks and shows no signs of letting up.

Ben has been able to hit over 110 three out of the last four weeks. This is a good sign for him, despite his poor performance last week, as he only scored above the 110 mark just once in his first four weeks. Finishing strong play a major factor for these remaining games.

Scott H has been a little more inconsistent, as he has only been above our bogie mark for consecutive weeks just once. However, two of his total four times have come the past two weeks. Positive note, but we will see how this plays out.

Sean of his three times he has never done it consecutive weeks, but has been able to do so two times in the last four weeks. Sean looks to be a sure lock for the playoffs, but he has never truly exploded. His season high is 122.5. He can rest assured that to beat him it will still be difficult as he has never scored 102 points.

Jamie two of his last four games have been greater than 110 and last week posted his season high 138.74. He has got the fire power, but I wonder when he drops his score can he still get the W. His other two scores over the past four were below 92 points. Chances of winning with that score becomes very challenging.

Dan, again, as previous stated in an previous post Dan and Jamie are very similar teams. Dan got his high score last week at 153.94. He has scored above 110 twice in the last four games. However, unlike Jamie his down scores have been above 92.

I see these teams as playoff teams. The ability to score the high mark is huge. As of this moment the teams that are the playoffs are as follows: Brent, Sean, Jamie, Danny, Cameron, and Scott. Anything could happen, but I see Ben replacing Cameron in the race for the 'ship. Where they end up in seeding is anyone's guess.

What do I gotta score to win?

Its all relative.

If you play Brent, you may score 113 points and still lose. If you play Jesse, you just need to make sure you have your lineup set. However, this is a critical point in the season, with many teams sharing the same record (seven teams at 4-4), and with the first and second seed in the playoffs all but locked up with Brent and Sean, its all about just getting into the playoffs.

I was curious the other day and asked myself, 'what do I need to score to win a fantasy football game?'. And then I was wondering to myself: Yahoo projects me to score 100+, that sounds good, but it going to translate into wins? I sure hope scoring over 100 wins me games! I would like to score 170+, but I'm no Brady, nor do I have Tom Brady on my team. 

First, what I did was look at all the scores (as you would have to if you really wanted to know, but before that, I collected all the scores.... if you want to know what I truly did first) and separated them into wins and losses... I then asked, what is the break down of these scores, i.e. what are the ranges of scores that translated into wins vs losses. My thesis was that if teams scored over 120 points a game, that team would probably have a 75-80% chance of winning my game.

When looking at the league holistically, we get some higher scoring hurdles than I had first expected. The true (up to this point) scoring hurdle to ensure a victory is to score over 138.46. You will win 100% of the time if you do that. I found this by simply looking at the highest score in a loss -- it was Week 3 when Scott H lost to Brent by a mere 4.58 points, as Brent posted 143.04 (yes, I double checked my math). Scoring above 138 is a tall task, as only SEVEN teams have eclipsed that mark - with just one team, Ben, to do it twice. It is a tall order when also considering that just FIVE teams have scored above 140 points. This tells us two things: 1) It is difficult to score that high 2) it doesn't happen very often. Go to Bookings.com for something less obvious.

However, there are outliers in our data. There always is. Brent and Jesse, as stated at the very beginning, are our outliers. Without their scores accounted for (I took them completely out of the data set and all with wins/losses from their match-ups with other teams) that 138.46 mark mentioned in the last paragraph is much, much lower. It would be at 108.96 or approximately 29.5 points lower than 138.46. That is a considerable amount of points. To score 138.46 you have to have your players average ~15.38 each. I don't know about you, but I am having a tough time finding a RB that can do that, let alone a kicker and defense to put up that kind of scoring. While at our new mark of 108.96, your players need to average ~12.11 points. High? Yes, but doable. All but one team has scored over 110 points.

What this means is that you don't have to ask a few of your players to do so much, to cover for the rest of the guys sorry asses, because it will never be that balanced of an attack. In this game someone always has to pick up another players weak performance.. No thanks to you, Ryan TannehillsuckieQB! Lets look at what happened on the week's those teams that eclipsed the mark of 138.46 did.

To simplify this I just looked at the top performers for WR and RB position, i.e. the highest scoring WR and also the highest scoring RB. Then I looked at the higher of the K/DEF score and always included the QB.

QB: averaged 30+ pts, with the high of 62. That 62 number is off the charts and must be excluded (Dan posted that last week as Brees just went insane on the membrane). This brings our average down to around 27. This is still a high mark and there were two cases of where the QB scored under 20.

WR: averaged 22+. The sample set was pretty close, so I didn't have to throw any numbers out. The high was 27 and low was 17.

RB: avg. 26+. There was one week where the leading RB had around 9 points (again, Dan's performance last week - he had Brees covering everyone else). Excluding that 9 pointer, you are looking at about 28 pts. But there was one week where a RB hauled in 44 points to cover for a poor QB performance (Cameron in week 7). Taking the 44 pts out you are down to ~26 pts.

K/DEF: avg.15+. There were just two weeks where teams had their kicker or defense score over 20. Taking those out reduces this number to ~13. Interesting to note here that the lower of the two still avg. ~8. Still not a terrible performance.

Do you follow this tangent at all? Basically what I'm saying is you need your core (or just one dude to go HAM) to really sow up. You are talking about a QB score of 27, a WR at 22, and RB at 26. That is a killer week man, but you gotta have some other support here, coming in the form of a kicker or defense, to cover for a more than likely shotty TE and WR2, WR3, and RB2. But those four positions would need to put up about 90 points. That is a lot of weight on a few guys to get to 138.46, while 108.96 is less than 20 points away.

Let's circle back to my original thesis, that you will win 75-80% of the time with 120 pts? What does that mean for my chances of winning? This is when it gets even more muddy. If you aren't already lost, you may be... I took the scores of wins, put them in ranges, then divided them by the number of times that range appeared. For example, looking at the range of between 110 and 120, I found seven times a team won, versus the total number of times a number between 110 and 120 were found 10 times. Therefore, 70% of the time. However, There are two sections below. One including Brent and Jesse and another that excludes their scores and the corresponding wins scores and range scores from the sample.

*Including Brent and Jesse

Looking at the ranges in about 10 point intervals from 138.46 down you get the following:

Scores	Chance to win	Number of Wins
>138.46	100%	8
> 120 < 138.46	85.71%	12
> 110 < 120	70.00%	7
> 100 < 110	38.46%	10
> 90 < 100	41.67%	5

It may look weird that you have a high chance of winning a game if you score in the range of 90 to 100, but this is due to the fact that we have had the least amount of wins in that range.

**Excluding Brent and Jesse 

Removing Brent and Jesse changes things quite a bit, as the scoring threshold in significantly reduced. 

Scores	Chance to win	Number of Wins
>108.96	100%	19
> 100 < 108.96	35.00%	7
> 90 < 100	33.33%	3
> 80 < 90	8.00%	4

Most wins (19) have come when teams have scored above the 108.96 mark. 

Finally, you now know what marks you must post to obtain victory.  My thesis was correct. You score 120, you have a high probability of winning. 

Week 8

Week 8 Charts..

POWER RANKINGS
1) Brent
2) Sean
3) Dan
4) Scott H
5) Jamie