Everyone in Sunbelt is going to win again, and the 4 of us are going to have the top 5 seeds (ignoring division winners). All 4 players in Northeast are below all 4 members in our division in both wins and points scored. Midwest compares much better but still far behind in wins. Peteys had the highest score of the week and he’ll have the top score of the division despite being in last place due to wins, but very much has a chance to get to the playoffs. I have no idea who is going to win the division but the wild card will probably come from there too.
Should we be thinking about possible realignment for next season?
I’m not particularly interested in realignment; I mean more along the lines of as soon as the season ends I feel like whatever rules are in place or have been decided on are locked in for the following season.
Meaning if somebody wanted to make a pitch for realignment for next season, now is a good time.
EDIT: I was going to go look at hypotheticals but the week isn’t over yet. Tomorrow will be much easier.
Oh Jesus Christ. I was just reading an article about possible landing spots for OBJ and The Carolina Panthers were mentioned. I’ll be so annoyed if he goes to the Panthers and tanks DJ Moore just like he went to the Browns and tanked Jarvis Landry.
Then again, what the f*** is going on with the Panthers? McCaffrey played and they still s*** the bed. They need some kind of help.
EDIT: Also, I think Evan Engram may be reading this thread. Caught a touchdown pass on the opening drive on Sunday. And then he caught another nine yard pass late in the game. World beater!
I’m more convinced than ever that Kyle Rudolph should be the starter and the Giants should have traded Engram before the deadline. Surely somebody needed a tight end.
Perhaps someone needed a tight end, but no one needed Evan Engram.
We’ll see, but I don’t think they’d punish him for antivax idiocy. They’d punish him for knowingly violating protocols and putting a lot of other people at risk. If the team covered his ass (and they absolutely must have) it could get very ugly. But it’s the Packers, so chances are absolutely nothing will come of it.
You’re right that now’s the time to discuss it. I am against it. Divisions are always going to lead to this kind of imbalance. Nature of the beast and I think a lot of the fun.
I proposed long ago that we re-aligned the division every year based on the previous year’s finish - the top division would be the top 4 players/playoff teams, then 5-8, then 9-12. That way there was a prestige to being in the top division, there would be parity as you would play the people who are roughly equal to your team, and someone at the bottom would still get a chance to make the playoffs as the division winner. If the results of using every year are too varied, maybe average them over 3 years or something.
Otherwise I think they’re fine as they are. It’s fine if the strength of divisions rises and wanes. They’ve been this way long enough that I think there is a certain degree of rivalry built up within them. I take more notice on division weeks vs non-division weeks and prefer to grind my division mates into the dirt.
If I’m sitting in a nursing home and this league still exists, I still will never forget you freezing me out of a QB last year.
I’m sort of more into this idea, not just as the perennial doormat. I envision a situation where a bad team gets locked into a division with three power mates and never gets a real chance to advance. Since Y! (I think?) doesn’t allow custom scheduling, divisional realignment is the best way to introduce a strength-based equalizer. Because IMO doing it through the draft alone isn’t enough to promote “parity”; even the difference between the first and fourth best players in a draft can’t offset taking extra L’s every year from a punishing division.
We should also be thinking about when the League moves to 18 game regular seasons. We won’t want to give up the two extra weeks of action.
I’m currently leaning towards no on realignment, but not particularly strongly. I am curious to see what it would look like, though.
For this type of realignment I think four divisions of three teams would be better. Having more smaller divisions would allow more mobility during realignment. It would also allow us to take advantage of the extra week to get in another fantasy game while still leaving two weeks for playoffs and no action in the final week of the season.
(Play both divisional opponents three times each for six games, the other nine teams once each for 15 total.)
Based on points scored, hypothetical realignment right now might look like the following:
1155 Peteys
1125 Retro
1108 RNATB
1097 Beef
1097 Gaffer
1084 Hamlet
1081 Dale
1066 Ellis
1060 Jules
933 Justin
878 Omni
865 Overly
I mean, that looks freaking fantastic, but I’m sure it’s just a happy coincidence that all the groups fit so perfectly. It wouldn’t look nearly as neat splitting into three divisions of four, for example. But still, that does look really good.
With three games against each divisional opponent, everyone would get a healthy dose of even footing. With four divisions, there are no wild cards. If you don’t win the division you don’t make the playoffs.
As I said I’m still leaning no, but after looking at those hypothetical groupings, I’m persuadable.
Running out of time on the edit window, I had a crazy thought: Real-time realignment!
Season starts with 11 straight weeks where everybody plays everybody else exactly once each.
After week 11, four divisions of three teams are created by whatever metric (probably record first with points as a tiebreaker) and then the next four games are all divisional, where everyone plays both divisional opponents two more times from weeks 12 to 15. Then the playoffs in weeks 16 and 17.
Does Yahoo allow realigning divisions during the season?
The Sunbelt is just ridiculously strong this year, and I don’t think there is any question we are better than any division has been in the history of this league. I mean, our worst team is better than everyone else’s best, other than Retro, and everyone in the Northeast has a losing record! But this is not a common scenario, and I don’t think we need to “fix” it.
Besides, I like crushing Beef and Dale under my bootheel ever year, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy doing the same to RyPete too (though actually he and Dale crushed me in our first meetings this year).
On an unrelated note, I was lucky to get a win this week. With two starters on a bye and Kareem Hunt on IR, I had to trot out Zack Moss as my RB2 and he promptly got concussed. Derrick Gore got Shanahaned by Andy Reid, despite clearly being the better KC back last week. I tried one more week of the Mo Alie-Cox “hey, score a TD” experiment and that didn’t work. In fact, I got exactly 1 TD from my entire starting roster, not counting my QB (and that TD didn’t come until Monday night).
On the bright side, nearly all my starters have had their byes and Hunt should be back soon. With that said, the following players are officially On the Block: Mecole Hardman (send me an RB4 if you think he can get good once KC fixes its passing game); Matt Ryan (surprise me); David Njoku/Evan Engram/OJ Howard/Maxx Williams (is your season over? One of them is going to be a star for a different team next year - send me a draft pick if you think you know which).
Also, something interesting happened over the last two weeks: the Yahoo! projections had me finishing third in the division with an 8-6 record (which is the same projection I had before the season started, except in that projection I finished second). I’m now projected to finish 11-3, 2 games better than anyone. Jules and I have the most remaining projected points, though he is projected to outscore everyone by a mile going forward and finish with the #2 overall score. Petey - currently in last place, albeit with the highest score - is projected to take the wild card.
I think you have to be careful inferring any divisional strength just a little through half-way of the season because on the unbalanced schedule.
This is true. H2H records are useless for predicting the future in terms of strength so points are the more appropriate comparison. I wasn’t bringing up the division’s toughness as a way to discuss realignment but about how hard it is going to be to win the division and also to brag a little bit about Sunbelt superiority.
I’m on the fence about yearly realignment. It could be fun to shuffle the divisions, and would give everyone a better shot at the playoffs every year, but I also don’t think it’s necessary. The rivalries we’ve built are pretty great (even though Varlos disappeared off the face of the earth to avoid playing me again) and I’d hate to lose that.
I also wouldn’t want the worry of a SUPERDIVISION to be the reason we do it. One division seems to outperform the others every year. And it changes from season to season. It was me and the rest of the Northeast not too long ago.
Damn, OBJ is going to eat some of my Cooper Kupp points. Bad day for the Peteys.
Kyler Murray is a game-time decision again. I’ll try to get everything squared away between 3:00 and 4:00 tomorrow, but if Murray gets scratched and I can’t get in, I’d like to start Colt McCoy in his place.
I was so busy this week I forgot to set my Thursday lineup, forgot the pick 'em league too. Since Chubb was probably going to be out (now is officially out) I would’ve started Devonta Freeman. Oh well, scraping together a team to field every week has been a struggle all season.
If anyone thinks OBJ will do well with the Rams throw me an offer.
Both the Giants and the Bengals have a bye this week, so instead of my theoretical Saquon Barkley and Joe Mixon, today I’m starting Carlos Hyde and someone named Kyle Juszczyk. I picked up Juszczyk as a free agent a couple weeks ago just so I’d have a 4th running back on my roster.
Also, Jones is on a bye and Darnold is on IR, so I guess I’m starting Baker Mayfield.
All around not looking to be a great week for me.
Don’t worry, I think you’re getting good Baker today.