NBD - Week 10 Review

Well, gentlemen, we're headed into the home stretch of the fantasy season, with only three weeks' worth of games before our playoffs begin. With that in mind, and with so many teams bunched in the middle with 4-6, 5-5, or 6-4 records, I decided to look ahead and see what we might expect to happen in these final three regular season weeks. Unfortunately, despite being a literary genius in two languages and having even passed the bc calculus exam in high school (thanks, Ms. DeMaria!), I am absolute shit at holding and calculating combinations in my head. Once I get past, like, two possible combinations, I'm done. And with 12 teams playing each other over three weeks, there are like probably at least 4 possible combinations that could happen. It may be more, I'm not sure. There's something about a factorial.
So but anyways, here's how I decided to predict the remainder of the season. First, I looked at each team's performance over the past 5 weeks to get an idea of what we could expect from each team in their current configurations. The big surprise here was that the top scorer over the past 5 weeks has been none other than yours truly! That's right, in the second half of the season I've averaged a whopping 98.1 points per game. I am followed, not surprisingly, by the 7-3 $5 Foot Long (96.4ppg), then the somewhat surprising CH Croakies (96.0ppg), and then the extremely surprising Woody's Warriors (94.9ppg). So once I determined each team's points-per-game average, I compared each team to their upcoming opponents and established a probable record for their next three games. Adding this probable record to their established record, I was able to determine who will make the playoffs. The results may shock you:


Team / Current Record / Final-3 Prediction / Final Record
$5 Foot Long / 7-3 / W-W-W / 10-3
Matt Ryan Loves Dogs / 7-3 / W-L-W / 9-4
Wyld Stallyns / 7-3 / L-W-L / 8-5
Lassard Blows Harris / 5-5 / W-W-W / 8-5
CH Croakies / 5-5 / W-L-W / 7-6
Stadler & Waldorf / 4-6 / W-W-W / 7-6
Chestpubes & Ballfro / 5-5 / L-W-L / 6-7
Burke City Giants / 6-4 / L-L-L / 6-7
Woody's Warriors / 3-7 / W-W-L / 5-8
Tri Steeg Area / 5-5 / L-L-L / 5-8
Dutch Rudders / 3-7 / L-L-W / 4-9
Mephistopheles / 3-7 / L-L-L / 3-10


That's right, bitches. If the trends of the last 5 weeks hold, you'll be seeing Stadler & Waldorf in the playoffs. Now, we all know that fantasy football is not nearly as predictable as simple statistical projections, and that so much is based on weekly match-ups, injuries, and simple luck. But it is interesting to see the possibilities here, including the very real chance that a team like the Burke City Giants, who currently sit alone at the #4 spot with a 6-4 record, could bomb out of the playoffs, while a team like mine which languished in last place for most of the season could sneak in. The important games will be those between the teams currently 4-6, 5-5, or 6-4. I'll be highlighting those each week in my Previews. For now, though, let's take a gander back at NBD '08 Week 10.


Stadler & Waldorf 113.32, Mephistopheles 103.68
Despite their usual standings as league pincushions, the Tarasovics came out fighting this week, and of course it was at the expense of each other. Ray J's been getting big numbers out of Drew Brees (23) and occasional breakouts from DeSean Jackson (15) all year, but the rest of his big showing this week came from some unexpected sources. I was flabbergasted to see my own draftee, Ricky Williams, enter the Mephistophelian revolving door of running backs, and even flabbergasted-er to see him drop 19 points on me during the early games. And Todd Heap (18)? I honestly thought he was dead. But those pleasant surprises weren't pleasant enough in the face of the Stadler & Waldorf onslaught. The rookie combo of Matt Ryan (18) and Matt Forte (19) continues to impress. This week they received some veteran assistance in the form of Tony Gonzalez's biggest day of the season, and Gonzo's second touchdown in the waning moments of the Kansas City-San Diego game was a huge difference-maker in this one. Later that night, Brandon Jacobs' 23-point outing sealed the deal, putting the game out of the reach of Ray's Monday Night kicker, Neil Rackers (11).


CH Croakies 127.80, Woody's Warriors 84.90
I had hoped that my 113-point outing would be enough to secure me top scorer honors for the second week in a row, but I was even't close to matching the week 10 Croakies squad. The Croakies, who had yet to top 104 points this season, went way beyond that in pouring it on over the hapless Warriors, with almost the entire team in double-digits. Leading the way were Adrian Peterson (29) and the Green Bay Defense (20), which seems somewhat paradoxical considering that they were playing each other. In looking back at my Week 10 Preview, I'm sort of shocked that I didn't take Elliott to task for the fact that he was starting Joe Flacco and Kevin Smith, but I'm glad I didn't. Flacco (18) is apparently eager to show everyone that Matt Ryan is not the only rookie quarterback who can lead his team to success, and Kevin Smith (18) hasn't remotely matched fellow NFC North rookie rusher Matt Forte this season, but he came pretty close on Sunday. With all of these big performances from the Croakies, we shouldn't overlook the huge day by Woody's Maurice Jones-Drew (27), who persists in being an all-or-nothing fantasy play. Unfortunately for Woody, he blew one of his "all's" on a day when most of the rest of the Warriors brought nothing, and some brought even less (I'm looking at you, Marc Bulger's -0.4 pts).


Chestpubes & Ballfro 79.26, Matt Ryan Loves Dogs 88.42
The Mercenary Award for the week goes to Brady Quinn, who was picked up by Colly last Wednesday, scored 18 points for him on Thursday, and was promptly sent back to the waiver wire this Wednesday. One has to question the wisdom of such a quick drop, especially considering that Quinn was Chestpubes & Ballfro's leading scorer last week. Perhaps his sculpted and likely clean-shaven torso simply did not jibe with the C & B ethos. He certainly did not seem to inspire his teammates to greatness, as the only other decent scorers for Colly this week, Roddy White (13) and LaDainian Tomlinson (11), were actually well below what you'd hope for from them. Meanwhile, Matt Ryan Loves Dogs continued their march towards the top of the rankings with a fourth straight win. Most of Koehler's squad was pretty lame this week (5 points or less for 5 starters), but when Thomas Jones (33) has the biggest day of his fantasy career and Kurt Warner (25) continues his campaign for MVP with his third straight 20+ point game, much lameness can be overcome.


The Dutch Rudders 79.54, Burke City Giants 101.08
I was unfamiliar with the term "Dutch Rudder" before Derek chose it as his name a little while back, and an Urban Dictionary search still leaves some equivocation as to whether it refers to a man getting masturbatory assistance from another person controlling their arm movements, or the act of steering another person around a room by sticking your dick up their ass. Either way, Michael Toobin is probably horrified, even though his team effectively cock-caulked Derek's this weekend and forced Eli Manning (15), LenDale White (8) and company to hold the arms of DeAngelo Williams (20), Reggie Wayne (17) and Michael Turner (16) as they brought themselves to completion all over the faces of the New York Giants' Defense (25). Man, I'm glad we've got Dads in the league.

[Note: to complete the Dad freak-out, I just did a video search for "Dutch Rudder" to try to embed in the blog, but my browser froze and broke down. I thought I had lost this entire post, which probably would have served me right. But the auto-save feature brought me back to life, demonstrating the wonderful convenience of modern computers. Then again, this same wonderful convenience is what will bring up "Dutch Rudder" everytime somebody using my computer searches for something starting with the letter D from now on. Win some, lose some.]

$5 Foot Long 90.08, Lassard Blows Harris 108.16
I was just talking to a buddy of mine about how each of us had traded for Anquan Boldin a few weeks back in other fantasy leagues, and how smug and happy we felt for having unloaded our useless players for a guy who has simply exploded over the past month. Papkin actually drafted Boldin, who led his team with 23 this week, so he's probably not quite as taken with Q as we are, but he's gotta be loving the production he's getting out of his 4th-rounder. His 1st-rounder, it should be noted, was Willie Parker, which might have been crippling for some owners, but Papkin's astute pick-up of his replacement, Mewelde Moore (23), has paid huge dividends. This week, Boldin and Moore were enough to take down the league's top team, though I should add that they got a significant helping hand from Donovan McNabb (22), who is amazingly 10 weeks into the season without a ruptured spleen, concave meniscus, or split gash. Haller got the week off to a huge start on Thursday night thanks to Cutler, Marshall and Torain (60 combined points), but could only manage half that from all the rest of his guys on Sunday. With Torain done for the season and Portis struggling with a strained MCL, Haller's regular season powerhouse may be limping into the playoffs - wait, he's got BenJarvus Green-Ellis, too? What the fuck have the rest of us been doing with the waiver wire?

Wyld Stallyns 78.84, Tri Steeg Area 60.10
Like the lungs of these two owners, this was a hideous pair of performances. Both of these rosters featured 0-fers this week, but while I'm pretty sure DeYoung should have known ahead of time that Steven Jackson wasn't going to play, Manning probably had no reason to suspect that Bernard Berrian wasn't going to show up, especially after his dominance the past few weeks.

[program interruption: just watched Rudy Fernandez hit a nasty jumper after a spin move to ice this game for Portland. Go Blazers! Also, Oden appears to have made it through an entire game without hurting himself. Way to go, G.O.]

Back to the Stallyns-Steegers match-up: Ultimately, DeYoung's early advantage thanks to Eddie Royal's big Thursday night (22) proved to be the difference in this one. Peyton Manning (20) made an effort to bring the game back into reach, but the rest of the Area did next to nothing to help (Lee Evans - 2, Jonathan Stewart - 2, Owen Daniels -1).

Thus ends another exciting week of NBD football. Things are really heating up in the playoff race; tune back in this weekend for a preview of all the important match-ups in Week 11.