SDMB Fantasy Football DYNASTY League: Year Eight

The Game Room
581

RNATB may have gotten a freebie from Omni, since he only won by less than 3 points and Omni could’ve started Braxton Miller tonight. (He could’ve also started Seth Roberts and still lost). Still, it hurt him pretty badly - he’d still be tied in record for the division lead with the other two, and it’s still up for grabs. RNATB’s playoff chances would’ve been hurt pretty severely with a loss too, although they’re not too bright currently.

With JB’s lost, I’ve moved up into the #1 seed. Petey and I both have 8-3 records, and we’re only 3 points apart in points scored. I have a one game division record edge, but he can take that when we play in 2 weeks. One of he and I are likely to get the wildcard.

Varlos has a chance of snatching up his division because he gets to play JB in two weeks, but he’d also have to pick up a division win elsewhere too and JB would have to pick up a division loss along the way. I play Petey in two weeks too, which will be a very significant game and likely determine the Sunbelt winner.

I’ll look into more specific scenarios later.

582

Well, things aren’t that dim. I basically just have to beat you and Petey and I’m in - I’m only one game back, and I’ll have the division record tiebreaker. Easier said than done, of course.

583

Varlos only has one path to the playoffs… he has to go 3-0 the rest of the way, while I have to go 0-3. This would put his 8-6 record over my 7-7 record for the division title.

But even if I only manage to go 1-2, I’d still win the division because we would have identical overall records (8-6) and identical division records (3-3), but I would have considerably more points.

The scenarios in the other divisions are still way too complicated to think about.

584

Yeah, after last season I’m not thinking too much about playoff scenarios. I got knocked out by a confluence of events that nobody had actually guessed might happen.

585

This could be a very bad week for me. I’m only a small favorite over Dale at this point. Petey is going to beat RNATB this week, which would give him two wins in the division, tying me if I lose to Dale, but also giving him a game up on me. RNATB will have a very hard time catching up in the division after this. Hamlet will probably beat Retro (but it’s relatively close) keeping him in the wildcard race. If I beat Dale I’m still in pretty good shape, but if I lose that’s going to be rough. Hopefully we don’t get one of those random dead Green Bay offense games I’ve been fortunate not to have to deal with lately.

586

That was nervewracking, it came down to the final drive.

I’m very likely to make the playoffs. If I win against Petey I’ll win our division, otherwise I’m likely to pick up the wildcard since I’m 2 games and 60+ points against any contender. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility, especially if I have two really bad weeks, but I’m in pretty good shape.

This would be my 7th straight year in the playoffs.

587

1 TD from my entire team again. Third or fourth time this season (more if you discount passing TDs), so about a third of the time. It is not possible to win when you’re this unlucky, no matter what choices you make. See you all next season.

588

Draft pick bowl next week between you and me, woohoo!

589

My game with Petey next week may not end up mattering. Sure, it’ll probably determine the division winner, but whoever wins our division is likely to be the #1 seed, and the other will be the wildcard, so either way the #1 and #4 would be playing in the semifinals. The only way that doesn’t happen is if Stringer or Hamlet wins out and outscores us by a whole lot of points taking the #1 seed, which is unlikely.

And in order to take the wildcard away, Hamlet and Stringer would both have to win out (getting 9 wins) and whoever lost the division between us would have to lose out… except that can’t happen because Hamlet and Stringer play next week.

There’s a small chance RNATB wins out, while one of Petey and I lose out, and he gains 100-150 points on us, he could steal the wildcard.

But most likely we have

  1. Winner of Sunbelt (Petey or me)
  2. Justin Bailey
  3. Stringer or Hamlet
  4. Runner up of Sunbelt (Petey or me)
590

Brain fart.

Obviously JB could win the #1 seed if he wins out and we go 1-1 or worse and he outscores us significantly, or he goes 1-1 and we go 0-2 and he outscores us significantly, or he wins out while we lose out. We’d still likely take the wildcard, but it wouldn’t be as a #1 and #4 matchup.

Additionally, if Varlos beats Justin next week, and then beats Jules while Justin loses to Ellis Dee, Varlos could still take his division. He’s out of the wildcard hunt though - that can only go to me, Petey, RNATB, Hamlet, or Stringer.

591

Ingram and Tyreke Hill finally go off in the week I don’t start them. Bah.

592

Well I’m losing Gronk again. FFS. He is my special sauce. This is crippling.

593

Omni has got a couple of players on bye week.

594

Outside of a week of Ryan Matthews or Lamar Miller or Gronk here or there has your team suffered any injuries? I don’t see anyone on IR for you.

595

I didn’t say I was unlucky or that I had suffered a lot of injuries, I was just saying losing Gronk is a big deal. And it is. He’s probably the hardest asset in all of fantasy to replace, given his value over the rest of the tight end group.

596

I’m not seeing it. This season, he’s the 13th scoring TE in our league. Obviously that’s due to injuries, but that’s my point: He’s an unreliable fantasy player because he’s so injury prone.

I would never trade Kelce (5th scoring TE this year) for Gronk straight up, for example.

597

A player’s value is their value over replacement, not necesarily their absolute scoring production for a given year.

For example, would you rather have a guy who scored 20 points per game but you knew would miss 8 games per year, or a guy who scored 12 per game but was reliable for 16 games per year? He’s scoring 192 points per year vs the other guy’s 160.

But not so fast. You’re not leaving that position empty while your guy is injured, scoring zero. You’re going to get a replacement-level player. What if the available replacement-level players average a score of 10 points per game? Then you’re getting 820=160 + 810=80 = 240 points vs the 192 points.

You’re looking at Gronk and saying “he’s the 12th scoring TE, that’s worthless”, not “he’s a guy who scored 19.5 points per game, by far the best at his position, during the games he was healthy”

No one else in the league is even remotely close to beating the next guy up in per-game production. Gronk has about a 50-70% edge on the next guy up at the TE position, compared to say WR or RB where the edge that first has over second is like 3%.

He’s also not really injury prone. It’s not like the guy is a weakling. Because he’s so physically dominant, the refs let the other teams get away with a lot of stuff they’d never allow on most players. In that way he’s a lot like Cam Newton. The fact that he gets injured more than Newton isn’t being injury prone on Gronk’s part, since I think most players would have a similar injury history or worse if they had to take the beating Gronk takes, but more a sign that Newton is superman. Gronk’s injuries have been all sorts of things - this year it’s a punctured lung - rarely the same thing twice. He played 15 games last season and another 15 the season before that.

In any case, Gronk was healthy. He was killing it. He was propelling me to victories. I have no idea how you can discount that because hey, he was injured before, so I didn’t really lose anything. It’s still a big loss for me.

As far as Kelce for Gronk - anyone else in this league would fist pump slam dunk that deal in 2 seconds, so I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding a lot about fantasy football strategy.

598

Jordan Reed, Greg Olson, Delanie Walker, and Tyler Eifert are all listed by Yahoo as having a better scoring average than Gronk this year. Gronk is less than a point ahead of Jimmy Graham and Travis Kelce.

The whole knock on Gronk coming out of college was injuries, especially his back. While stuff like the lung and maybe his ACL don’t make him injury prone, his back problems (which is why he’s on IR now, because he needs surgery on a ruptured disk in his back) and requiring 4 surgeries for a broken forearm indicate otherwise.

Yes, it’s a loss. Which sucks for you. But a fantasy team should be able to handle losing one starter to injury. Maybe not 4 very good starters, but one surely.

599

I wasn’t counting the games when Gronk was active but clearly not healthy in terms of coming up with his per-game averages, which happened a few times this year.

Also, tough crowd. I wasn’t saying “oh woe is me, injuries this year” or anything. I was just saying “shit, Gronk on IR, that hurts”

600

Yeah, having built a great team, being projected to win, and then losing Peterson, Charles, Decker, and Allen to injury has made me hypersensitive to expressions of regret over injuries.