Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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…

After seven weeks of the season, Logan, Andy and I are all tied at the top with 5-2 records. Nick Tyler and Tim aren’t far behind, but Luke and Chelsea are really going to have to pour on the coals to make a run for it.

There weren’t really any close games in our league this week. Logan came back to beat Luke on Monday night but he ended up winning by 19 points. I knocked off first place Andy (even though Mahomes gave me less than 8 points), Tyler beat Tim and Nick beat Chelsea.

Power rankings:

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

On to the weekly awards, where Luke picks up the “Highest losing score” again. The old record for the toughest season schedule was Tyler in 2018 where his opponents scored an average of 133.22. Luke’s current season opponents are coming in at a whopping 146.35!

I didn’t have much hope for the Seahawks without Russell Wilson or Chris Carson, but Geno Smith and Alex Daniels made a run for it.

In our league, Luke is no longer winless! He put up the second highest score in the league and it paid off with a victory. It’s still early enough that I feel like he’s going to have one of the playoff spots, but he has a long way to go. We had a battle for first place between Andy and Logan with Andy coming out on top. He set the highest score of the season (topping his previous record from week 1.)

There are a LOT of big name players on bye weeks coming up so please pay careful attention to your rosters. Nick had a couple empty spots on Sunday but was able to fill one before the game on Monday. Let’s keep those rosters full please.

Power rankings:

1. Luke ▲1
2. Logan ▲ 2
3. Andy ▲ 4
4. Ben ▼ 3

On to the weekly awards…

Russ is out for an undetermined amount of time (4-8 weeks?) because of a ruptured tendon in his hand. Geno Smith made an impressive start marching the team 98 yards down the field for a touch down, but we can’t expect that with every drive. It’s clear that the Seahawks were not going anywhere this year so I guess this is a season to tread water and see what can be improved without Wilson driving the bus.

Our league continues to provide a lot of entertainment. There are two big stories from this week.

1. In general I feel like point total is more important than win/loss record because scoring points is what wins over time, but Luke is certainly the exception so far. He’s now 0-5 despite having 96% of the point total of first place. If we ranked by total points, he’d be third instead of 8. If we compare his “Points against” with first place Logan we see that Luke’s opponents have scored 45% more than Logan’s opponents! I don’t have the data to prove this, but I’d be amazed if a team in our league has ever had this many points and been winless after week 5. Chelsea is next in line to see if Luke’s streak will continue.
2. Going into Monday night’s game, I was 13 points behind Nick. He had a RB (Jonathan Taylor) remaining and I had a TE (Mark Andrews) and a DEF (Baltimore) remaining. Taylor put up 30 points for Nick and at the start of the fourth quarter, Yahoo predicted that I had a 1% chance of winning. But before the end of the game, Andrews caught not one but two touchdown passes. That still wouldn’t have been enough to catch up but the Ravens went for two on both TD’s and both times Andrews caught the pass which was just enough to push me ahead by less than a total of 2 points. In poker they would call this sucking out on the river. #sorrynotsorry

Logan and Andy are both tied for first place and they are facing off next week. Andy is doing all of this with only the roster he drafted. He hasn’t made any roster moves yet!

Power rankings are back too. Each week I’ll show the top 4 teams according to my super secret formula (it’s mostly based on points scored in previous weeks with an emphasis on the most recent weeks):

1. Ben
2. Luke
3. Nick ▲4
4. Logan

On to the weekly awards…

I didn’t have a lot of hope going into the Seahawks games and after posting negative total offense well into the second-half, it looked like my pessimism was justified. But somehow they ended the first half tied with the 49ers at 7 and then the 49ers injury woes got even worse as Garoppolo left the game. Add that to the lack of anyone who had kicked a field goal in a game before and things were looking up for the Seahawks. Wilson and company were able to put some offense together and walk away with a win.

In our league, there are no undefeated teams remaining. The Scherschel power couple each knocked out Andy and Logan. Chelsea’s win was especially impressive as her 8th place team not only beat the Andy’s 1st place team but did it with 2.5x as many points! I helped Luke continue his extremely unlucky season as he sits winless in last place with an astronomically tough schedule so far. Next week he faces off against Tim so we’ll see how the brothers fare. This chart shows the points scored against each team so you can see how unlucky Luke has been getting.

We also must take a minute to rain down boos upon Andy and Nick who both started players that were declared out on Friday. While game day scratches are inevitable, please be sure to check at least the day before to make sure nobody has been declared out.

On to the weekly awards…

The Seahawks are 1-2. Ouch. Things looked promising with Metcalf getting some catches, but the Vikings kept marching down the field at will going on a 23-0 run to end the game. Russell Wilson is putting up numbers that top the league, but it seems like maybe the league has figured out Pete Carroll’s revolutionary defensive strategies.

In our league, Tyler got the highest score after posting the lowest score last week. Chelsea lost the battle with husband Tim which is double frustrating since she had the highest scoring player on her bench. And Andy had the lowest winning score of the season but still managed to get the biggest blowout of the week. Luke is getting the raw end of the deal in terms of strength of schedule. His opponents have scored 463 points while the opponents of Andy and Logan haven’t scored over 305! So even though Luke is down in 7th, expect him to start climbing the ranks. Hopefully that starts in Week 5 though since he plays me this week.

On to the weekly awards…

After leading 24-9, the Seahawks lost to the Titans. Derrick Henry ran all over the field and was particularly fond of the end zone, finding it three times. There were some fun long pass plays from Wilson but with so many three and outs, there wasn’t enough offense to fight back against the Titans. DK Metcalf is off to a slow start and Chris Carson didn’t put up many yards either.

In our league we exit week 2 with three undefeated teams and three teams still searching for their first win. All our teams that one had more than 140 points! Andy in particular is on fire with 325 points in just two weeks. How long can he keep that up? The highlight of next week’s matchups will be Tim and Chelsea battling to see who will get the first win in the Scherschel household.

On to the weekly awards…

The Seahawks are off to a 1-0 start with what felt like a pretty solid win over the Colts. Shane Waldron seemed to do a good job in his first game as offensive coordinator. Beating a team on the road that went 11-5 last year is a solid start to the season.

And our league was back in action after taking a COVID break last year. This year we have added one more roster spot plus two IR spots to account for players that get hit with COVID for a game or two.

Last year Tim defeated Tyler in the championship but I was able to squeak out a win. Tyler defeated Chelsea in her first game in the league. Logan put up a lot of points like he usually does, and Andy demolished Luke’s otherwise respectable score.

We’ll start the weekly awards by including stats from last season for comparison.

Seahawks! Their first three drives were fun to watch this week! Things settled down after that, but I liked seeing them airing the ball out some more. There were fantastic catches from Lockett, Metcalf and Brown along with great runs from Carson. Brown put a sour note on the game by being suspended indefinitely on Monday (for the fifth time.) I’d say his career is probably over, but it sounds like the Seahawks don’t really lose any money on the deal and many of his 7 catches this season were in big situations so it’s probably an overall win for the organization.

Normally I’d jump into our league at this point, but I have to mention the 49ers game. Both the 49ers and the Seahawks are in a position where they either win the division and get home field advantage or they have to fight their way up from the wild card. With the Seahawks losing last week, the 49ers had the upper hand but then they lost in epic fashion to the Falcons! Going into this week, their only two losses had come on the last play of the games. This one almost ended the same way except there was 2 seconds left. If you missed that game, be sure to watch the 6 minute recap to see the Falcons come back from 9 points down in the last 5 minutes. Last week the 49ers were ~60% favorites to win the division but this change bumps the Seahawks up to a 54% chance. Both teams are locked into the playoffs either way though.

There was plenty of drama in our league too. The underdogs won every matchup except the game between Dad and me. Time took down #1 seed Logan and Tyler beat Luke. So we get Tyler vs. Tim in the Super B.. championship. Tim has outscored Tyler by 15% this season and 25% in the last 6 weeks so hes’ the clear favorite, but anything can happen.

I think a lot of those championship bracket teams were thankful they weren’t playing in the consolation bracket this as there were some high scores among the battle for the scraps. The two highest league scores from this week (Nick and me) will face off next week for 5th.

The power rankings ignore the playoff bracket so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you’re curious, Tyler is #5. I only publish the top 4 to avoid shaming anyone.

1. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
2. Tim (Beer-me) +1
3. Nick (Insert Creative Name) +-1
4. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) +2

On to the weekly awards…