Week 6, or a new unexpected Tidwell winner

Week 6 brought us our top team getting leveled, and the rest of the league continuing to level off. It’s still early (not quite halfway through the season) but I’m sure there’s more than one panicky owner.

Dancin’ Dennis Nedry (143.5, 4-2) vs. The Jeff Fisher Effect (113, 2-4)

Todd Gurley scored two TDs and rushed for over 200 yards. And that WASN’T the highest score of the week for Dancin’ Dennis. Nope, that belongs to Tyreek Hill, who scored three TDs. On the flip side of the ball, Melvin Gordon scored three TDs of his own. I’m not sure how many matchups have three 30 point scorers in our league history, but it can’t be too many.

Iron Ryan (127.5, 3-3) vs. Team Provost (123.5, 3-3)

It’s always good when all your skill players score double digit points, as they did for Iron Ryan. Provost would have been close, but Amari Cooper got concussed and scored 0 points. I know you can’t plan on injuries, but it hurts a little more when you’ve got a double-digit scoring WR on your bench, and basically playing a warm body in that spot could have resulted in a win. Iron Ryan continues a three-game win streak.

Pedro Pickles (137, 2-4) vs. Hardcore Sacks (78, 5-1)

Our top team against one of the bottom teams and...wow. Hardcore had Drew Brees on bye, but there was nothing he could have done this week. Antonio Brown and David Johnson were what he got. Sometimes, that’s what happens when you have two starters who are Cleveland Browns. Pickles has ridden Sony Michel and Patrick Mahomes most of the year so far, and this week they led him to victory. It’s never a good thing when you’re starting Austin Ekeler in one of your RB spots. Pickles badly needs Lev Bell to come back. And play.

Released Dix On Boobies (163.5, 3-3) vs. Panic Time Squad (103, 3-3)

Speaking of Lev Bell coming back, Boobies (heh) hopes that never happens. James Conner put up his second straight enormous week, and Kareem Hunt got into the act too: Conner and Hunt combined for 55.5 points. Every player in the lineup for Boobies broke double figures, and it never hurts when your kicker scores 22 points. PTSd pulled most of the right strings but his newly acquired toy in Dion Lewis did not help him out at all. Neither did Eli Manning. “But Commish, PTSd started Big Ben at QB.” Why, yes, astute observer, he did. But Eli Manning is in charge of getting the ball to Odell Beckham...and that didn’t go as well as it could have.

Death Valley Driver (89.5, 4-2) vs. Scrote Squad (81, 1-5)

If there were actual game tape to review of these games, there’s little doubt this one would be last. Against anyone but Hardcore’s total, neither of these teams would have had a chance. Let’s see….uh…. Robert Woods was the high scorer in the matchup (non-QB edition) with 15.5 points. The low score? The 8th-round draft pick Jaguars defense scored -1 against the vaunted (haha, couldn’t say it with a straight face) Cowboys offense. DVD has really come crashing back to earth after a monster first four weeks. But he sits at 4-2 nonetheless.

Money Makes The World Go Around

I’ve seen it all now. After posting a bottom-10 all-time score just TWO WEEKS AGO, Released Dix On Boobies wins his first ever Tidwell Award. Congrats to him. Somehow, his team is good now?

Interesting thing about this: Boobies (heh) score is the second highest in the league this season. The other 3 of the Top 4 all came in Week 4. Which just so happens to be the week Boobies (heh) bottomed out with 59.5 points. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is the largest single season swing (104 points) in league history.

Up Next

Look for the usual Mid-Season report following next weekend’s games when we’ll be, ya know, mid-season. Until next week, enjoy this nerdy game we all play.

And when are we getting together to watch games?

Week 5, or The Middle Gets Muddy

Week 5 has given us a clear leader, and then a muddled middle of the pack.

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ITALICIZED TEXT:

Also in the middle of the 1 p.m. games, we had some controversy with our new IR spot. I mentioned this in Week 2’s notes. Basically, if your guy doesn’t have the red “IR” next to his name, he can’t go in the IR spot on your roster.

Thank you. You may now return to your usual reading habits for the notes...

OK, shall we recap? Let’s recap.

Team Provost (81, 3-2) vs. Death Valley Driver (75.5, 3-2)

Team Provost dusted off that old Provost Magic™ in holding off DVD this week. It seemed very easy for DVD to come back from down 14 with Alvin Kamara and Adrian Peterson still to go on Monday night, but the Saints decided it was important to give Mark Ingram the ball and basically give Kamara a week off before their bye week, and Peterson got injured: the two combined to score 8.5 points. Womp womp. Provost basically only had good RBs (which is pretty common when you start Saquon and Zeke), which put him at a major disadvantage, until Kamara ghosted and Peterson broke. After showing out last week, Amari Cooper and Golden Tate were quiet this week, but it didn’t matter. Our top scoring team put up the lowest point total this week.

Panic Time Squad (123, 3-2) vs. Scrote Squad (92.5, 1-4)

Well, Odell Beckham decided to remind everyone that he’s a factor, even though the Giants lost a heartbreaker. Funny part of this for PTSd - he could have had even more points if he played Kenyan Drake and Isaiah Crowell, though no one blames him for sitting them because they combined for 2 points last week, and 51 this week. Scrote bet into the TD streak of Calvin Ridley, which didn’t work out. Scrote is just overmatched most weeks and needs his guys to blow up. When they just blow, there’s very little chance for him.

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (138, 5-0) vs. Dancin’ Dennis Nedry (117, 3-2)

Hardcore becomes the second team in as many seasons to start the year 5-0, and his team looks every bit as dominant as last year’s champ. It’s tough to keep Antonio Brown down for a whole game, and even though the Cardinals are an absolute dumpster fire, David Johnson continues to get his. Also, Davante Adams. DDN had a promising start, but has fallen off of late, even though Todd Gurley continues to destroy NFL defenses. When I say “fallen off”, it’s a lot of bad luck. His 117 points would have beaten about half the league. He just happened to play against this week’s Tidwell winner. And he’s the second highest scoring team in the league.

Iron Ryan (106, 2-3) vs. The Jeff Fisher Effect (84.5, 2-3)

Tom Brady had a big Thursday night, which launched Iron Ryan to a lead, and then when Brandin Cooks went down with a concussion in his first target on Sunday, JFE was done. It’s really hard to win when you have an injured guy put up a 0, and your defense put up a -2. Iron Ryan is on a two-game winning streak and recently texted the Commish, proclaiming he was going to win the championship. He’s feeling pretty good about his team, even if perhaps a bit disillusioned. Yes, Ryan, I understand there was some sarcasm to that claim, but damn, if it doesn’t look good when you win again.

Released Dix On Boobies (123, 2-3) vs. Pedro Pickles (119, 1-4)

This was a hard luck loss for Pickles, especially since his score would have beaten half the league. Only thing Pickles could have done differently was play Shady McCoy instead of Chris Thompson, but even that would have only gotten him to 122 points, and still a heartbreaking loss. Boobies (heh), meanwhile, used James Conner’s 33 points and a garbage time TD from Demaryius Thomas to win his second game of the season, and put up a big point total. Boobies (heh) seems to be the biggest boom or bust team we have. He’s either well over 100, or down in the 60s (or lower).

This Week’s Tidwell Award

Hardcore Sacks ran train on the league this week, picking up his second Tidwell award. I’d put another Rod Tidwell gif in here, but the gif sites are blocked at work. Hardcore and Dancin’ Dennis have two Tidwells, while our top scorer, DVD, only has one.

Random Score-dom

It’s not predictive really at all, but I find Iron Ryan’s and Pedro Pickles’ week-by-week scores interesting:

Iron Ryan: 86, 85, 85.5, 104, 106

Pedro Pickles: 122, 121, 95, 95.5, 119

The clusters are interesting. Pickles is also fifth in points for, and should be better than his 1-4 record. For context, he’s fourth in points against.

We move on to Week 6, dreaming of wins to separate the middle of the pack.

Week 4, or the Best of Scores and the Worst of Scores

Week 4 in the NFL featured four overtime games, one of which included an inexplicable re-spotting of a ball to rob Cleveland of a first down. Also included in the weekend slate, the return of your Commissioner’s team namesake Jeff Fisher in broadcast booth.

Week 4 in STPS was the highest total point output the league has ever seen, and also included one of the lowest individual scores our league has ever seen. Oh, fantasy football...

Team Provost (158.5, 2-2) vs. Dancin’ Dennis Nedry (112.5, 3-1)

No more dancin’ this week. But it’s not because he didn’t put up a good score. It’s because Provost did, knocking DDN from the ranks of the unbeaten. Zeke, Saquon, Amari and Golden went nuts, giving Provost the third-highest score of the week. There wasn’t much DDN could do. He DID leave 88 points on his bench, including huge games by Corey Davis and Cooper Kupp, but the major concern could be Jordan Howard’s 2 points in this one. Running back points are hard to come by, and he’ll need some support for Gurley.

Scrote Squad (135, 1-3) vs. Pedro Pickles (95, 1-3)

Pickles middling luck continued this week. He’s got the second-most points against in the first four weeks (behind only Scrote Squad), and his decision to draft Lev Bell and Shady McCoy in two of the first three rounds looks like it’s hurting him bad. He’s hoping for some reprieve from Sony Michel, and if Lev Bell comes back healthy, he could make some noise. As long as he’s not 1-6 when Bell comes back. Scrote, meanwhile, has been putting up points the last two weeks. And he left Jared Goff and Calvin Ridley on his bench. Really, both of these teams could be better than 1-3. Both would be 2-2 playing against the league average (fun stats like this can be found on our 2018 Stats sheet).

Death Valley Driver (164, 3-1) vs. The Jeff Fisher Effect (159.5, 2-2)

This one was a fireball matchup that had JFE watching the Monday Night game very closely. Neither of these owners would have lost to anyone else this week, or anyone else in any week of the season to this point. DVD had the big explosion from Alvin Kamara, and smaller explosions from Nuke Hopkins and Sterling Shepard, while JFE had blowups from Melvin Gordon, Brandin Cooks and George Kittle. This game smashed the record for most total points in a matchup (323.5). The highest previous total was 298.5 in Week 3 of 2015 between Team Arby’s (Ryan) and Peterson Venkman, Phd (in a matchup that gave us the highest single game score ever).

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (109.5, 4-0) vs. Panic Time Squad (95.5, 2-2)

Last week, I pointed out that Panic Time Squad probably was early in changing his name and shouldn’t panic. Well, I take it back. Again. When your two RBs combine for a total of TWO points, you probably ought to panic. And when the FIVE RBs on your roster (granted, one is injured) combine to not reach double digits, you probably ought to panic. And yet, he STILL almost pulled it off, partly thanks to a downright terrible day from Drew Brees. Hardcore got production from everywhere else though, icing the win, and moving to 4-0 for the first time.

Iron Ryan (104, 1-3) vs. Released Dix On Boobies (59.5, 1-3)

Well, Iron Ryan got his first win of the year, thanks to, as he pointed out, a 9-point head start granted to him by Boobies (heh) and the Vikings D. And then, going into Monday Night, Boobies (heh) had a legitimate shot at the worst weekly output our league has ever seen. And then Kareem Hunt rescued him from that embarrassment. I’ll have more on the futility of Boobies (heh) this week in a minute. For now, we sit here and wonder, “How in the name of Terry Bradshaw did this team score 143.5 in Week 1? He’s failed to score even half of that total in a game since. Kareem Hunt scored a whopping 42.8% of his points this week, and if Hunt hadn’t gone off on Monday, we’d seriously by talking about an all-time futile score.

Masterpiece of Futility

At the end of Sunday night’s games, Released Dix On Boobies was sitting on a total score of 30 points. The all-time low score for a week is 40.5, achieved by Cusick in Week 4 of 2015. In the “modern era” of the league (after we expanded and added the .5ppr), we have now had 9 sub-60 point scores, including in the postseason. Here they are, listed lowest to only slight less low:

SCORE	YEAR - WEEK	OWNER
40.5	2015 - Week 4	Cusick
48	2017 - Week 7	Ryan
48	2017 - Week 8	Chris
50	2016 - Week 16*	Chris
55	2016 - Week 14	Nate
56.5	2015 - Week 9	Chris
59	2016 - Week 8	Kyle
59	2017 - Week 3	Pete
59.5	2018 - Week 4	Chris

*denotes postseason

These are the lowest of the low scores, and you’ll note that Chris has four of them. (Also note: I threw out the “Kyle vs. Ryan Kicker Fiasco of 2016”)

Show Him The Money

Not surprisingly, Death Valley Driver finished as the Tidwell Award winner this week. The Effect’s 159.5 is now the highest non-Tidwell winning score, besting the previous high of 130 by Pedro Pickles last year in Week 8.

"I'll take Interesting Scoring for $200, please, Alex"

Pedro Pickles has had a great run of scores in our first 4 weeks. Here they are, in order:

122

121

95.5

95

I don't even know how to "analyze" that, it's just pretty cool to see.

Week 5 continues the fireworks known as Fantasy Football, and starts with the Colts-Patriots Thursday night game. The marquis matchup in our league this week pits Hardcore Sacks (4-0) vs. Dancin' Dennis Nedry (3-1). Sunday Night Football NBC would probably steal this game for Sunday Night Football. You know, if watching fantasy football matchups were good TV.

-Commish

Week 3, or a middling week after two big ones

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (148, 3-0) vs. Scrote Squad (103.5, 0-3)

The week Scrote Squad attempts to make your Commish look silly after calling his team not good, he breaks 100 for the first time and would have beaten more than half of the league’s teams. Unfortunately, he went up against the week’s highest scorer in Hardcore. Scrote stacked Deshaun Watson and Will Fuller to the tune of 41.5 combined points, and Run CMC scored another 21 points this week, but it just wasn’t enough to compete with the highest score in the league so far. I mean, how do you compete with a Drew Brees who has both 1) an extra quarter to rack up stats and 2) gets two rushing TDs (including the game winner)? The answer: you probably can’t.

Death Valley Driver (117.5, 2-1) vs. Iron Ryan (85.5, 0-3)

Iron Ryan, man….he’s gotta change his name to Brittle Ryan. His guys just can’t seem to stay healthy. Two injured guys on his bench (Baldwin, Fournette), one “injured” guy on his bench (Josh Gordon), and then an injury in the first quarter to Evan Engram and….damn. Also doesn’t help that Tom Brady has looked damn near mortal this year. (See the “Somewhat Random Thought” below.) Driver, meanwhile, has very few injuries, and a bench stacked with talent: literally every guy on his bench scored double digit points this week. Ryan Fitzmagic tried like hell to become Fitztragic Monday night, but dug himself out of that hole. But it didn’t matter against the Not-Goodness (and bad luck) of Brittle Ryan.

Panic Time Squad (111, 2-1) vs. Released Dix On Boobies (68, 1-2)

Tale of Two Teams: Panic Time thought his season was over when his team underperformed in Week 1. Boobies (heh) thought they were sitting pretty after dropping 143.5 points in Week 1. Now the situation has reversed. For Boobies (heh), it starts with the Brady/Gronk Connection that hasn’t been there for the last two weeks, and an injury to Jay Ajayi. Plus, he’s still got DJ Chark on his bench and his -0.5 fantasy points on the season. For PTSD, the injury to Devonta Freeman seems to not have mattered, and neither has the basic ineffectiveness of Kenyan Drake. He had a solid day all around.

Pedro Pickles (95.5, 1-2) vs. Team Provost (93.5, 1-2)

Now we get to the games that were most directly affected by the Monday Night Shootout. Pickles trailed going into the matchup, but then Fitzmagic pulled out his magic wand, and expelliarmus-ed the Steelers awful secondary, Mike Evans had a big night, and gave Pickles the two-point victory. Provost got a total of 11 points from his WR slots, which certainly didn’t help. And speaking of guys on one’s bench that should have been dropped long ago: Cordarrelle Patterson and his 5.5 fantasy points.

Dancin’ Dennis Nedry (99.5, 3-0) vs. The Jeff Fisher Effect (98.5, 2-1)

Talk about a way to ruin your night: wake up with your 1-month old son, check your fantasy score to learn you’ve lost by 1 point because of bad JuJu. Or good JuJu from the point of view of Dancin’ Dennis. Each team had a reasonably solid day, and could have made a change or two to boost their score but…. Sometimes it just works out this way. DDN is sitting pretty at 3-0 with good starters, a decent bench and squeezed out a win with a bad day from his wideouts. JFE is 2-1, and starting to hit the panic button a little bit with Joe Mixon out.

Show Him The Money!

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 is this week’s Tidwell Award winner. It’s Tim’s second ever Tidwell Award.

Shoulda Started That Guy

Death Valley Driver’s BENCH scored 102.5 points this week. That would have beaten 6 teams this week. Maybe he shouldn’t have started those guys (I mean, he won anyway), but his team be deep, yo. (I know I have the ability to remove that ridiculous sentence, but I’m gonna leave it in.)

Somewhat random thought

You guys remember years ago (not sure you’re all Red Sox fans?) when the world was convinced that David Ortiz was washed up when he started slow for the first couple months, and then he became David Ortiz again? I’m wondering if that’s happening to Tom Brady. Boston Media thinking the guy is done, and then toward the end of the season, he’s the guy we’ve always known. Or maybe, Alex Guerrero is full of shit and the TB12 Method is a total crock.

Week 2, or The One That Should Have Been Week 1

Ahh, Week 1. The start of the fifth season of Smarter Than Phil Simms. The one week when everyone thinks they have a chance (even though everyone else knows Crobi doesn't).

Wait a minute… this is Week 2? Right. Sleep deprivation kicking in. I guess since it's Week 2 (heading into Week 3), now even Crobi knows he doesn't have a chance.

Actually, it's Cusick who doesn't have a chance.

Let's do some long awaited recaps, shall we? We shall!

Panic Time Squad (129, 1-1) vs. Pedro Pickles (121, 0-2)

Well, perhaps Panic Time Squad (PTS) changed his name too early, because this week offered very little reason to panic. It's a major tough break for Pedro, who sat there as Patrick Mahomes was throwing 6 TDs, "No way my QB gets outscored!" and then his QB was outscored. By the other QB in the same game (Ben Roethlisberger). Interesting tidbit: both of their defenses lost points this week. Pickles is the most consistent team in the league, scoring 122 and 121 points, but he’s been a hard luck loser twice. His team is much better than his 0-2 record.

The Jeff Fisher Effect (118.5, 2-0) vs. Scrote Squad (90, 0-2)

This one came down to the lack of strength at wide receiver for Scrote. It's going to be hard to compete with teams trotting out Robert Woods and Marvin Jones. It's also a stroke of bad luck when your kicker goes down in pre-game warm-ups (Greg Zeuerlin). JFE caught a break with Melvin Gordon who had about 50 total yards in the game, but scored three touchdowns. JFE might be in trouble with the injury to Joe Mixon.

Hardcore Sacks 2.0 (83.5, 2-0) vs. Released Dix On Boobies (65.5, 1-1)

This game looked a lot like the Sunday Night Giants-Cowboys game: shitty. Not ONE of the starters in this matchup reached 100 scrimmage yards (QBs not included), which explains the insanely low scores. Hardcore had a big week last week, but this week beat the only team he could have. David Johnson could be lost in that putrid Cardinals offense, but if he and Antonio Brown have days, look out. Boobies (heh) got some TDs from his RBs, but Gronk was virtually shut out by the Jags defense. I’m not sure what he’s going to do when (if?) Lev Bell comes back and James Conner becomes superfluous.

Dancin' Dennis Nedry (147, 2-0) vs. Death Valley Driver (126, 1-1)

It's funny what happens when you have the same team as the previous year's champion: you win. Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs and Todd Gurley carried DDN for the second straight week. Now, this is not disparaging to DDN; you draft good players, you win games, and score lots of points. Death Valley is just a hard luck loser this week, since they would have beaten almost any other team this week. Make no mistake, if you're looking for the top teams to this point, I'd be looking at this matchup.

Team Provost (118.5, 1-1) vs. Iron Ryan (85, 0-2)

It’s a different year, but once again, Iron Ryan is more like Brittle Ryan. His team just can’t seem to stay healthy. With no Doug Baldwin or Leonard Fournette, his team is not very deep. Plus he’s got that Irish Dancer Alex Collins, who’s just...well….not good. Provost will be able to go as far as Saquon and Zeke will carry him. This week felt like the ceiling for his guys, with all his skill position guys achieving double digits. It’s a nice ceiling and will get him a lot of wins, but may not carry him far into the playoffs.

Rod Tidwell Award

Dancin’ Dennis Nedry is the Tidwell Award winner for the second straight week. In Week 1, he won the prize by half a point.

Housekeeping and Hodge Podge

Matt Breida (DDN) was the Benchie Award winner this week. He had the most points, non-QB division on the bench. Kirk Cousins had 33 points on the bench as the highest scoring QB on the bench. Shockingly, he WASN'T the better play for his owner (Pickles had Mahomes and his 37).

Death Valley Driver had the highest scoring total bench of the week.

Just a reminder of our new IR roster spot. Only players with the little red "IR" next to their name are eligible to be used in that spot. Technically, ESPN allows other players to be used in that spot, but we established the spot only for IR'ed players (see: Dancin' Dennis Nedry and Panic Time Squad for proper use).

I WILL be putting together a spreadsheet like last year with week-by-week totals, positional points and all that. I'm still working on building it, so stay tuned for that. You know, in my copious amounts of free time.

Until next week, League mates!

SURPRISE!! The BIG reveal!

So I'm sure you've all been waiting like this for the big surprise...

I've thought for a while it would be awesome to have an official league logo. So I used the website Fiverr.com, and had one made....

AND HEEEEEEERRRRREEEEEE IT IS!

I'm hoping I can use it on all kinds of fun league things, like stationary, pens, coozies...you know, that kinda stuff.

I was so excited when this logo came out. I think it's hilarious, and just about perfectly captures the essence of our muse, Mr. Simms, and our league.

I'll be infusing the logo into the league history spreadsheet, and hopefully onto the background of this blog. And some other places too, I hope.

Also working on codifying our rules into one easy-to-read document. That will be coming down the pipe soon.

And let's think about when we're getting together for the Draft Order Determination Event (or DODE). Probably best to do it soon, maybe even before the end of the summer?

The One Where The Commish Procrastinated

So here's a blog post that's been waiting to be posted. And waiting.

And waiting.

<clock ticking...>

We met, oh, about 6 months ago (it seems) for our End of Season: The Gathering and discussed some rules changes and some other fun things. Here's the adjustments to the rules we agreed upon:

1. We agreed to return to the way we formerly named "The Worst," that being the loser of the Loser Bowl.
2. An IR spot will be added, with the understanding that the spot will only be used for players who are on IR, even if the ESPN rules allow for other uses.
3. We modified our keeper rule. Effective with the 2018 Draft, each player will only be allowed to be declared a keeper in two consecutive years (players who have been kept multiple years up to now don't matter; their clock resets). We will continue with our round penalty. We also added a provision that once a keeper would be kept in Round 0, he can no longer be kept.

The Commish also informed the owners of the following:

• there will be an adjustment to the schedule for 2018. Basically, if you played a team twice this year, you'll only play them once next year, and vice versa.
• A trade deadline is now formally in place (in prior years, The Commish had full veto power). Saturday at 11:59pm Eastern time, leading up to Week 13. In 2018, it appears that will be December 1, 2018.

I believe these are the only adjustments to the league this year. I love the minor adjustments that hopefully will continue to make our league a little more interesting as the season goes on.

In the offseason, let's continue to use the GroupMe. I think it's a great way to stay in touch. We should also consider getting together sometime to play some actual football, because I think it would be fun. And not at all dangerous.

And we'll try to have a Draft Order Determination Event, perhaps in the late Spring. And then the draft, probably the final weekend in August, since we probably won't want to draft on Labor Day Weekend? All this is up in the air, but keep it in mind. I would LOVE to have a 100% in-person draft this year (no more boat-drafters).

We won't be putting together a Smarter Than Tim McCarver Fantasy Baseball League any time soon, since very few of you seem interested in fantasy baseball. (Which is totally fine. I agree to join a league a few weeks ago, and I'm already regretting it, and we haven't even drafted yet.) So we'll stick with our own fantasy football things.

Anyone got any ideas to make the actual NFL draft fun? Pete? I feel like this is right up your alley.

Also Pete: where's my money from our playoff pool? If memory serves, I had the Eagles, who won the Super Bowl. And I've got some charities that are anxiously awaiting my prize money.