BIFL - Week 5 Review

As you will hear about in a bit, my team lost this week, dropping us to 2-3. 2-3! This is a team that still has the cornerstone of their 2006 & 2007 championship teams, Steven Jackson; the top running back in the league, Michael Turner; and two of the top 10-scoring quarterbacks. And now we have the same record as Alligator Fuckhouse, a team that has twice failed to top 50 points, and has only once topped 80. It seems so unfair, and so unlucky.
We are all well aware of the luck aspect of fantasy football. There are always teams that score a ton and yet perpetually seem to just barely lose, while some other schmuck sports a winning record with a team full of shitbirds. This season, for example, the afore-mentioned Fuckhouse squad is pretty miserable, but their opponents have scored a mere 339 points (68 points a week), well below the league average. Justin's opponents, by contrast, have scored 540 points, meaning that the Argonauts have needed 108 points a week just to be competitive. Seems unfair, but it all evens out in the end, right? I decided to do some research to find out.
I went back through our league history, looking at Points Against for every year we have records (2004 to the present). Over the 4+ years of our league so far, the average weekly score is 91.92 points, meaning in any given season we should expect about 1,195 points to be scored against us in the regular season. If Justin continues on his current course, he'll end up with 1,404 points scored against him. That would be bad, but it would not be the unluckiest season ever: that distinction belongs to Spencer. Last season, Spencer had 1,423.5 points scored against him, and that was a pretty huge statistical outlier. Other than that, only two teams have ever even had more than 1,300 scored against them, and those were both back in 2004 (Chalski and Will), our highest scoring season. The luckiest season, on the other hand, belongs to 2007's Dekker team, which had a mere 943 points scored on it. Like with Spence's record-setter, that is truly an exceptional performance: only three other teams in history have had less than 1,100 scored against them (Schank and Rousseau in 2006, Dekker in 2005). In general, the statistics even out far more than that, but there are still winners and losers in terms of luck in BIFL. Without further ado, I give you the unluckiness quotient for each franchise in BIFL history:
Team Average Points Against
Dekker 84.22
Schank/Souts 85. 37
Dick 89.87
Sovic 90.25
Juse 90.68
Chuck 91.70
Bardey 92.86
Dre 93.61
Shoaf 94.87
Jones(!) 95.5
Billy 96.47
Chalski 97.57
Congratulations, Chalski! As you've long suspected, you are the unluckiest owner in the history of BIFL. But at least you're only a little unluckier than your nearest competitors in unluckiness. Dekker and Schank/Souts, on the other hand, seem to be significantly luckier than anybody else in the league. And yet neither has ever won the league, despite this incredible good fortune. And I've won it twice! I guess ultimately, luck is no substitute for talent. Let's take a look at who was lucky and who was talented this week:

Sky Vault Centurions 122, Juse and the Argonauts 64
Juse's unluckiness quotient for this season may have been a little skewed by the beating he took from Andre this week. I can't imagine the explanation for why Andre benched Clinton Portis (23), one of this season's top backs, in favor of Jonathan Stewart, but clearly it didn't matter. Brandon Jacobs (27) scored enough for two RBs. Dre's receivers were no slouches either, with Larry Fitzgerald, Hines Ward, and Roy Williams combining for 41 points. The Argos' had a big day from a receiver as well, getting 16 from Isaac Bruce. Bruce has now averaged almost 13 points over the last four weeks, and is improbably looking like the fantasy factor he was back in the Greatest Show on Turf days. With only Jake Delhomme (17) matching his scoring, however, his return to greatness is being largely wasted on this Argo squad.

Egon Spengler 80, Iron Chef of Pounding Poon 91.5
With all this luck talk going about, perhaps I should count myself lucky that Dick left DeAngelo Williams' 34 points on the bench this week. Then again, I still lost, so who the fuck are you to tell me I should feel lucky, asshole? Anyways (as if you deserve any explanation), I actually thought I had a chance going into Monday night's game. Dick had put up a reasonably decent week thanks to Eli Manning (18), Chris Cooley (18), and Donald Driver (14). I was 15 points down after Sunday night, sure, but I had Robert Meachem and Will Smith going for New Orleans, and considering the Saints' high-flying offense, 60 yards and a touchdown for Meachem and 5-6 tackles from the Fresh Prince didn't seem that much to ask. Well, early on Meachem dropped a pass that could've gone for a touchdown, and from then on Drew Brees gave him the cold shoulder, effectively ending my chances for the week.

Manatee Eaters 131.5, Pet Monkey 70.5
Agh! Chuck's team had a frighteningly good week, outscoring Hollywood Meyers by more than 60 points. The lowest offensive scorer (and the only one not in double-figures) for the Eaters was DeSean Jackson (7), which is to be expected considering he was going up against the unstoppable juggernaut that is the Redskins. How about those Redskins, by the way? Do you think Chuck and Billy would be upset if, instead of talking about their game or their teams, I just spent the entire write-up talking about the Redskins? I can't really recall either of them ever commenting on the blog here, so either they don't read it, or they're just a couple of lazy fucks who read without truly appreciating it. Either way, fuck em. The Redskins have been the shit so far this season (well, except for that first game). Our left coast offense is efficient and consistent (Zorn!). Our defense is tough and spirited. Our media-friendly players, Clinton Portis and Chris Cooley and, increasingly, Jason Campbell, are the best in the league at being outlandish without being annoying (take notes, Chad Ocho Cinco). Fuck me I love Eastern Motors. Hip hip hooray.

Alligator Fuckhouse 48, Cholish Chachfaces 63
Ugh. Maybe I should have saved my Redskins rant for this write-up, because there sure isn't a lot to say about the scoring in this game, besides the fact that there was none. Soutendijk is on his way to a historically bad season. This week he had only two players, a linebacker (Patrick Willis, 11) and a kicker (Ryan Longwell, 14) in double digits. Beyond that, no one got even higher than 5 points. Granted, his top running backs had the week off, but it's not like you're going to expect a huge output from Jamal Lewis and Thomas Jones. Meanwhile, Marcus did nothing to justify his #1 ranking in last week's power rankings, but he did get one lucky week to counteract his history of unluckiness. A perfectly average performance by Reggie Wayne (15) and a sub-par outing by Philip Rivers (10) were enough to put him on top of this ugly contest.

Jeff Stryker is not really gay 92, FUBAR 102.5
After Sunday, this game looked like a classic Monday Night Match-Up. Will was up by 4.5 points with one of fantasy's most dynamic runners, Adrian Peterson, going up against Spencer's Drew Brees, the second-leading scorer in all of fantasy this year. And did I mention that the Saints can't stop the run and the Vikings can't stop the pass? By midnight on Monday the score of this game should have been a million to a million and one. But something happened to Adrian Peterson (my guess? he realized he's a huge pussy) and Drew Brees had an only moderately outstanding day (17), meaning a pedestrian scoreline and a victory for Spencer. I have a bet going with Will that AP will not get 6 weeks with 15 points or more scoring. Already he's got three, and in the next two weeks he faces Detroit (who is absolutely atrocious) and Chicago (which has a good defense that AP regularly destroys), so he'll probably be up to 5 by week 7. Not good, right? But then Minny has their bye week, and I feel confident that, given two weeks to himself, Peterson will find a way to injure himself for the rest of the season. Maybe he'll slip in the shower and knock his head against the side, falling into a coma. Maybe he'll slip on the wet deck of a Minnesota party boat and drown in Lake Spinnapataunka, or whatever the fuck they call their lakes up there. Maybe he'll just sleep wrong and have a sore back the next day. I don't know. But I believe in Purple Jesus' ability to crumple and wither before the season is through. Don't let me down, Adrian.

Skinny White Guys 93, Chip Lohmiller 86.5
Statistically speaking, Dekker should have won this week. His 86.5 is a good two-and-a-half points better than his average historical score-against, so he must have been shocked to find that a completely mediocre performance is not enough to win some fantasy games. I've almost getting sick of saying that Lohmiller's squad is NFC East-based, but sure enough those were his top scorers again this week. Tony Romo (17), Terrell Owens (14), and Brian Westbrook (14) again had outstanding weeks despite the fact that the Cowboys barely beat the lowly Bengals and the Eagles got humiliated by the Redskins. Comparing those scores to Bardey's, I can't actually figure out how the White Guys won (I'm not about to start doing math), but win they did. Andre Johnson (21) showed up for the first time this season, and Matt Forte (17) continued to be this year's most effective rookie, but other than that there was nothing outstanding for the White Guys. They won, though. Trust me.

Thus concludes Week 5 of BIFL. 5 straight weeks where Ive gotten the Reviews and (hopefully) the Previews in. We'll see how long this lasts. I'm starting to feel exhaustion set in. See you on Saturday for Week 6 predictions?