Three weeks left until the playoffs. This season has absolutely flown by. It seems like just the other day when Yahoo gave Ross the 4th best draft grade and gave me the worst. That just goes to show how things can change as the year progresses. We can only speculate about how the season will go for each players, but we have no idea. I turn to past seasons performances and slightly weigh in projections for the current year to figure out who I should draft, hence Mark Ingram and Todd Gurley in the first two rounds. Whatever your draft strategy, we can all agree that Fantasy Football is mostly a crapshoot. You put out your lineups that you think will have the highest probability of getting you points, but for the most part it will only gain you a few percentage points here and there. Go take a look at the Expected Win Percentage and you will see that the majority of us are somewhere between 48%-56%. All in all, while this game we play may involve a lot of luck and a little knowledge, I love playing in this league with all of you.
Also, last week was pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for my picks. I went 3-3 and for the season I am only 56.7% correct. So as you can see, I am about as good at picking winners as Lee Corso... Talk about the most useless ESPN personality they have...
Playoffs! Yes Herm, we are talking about the playoffs! This week starts the division matchups and every division will be a battle. Especially seeing how valuable your division title is. Sorry Trevor or Majors, but only one of you can win and the other will have to suffer with a 5 or 6 seed. I am not ruling anything out yet. So as we prepare down the final stretch of the season, let's take a look at the playoff pictures of the past.
As you can see, Willis currently holds the longest playoff streak, only missing the playoffs in 2012. In addition, you can see that Majors, Ross, Willis have only missed the playoffs once. Ross has only been in the league for the prior 4 seasons and missed in 2013 in his first season. Unfortunately, I think that Ross' streak will come to an end this season as his season has been pretty disappointing. Also Trevor will look to pop his playoff cherry this season.
Speaking of of the playoff seedings, let's talk about the top two seeds getting a bye week. Now that we have made this a money league, those bye weeks are HUGE!!! One of the teams that gets a bye week is guarantedd to at least get their money back. In addition you have a 50% chance of placing first or second because you only have to win your first game, whereas every other team that makes the playoffs only has a 25% chance of getting into the final game. That is assuming that you have a 50% chance of winning any given game.
Who will get those top two seeds?
Believe it or not, Jared and I have not been matched up against each other since week 4 of 2015. Still we have played a total of 8 games against one another. I have taken 5 of them but Jared took the last one. Thankfully this year I do not have Jared's schedule because if I did then I would only have 4 wins to my 5.91 expected wins so far. Not much would change for Jared if he had my schedule unfortunately. He would still only have 2 wins to his 3.18 expected wins. I am very happy to have Alex Smith back from his bye week and I am especially happy that he is playing a Giants team that has just given up this season. So far this is projected the be the biggest blowout of the week but Jared will want to put a kicker in that is not on his bye week. I like my chances this week, and I really need a win after Trevor stole a win last week on Monday Night Football.
The good ole brotherly rivalry. Unfortunately for Ross, this has not been the year that he was hoping for after winning the title last year. Oh well, Majors will definitely need every win and every point he can get with Trevor right on his heels. That will be made much more difficult with Zeke serving his suspension but Kamara has been a beast all year and Collins should provide enough value. These two are all tied up with 4 wins a piece against each other. It has been a back and forth series for the past 5 games with Majors beating Ross in week 1 of this year. Interestingly enough, if these two swapped schedules, they would still have the same records. I am taking Majors in this match-up because I don't trust Tarik Cohen or Demaryius Thomas to do enough to beat Majors. Plus Majors has the most points for per week with 99.32 and a standard deviation of 22.42 points compared to Ross' 77.19 and 22.45 points.
Another divisional match-up but this one is a little bit of a closer race between the two. Talk about beneficial schedules, if these two swapped schedules, Willis would only have 5 wins and Chaz would only have 3. Timing is everything. Going into this game, Willis and Chaz are tied with 2 wins each but Willis has taken the last two games. Will he be able to extend that to 3 wins and take a firmer hold of the division? I think so. Willis has only failed to put up 100 points on Chaz once and he is getting Kareem Hunt back from his bye week and has the Giants, who are a pretty favorable match-up. Gimme Turd Ferguson.
Watching Sawyer fall has been pretty entertaining. Starting off 6-0, he has now lost 4 straight and even worse, he only has 2 players projected to get double digit fantasy points this week. One of those being Jay Cutler. Last year, Basil was Team David Johnson and this year Sawyer is Team Cam. This is going to be one great QB dual with Ean starting Case Keenum and Sawyer going with Jay Cutler. Both are fine bye week fill ins. So let's swap their schedules. If Ean had Sawyer's schedule, he would be sitting at .500 with 5 wins. If Sawyer had Ean's schedule, he would be down with Ross at only 3 wins. Anyways, let's get to the history between these two. Sawyer has sufficiently dominated Ean winning 10 out of the 13 times they have played, including one of the worst games we have seen this season. I am taking Ean in this game because I believe in Baldwin, Kelce, and Sexy Rexy.
This one looks to be a game to watch this week. Trevor's team looks great, especially with Coleman most likely getting the majority of touches this week. In addition, if Tyreke Hill is going to have a big game, this would be the week and Robert Woods has been on fire in recent weeks. Who knows if Xavier Rhodes will shadow him or Sammy Watkins. So far, Trevor has beaten Sam 3 out of the 5 times they have played but Sam has taken the last two. He will need to continue that streak if he wants to make the playoffs. Also this is going to infuriate Sam but if Sam and Trevor swapped schedules, Sam would have 7 wins and Trevor would have 7 wins. Trevor and Sam have been two of the strongest 4 teams so far this year, based on the total expected wins. In fact, they have been pretty much identical. Sam has averaged 90.13 points and a 20.81 standard deviation, whereas Trevor has averaged 94.4 points and a 20.96 standard deviation. This one is tough but I am going with Sam because Brady s=is money down the stretch and I think Hill could be big this week.
This game could very well decide who wins the division. In fact, I think that the tie is going to come back to bite one of these two in the ass. So far these two have played each other 7 times with a dead even split of 3-3-1 for each. That god damn tie. Before the tie, Basil had a 2 game winning streak against Hunter, but Basil pretty much dominated everybody last year. If these two swapped schedules, then their division would be pretty much decided with Basil standing at 6-3-1 and Hunter standing at 4-5-1. As dominate as Basil was last year, he has been pretty much middle of the pack this year, but you cannot expect much else when Aaron Rodgers goes down. So far Basil averages 87.2 points with a 15.75 standard deviation and Hunter is the third worst with 81.26 points and a standard deviation of 14.93. Although I think that Hunter will have a comeback week this week with the Steelers playing at home against the Titans. I expect a big day from Le'Veon and I think that will give Hunter a valuable win.