Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Our 2021 fantasy season is over! Logan beat Tyler in the championship game to bring home first place. It might take a little while for the Tyler’s pain to wear off as he left a WR with 50 points on his bench. Ouch! And in a last minute comeback on Monday night, Andy beat me for 3rd place. Here are the final standings:

1. Logan
2. Tyler
3. Andy
4. Ben
5. Nick
6. Tim
7. Chelsea
8. Luke

I don’t care much about getting fourth instead of third, but I did come across an interesting story about the last minute score from Najee Harris (Andy’s running back.) Read here if you’re interested but that play decided a lot of fantasy championships!

Here are a few end of the season stats for you:

• Logan’s 1933.33 regular season points comes in 3rd on the list all time behind himself in 2018 (2024.38) and me in 2015 (1955.86).
• Luke’s opponents scored an average of 129.37 regular season points which sets a new league record.
• Andy won when it counted and finished in 3rd place despite having the lowest season point total (only 84% of what Logan scored in first place.)
• Logan now has 4 first place finishes in our league.
• We all know the draft day projections are bogus, but this year’s projections correctly named the top four teams.
• Tyler has finished 2nd in the league in both of his seasons.
• Logan had the most points this season from drafted players (1876.65) and I had the least (1331.62)
• I had the most points from this season post-draft acquisitions (689.65) and Andy had the least (101.37).

Here are the top players for various positions:

Thank you everyone for playing this year! I appreciated all those full rosters and nobody pulling an Antonio Brown. I hope you’ll all come back next year, but as always, if you want out, please let me know sooner rather than later so I can find a replacement.

On to the weekly awards…

The semifinals are complete and Logan and Tyler will be battling it out for first place! Tyler put up the high score of the season, and Logan’s off week was still good enough to scoot past Andy. In our last fantasy season (2019), Tyler lost to Tim in the final game. Can he redeem himself this year or will Logan finish his dominant season with a win?

For the first time since Week 6, Logan isn’t in the top spot of the power rankings anymore. In fact, he’s not even in the top 4! In fact, 3 of the bottom four teams are in the top four in the power rankings. Everything is topsy turvy.

1. Tyler ▲2
2. Tim ▲5
3. Chelsea ▲1
4. Luke ▲1

On to the weekly awards…

The post is a little bit late this week because everyone in the NFL has COVID! (And apparently it has spread up north too.) The oddity of watching a Tuesday afternoon football game apparently threw our league into another dimension because remember how last week I was wondering how anyone would beat Logan and Tyler in the playoffs? If you add their scores together this week, they would only beat last place Chelsea by 1.91 points! They both bombed hard. Will they recover next week for the playoffs?

Speaking of which, I screwed up when I set the fantasy schedule this year. Normally we do our playoffs on Week 15 and 16 so that if playoff teams are resting their players in Week 17, it doesn’t affect us. Oops. I guess that’s just part of the league this year. Next year we’ll go back to the 15/16 playoffs.

Also of note, Logan’s loss also means that the 8 game winning streak is still the high bar for this league.

So with that, our playoff bracket is set. Here are the seeds:

1. Logan
2. Ben
3. Tyler
4. Andy
5. Nick
6. Luke
7. Tim
8. Chelsea

Despite almost setting the record for the lowest score of the season, Logan has enough momentum to stay in the top power ranking spot.

1. Logan
2. Ben ▲5
3. Tyler ▼1
4. Chelsea ▲1

On to the weekly awards…

We still have one more week in the regular season to play but our first week of the playoffs is already locked. Here’s what we’ll see in week 16:

• Logan vs Andy (1 vs 4)
• Tyler vs Ben (2 vs 3, seeds may swap)
• Nick vs Chelsea (5 vs 8)
• Tim vs Luke (6 vs 7, seeds may swap)

Logan and Tyler looked dominant this week. They both toppled the season high school record with Tyler putting up 176.03. Tyler has been up and down like the rest of us, but Logan’s total season score is 11% higher than the next highest total (me.)

Chelsea almost came away with her third win of the year but one of her players tested positive for COVID early Monday afternoon and there’s not much you can do to recover from that as a fantasy manager. Good news for Nick. Bad news for Chelsea.

The other news from this week is that Logan has tied the all time record for winning streaks. In week 15 he’ll face off against Nick to see if the can keep the streak alive.

There are some changes in the power rankings but Logan has been on top since week 7 and he stays there again this week.

1. Logan
2. Tyler ▲2
3. Luke ▲3
4. Nick ▼2

On to the weekly awards…

With Tim’s loss to Nick this week, the top playoff spots are officially locked. Thank you to everyone for keeping full rosters even if you’re not going to make the playoffs! Logan and Tyler looked strong and hold the top two seeds while Andy and I faltered in 3rd and 4th. Logan is also one game away from tying the league record for winning streaks. Let’s see if Nick can stop him next week.

Logan continues his stranglehold on the power rankings:

1. Logan
2. Nick
3. Chelsea ▲3
4. Tyler ▲1

On to the weekly awards…

Officially Logan is the only one that has secured a playoff spot, but realistically, our playoffs are set with Logan, Ben, Andy, and Tyler. Thank you to everyone for continuing to start full rosters even if you can’t hope to make the playoffs!

We had two kickers post 21 points each this week! Daniel Carlson did it for Andy and Nick Folk did it for me. The season high is 22 points by Graham Gano back in Week 2 as a free agent. Last week Evan McPherson and Jake Elliott had 20 and 19 points respectively. Maybe it’s time for your kicking position to get an upgrade?

As I looked into the playoff picture, I thought about making a tool that would let me pick winners of games for the rest of the regular season and see how that affected the playoff picture, but then I realized that someone had probably already done that. Sure enough, theffhub.com came to the rescue. They read the data about our league and produce an awesome set of charts including playoff odds. I wish I had found this earlier in the season but I look forward to using it more next year. As you can see, Logan is a lock for the top seed in the playoffs but seeds 2-4 are undecided.

Another interesting page on that site is the schedule comparison. I’ve written a lot about Luke’s very tough schedule this year. If anyone else had the same schedule, the best they could have done was 6-6, so don’t question whether luck plays a role in this league.

This week’s power rankings show Nick peaking at the wrong time while Logan remains on top.

1. Logan
2. Nick ▲2
3. Ben ▲3
4. Tim ▲1

On to the weekly awards…

Congrats to Logan who has become the first player in our league to clinch a playoff spot! His stellar 9-2 record is enough to at least guarantee him 4th spot, though at the rate he is going, it’s hard to him imagine going in without a high seed. Andy and Tyler continued their top 4 run with wins, making me the only top four team with a loss. There’s a pretty big gap between 4th and 5th places but it’s still possible that we’ll see some changes in the playoff roster with four games left in the regular season.

The weekly power rankings keep Logan and Tyler on top but Nick and Andy are climbing the ranks:

1. Logan
2. Tyler
3. Andy ▲3
4. Nick ▲1

On to the weekly awards…

This week went almost exactly as the ratings predicted for our league. All the top seeded teams won except for a spousal battle in the Scherschel household. Chelsea got her second win with authority by putting up the highest score that was 17 points higher than anything we’ve seen since week 7! I pull in the honor of closest loss this week with the frustration of Patrick Mahomes putting up a slump-busting 46 points on my bench. It’s hard to argue that I “should have won” that matchup with such a bonehead move in retrospect. But regardless, that means that Logan is now in sole possession of first place with an astounding 8-2 record! Next week’s key matchup is probably Tyler and Nick sitting in 4th and 5th respectively. We are 2/3 of the way through the season and we have to start looking at who will nab those top 4 spots for the playoffs.

Here are the power rankings. Check out Chelsea moving up to the fourth spot! Want to know who is in 8th spot in the power rankings right now? It’s our third place team: Andy. Chelsea takes on Andy this week so let’s see how that one plays out!

1. Logan
2. Tyler ▲2
3. Ben
4. Chelsea ▲3

On to the weekly awards…

The highlight of our league this week was the game between Luke and Nick. Going into Monday night, Nick only had his defense left and needed about 10 points to overtake Luke. Defenses generally start with a lot of points and then lose them since part of their score is based on the number of points scored by the opposing team. With 2:47 left in the game, Luke was winning by 0.01! He went on to win by 1.01 but any time a score is that close, I wonder if a stat correction will come in and overturn the result. But as it stands now, Luke found his second win of the season. This was the second time this season that Nick has lost by less than two points.

In other league news, Andy had a very rough week, beating his previous record for season low score. That dropped him out of the tie for first place. Logan and I are alone in first and we face off next week so when the dust settles, we’ll have someone in sole possession of first place.

There were no changes to the power rankings:

1. Logan
2. Nick
3. Ben
4. Tyler

On to the weekly awards…

The Jaguars make the Seahawks look good! It was fun to watch a game where it was obvious that the Seahawks would win, and it was the first time I had ever seen an onside kick returned for a touchdown. Only 10 players have done that in the last 27 years. Believe it or not, the Seahawks are not in a terrible spot looking at the NFC wildcard race. They are currently on the bad end of some potential tie-breakers, but we’ll see where the season takes them.

In our league, everyone underperformed the Yahoo estimate except Nick. And Nick did that with a last minute scratch resulting in 0 points for his wide receiver. When you see that he has the closest loss, that hurts even more. In other painful loss news, Luke finally played the team with the second lowest score of the week and still lost. Ouch. Also, be sure to check out the record for winning with the lowest score because Andy just beat his previous record!

It’s going to be a busy week on the waiver wires as there are a lot of big bye weeks and injuries leaving empty spots for next week.

We’re over halfway to our league playoffs. There are only seven weeks left of the regular season in our league. I think it’s going to be tough for Luke and Chelsea to crawl back, but it’s not impossible and they can still have fun playing the spoiler. The top four positions are up for grabs for everyone else, but Tim is starting to get into must-win territory.

Power rankings:

1. Logan
2. Nick
3. Ben ▲ 1
4. Tyler ▲ 1

On to the weekly awards…