FINAL EPISODE. Austin couldn’t make it this week so the recently eliminated CHAMP is here to talk about the crazy second round of playoffs, what next years draft might look like, and what’s going to go down in the BO BOWL this week.
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Time to get serious. The Dreadmetal Pumaskulls have not played a meaningful game in weeks, and now they go against one of the hottest teams in the league, fresh off another smackdown. The Nibblonians are averaging 135.7 points over their last six weeks. The Pumaskulls can only dream of putting up scores like the Nibblonians – their max score of 118.8 has been beaten four times in the last five weeks by the Nibblonians. Like we mentioned last week, the Nibblonians have been fairly volatile this season compared to the Pumaskulls, and the Pumaskulls high floor/average of 100 points is hardly inspiring.
Despite losing David Johnson and Dalvin Cook, the Pumaskulls have still scored the majority of their points from drafted players, although they rank only behind Nibblonians in average points from free agents. Pumaskulls have benefited from all kinds of great waiver wire performances from Jamison Crowder, Robby Anderson, Buck Allen, and Duke Johnson, almost all previously owned by other teams.
This matchup favors Nibblonians at nearly every position but quarterback, where Russell Wilson has dominated for the Pumaskulls. Once a sore spot for the Nibblonians, Jamaal Williams has averaged 25 points over his last three games, and Marshawn Lynch and Dion Lewis have both provided excellent floor plays. Pumaskulls will have to decide between their stable of ten point running backs and if they want to rely on newly acquired Mike Davis. It’ll be a blood bath at wide receiver, where Antonio Brown has averaged 30 points over the last four weeks while the Pumaskulls have struggled to even get ten from his receivers. Cooper Kupp and ex-Pumaskull Marquise Goodwin have both filled in nicely for the Nibblonian’s other injured receivers. Once a bright spot for the Pumaskulls, Robby Anderson lost his quarterback this last week, and now faces a pretty tough schedule. Nibblonians will have to keep an eye on the injury report to see if #3 tight end Zack Ertz will play this week.
Neither team has any Monday night players (for now) so we should have some early closure on this match-up.
Final Prediction:
The top two scoring teams are duking it out for their Bo Bowl spot. These teams just met three weeks ago and both exploded for 173 and 142 points. The teams seem to ebb and flow together, and it’s hard to say if one team has more momentum than the other. While the Shittysauruses have to feel good about the 129 points they scored last week, it’s still less than the Surfers 131 points in a week where they weren’t even really trying.
Both of these teams are projected to outscore the other two contenders, and all projection systems have this match-up at a dead even 50/50 split with nearly identical point ceilings and floors. This match-up features opposite groups with the Surfers rocking the #1 and #2 running backs, while Shittysauruses feature the #2, #3, and #6 wide receivers. While Shittysauruses has made some of the more savvy free agent pickups this season (JuJu Smith-Schuster, Alex Collins), no team has scored more points from free agency than Butthole Surfers, who has accumulated an average of 41 points per week from the waiver wire. The Surfers led the team in trades this season with seven, and collected 20% of their production from traded players. Shittysauruses didn’t make a trade all season, but did get the most production from their drafted players – hitting on a ton of mid and late-round picks (DeAndre Hopkins – $21, Keenan Allen – $18, Alvin Kamara – $4, Dak Prescott – $3).
The Shittysauruses has been rocking Dak Prescott at QB all season, and while he’s had a few down weeks, has averaged 20 points over his last two games and has a soft match-up. Surfers have been successfully streaming the QB position for most of the season, averaging a respectable 17 points from the position over the last three weeks. Surfers one-two punch of Le’Veon Bell and Todd Gurley is unmatched in the league, although Shittysauruses’ Alvin Kamara is ranked third at the position on the season (if he plays), and Alex Collins is averaging 18 points over his last four games.
Surfers will have some tough decisions at wide-receiver while hoping for big games from Doug Baldwin and Marvin Jones Jr. Shittysauruses will need to take some risks at the tight end position – they’ve produced the third worst average for the position on the season. Both teams have had found success at the D/ST position, Shittysauruses seemingly making magic happen at the position each week, while Surfers have the #2 D/ST with a tasty match-up against the Browns.
With Dak Prescott playing Sunday night and Julio Jones on MNF, Surfers will have to sit by and hope that they can hold their lead (if they have one at all).
Final Prediction:
Round one of the playoffs are OVER and Austin and Justin are back to talk about the next round. We rehash everything that happened in the first round, look at the teams potentially heading to the toilet bowl, and spend some time talking about what we’ll do differently next season. The rest of the podcast is dedicated to how Austin is doomed in his match-up and how The Shittysauruses and Butthole Surfers might be the most explosive matchup of the season.
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It’s playoff time and Austin and Justin are here to speculate about who could end up where and the strengths and weaknesses of each of the team. If you make it that far we’ve got a couple mailbag questions for you, along with some PWR mailbag to spice things up.
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The first matchup of round one, the #4 and #5 seeds duking it out for world domination. This is the first time that these two teams have ever faced off and it couldn’t have happened at a more exciting time. The teams are almost polar opposites in point production and how each team is scoring their points. The Nibblonians are the leagues most volatile by far, scoring between 60 and 185 points this season. The Shenanihads have been much more stable, and while they don’t have as high of a ceiling as some of the other teams, they have a relatively high floor of 79 points (That Nibblonians have failed to meet three times this season). Nibblonians definitely have momentum in their favor, winning three of their last four games while scoring the most points in the league over the same period.
Outside of QB’s and D/ST’s the teams have also had opposite success with the waiver wire. The Nibblonians have started players off the waiver wire eighteen times this season and produced a best-in-league 11.8 points on average. The Shenanihads have started waiver wire players five times this season and produced worst-in-league 1.34 points on average, including two goose eggs from Torrey Smith. To add insult to injury with pickups and drops, Shenanihads drafted and dropped (twice) Robby Anderson, who’s now the #11 receiver.
It’s hard to know which players each of these teams will start, but as we get closer and closer to game time, the gap between the teams gets smaller and smaller. Projections favor Shenanihads 55-45, with the difference maker coming from the tight end position. The player projections for every other spot are within 2-4 points of each other, but Travis Kelce is a significant upgrade over Ertz (who may not play) or Jason Witten. The Nibblonians will have tough line-up decisions to make with the Steelers back at home, but facing one of the toughest defenses in the NFL.
This will be another long drawn out match-up with the Saints/Falcons playing on Thursday, and the Patriots on Monday night.
Final Prediction:
The Domestic Bowl! These two have faced each other ten times (although never in playoffs) with the Shittysauruses winning seven of the contests. In each of these matchups, the Shittysauruses have scored a robust 117 points on average over Giant Ocotpus’ 97.5. Shittysauruses domination over Giant Octopus continued into this season when she crushed the ‘Pus back in week seven. The Shittysauruses are second in points over the last four weeks and have outscored Giant Octopus five times over the last seven weeks. While Giant Octopus had a nice bounce-back week, they also only scored four more points than their competitor, and have scored as low as 54 only five weeks ago.
Shittysauruses hold the highest projection of the week and are heavily favored 65-35 to crush Giant Octopus. Shittysauruses have outscored Giant Octopus at nearly every position this season, aside from tight end. The Shittysauruses have started eight different tight ends this season for an average of 5.1 points. The tight end discrepancy may not matter this week as Giant Octopus will be missing the #2 tight end Gronkowski due to an unimaginably stupid late hit suspension.
This match-up will also feature two of the draft-darling running backs, Kareem Hunt and Alvin Kamara. While Hunt came out of the gate roaring, his usage and production has slowly dropped over the season while Kamara has seen an increase in both, earning him the #2 running back spot – only four points behind Todd Gurley and ahead of Le’Veon Bell. This match-up also features the two teams strongest at wide receiver – Six of the top ten receivers are on these two teams.
Both teams have been streaming defenses over the course of the season, and while The Shittysauruses may regret dropping the Jaguars D/ST after week two, they can feel confident in their ability to pick streamers – they’ve scored 11.5 points per game, good for third in the league and only behind the Jaguars and Ravens D/ST. Giant Octopus on the other hand has produced the fourth fewest points from the position.
This match-up also features players Thursday through Monday, so don’t expect any quick conclusion.
Final Prediction:
It’s the final week and Austin and Justin are hashing out all the scenarios and what teams they think have a shot.
The one game that could determine Giant Octopus’ playoff run. If you read the Playoff Madness post, you know that Giant Octopus needs to beat TGIF this week to even have a shot at playoffs. A loss for the Big Puss here means that no other game matters (besides seeding).
These teams have met thirteen times in the past, with TGIF taking a slight lead 7-6. Earlier this season Giant Octopus put a 20 point beat down on TGIF (back when Giant Octopus was still good). Since then each team has had mixed success, although not a lot in the win department. Giant Octopus enters this contest on a two game losing streak, and tenth in points over the last three weeks. TGIF has been fifth over that same time period, and while they were able to crush any hopes the Atoms or Boomers had at making playoffs they couldn’t beat the Pumaskulls (smh).
Both PWR and the player projections agree for once, giving a 60-40 edge to Giant Octopus despite the teams complete inability to score any amount of meaningful points. TGIF’s strength all season has come from the quarterback position, and this week he’ll have a tough decision between Cam Newton and Carson Wentz. Giant Octopus will also have some tough decisions at the QB position, mostly how to fix the 9 point average they’ve gotten from the position over the last 2 weeks (2nd worst in the league – Dak Prescott says hi). Once a position of strength, Giant Octopus will hope for a Kareem Hunt bounce back while facing off against former Octopus star Adrian Peterson and waiver wire darling Samaje Perine. One thing Giant Octopus will be able to count on is his strength at the wide receiver position where he’s rostered three of the top 10 scoring players. The flex positions will be a puzzle for both teams, as well as uncertainty from the D/ST position where both teams are averaging 5-6 points over the last two weeks. Giant Octopus has almost his entire roster playing at 10AM on Sunday, although AJ Green playing on Monday night may be the difference maker.
Final Prediction:
Who do you think will win? Make sure to leave a comment and vote on the game.
Ok everyone, it’s time for the best post of the season – THE PLAYOFF SCENARIO RUNDOWN. Let’s start with the locked teams first:
So here’s a simple flowchart for how things can go down this week:
So let’s start with the one match-up that might determine everything:
If Giant Octopus loses here then nothing else will matter. All the 7-5 teams will head safely to playoffs. Right now this match-up is about 65-35 in favor of Giant Octopus, but TGIF has outscored or matched Octo the last 4 weeks. If Giant Octopus wins, a lot of other things still need to go right for them to make playoffs. They’ll have their eyes on this next game:
If Giant Octopus wins and Bunnies can’t beat Mega Shark, Bunnies will drop to the bottom of the pile and be eliminated. This game is projected to be closer than it looks, even with Mega Shark’s dud last week. The Bunnies will need to bounce back after dropping points for three straight weeks.
If Giant Octopus and Fluffy Bunnies both win, we’ll be looking at the Shittysauruses, Nibblonians, and Shenanihads games. If they do a clean sweep and all win, Giant Octopus will still be eliminated. If anyone one of them loses, they’ll be looking at point tie breakers against Octo.
Shittysauruses currently have a 110 point lead over Giant Octopus and are a theoretical lock for playoffs even with a loss.
If The Nibblonians lose, they would still need to score ~55 less than Giant Octopus and/or ~35 less than Shenanihads to be eliminated.
If Shenanihads lose, they would need to score ~20 less than Giant Octopus to be eliminated.
Ok stfu nerd, what are my playoff chances? Probably pretty good unless you’re me: UPDATED PLAYOFF ODDS ARE BELOW
Later today I’ll have a post up with seeding odds.
UPDATE:
The PLAYOFF MACHINE has been fixed and updated and can now provide SEEDING ODDS.
| Team | Avg Final Score | Avg Final Wins | #1 Seed | #2 Seed | #3 Seed | #4 Seed | #5 Seed | #6 Seed | Total Playoff Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dreadmetal Pumaskulls | 1351.438 | 10.6171 | 100.00% | 100.00% | |||||
| Butthole Surfers | 1535.428 | 8.5921 | 98.91% | 1.09% | 100.00% | ||||
| Shelbyville Shittysauruses | 1452.945 | 7.7654 | 1.02% | 73.35% | 3.77% | 15.49% | 6.35% | 99.98% | |
| The Nibblonians | 1394.437 | 7.4079 | 0.07% | 13.09% | 0.38% | 49.18% | 33.43% | 96.15% | |
| Philadelphia Shenanihads | 1355.206 | 7.74 | 10.61% | 80.44% | 0.24% | 3.79% | 95.08% | ||
| The Fluffy Bunnies | 1203.908 | 7.5945 | 1.86% | 6.46% | 32.50% | 34.36% | 75.18% | ||
| Giant Octopus | 1334.588 | 6.6008 | 8.95% | 2.59% | 22.07% | 33.61% |
A Division 1 rematch that will decide who makes playoffs. Will The Nibblonians make it to the playoffs in their inaugural season? All that stands in their way is an endless fountain of luck for one of the worst teams in the league. A win here for the Nibblonians could send Bunnies into a elimination spiral, while a defeat for would almost certainly seal the Nibblonians fate.
These teams last met in week three when Brees and Antonio Brown did their best to overcome the deficit the Panthers D/ST left in her lineup. The Bunnies were able to pull off the win with big performances by Cousins, McCaffrey, and Hilton. Since that match-up, both teams have averaged 101 points, although the Nibblonians have been far more erratic – scoring as low as 60 and as high as 161. Which version of the Nibblonians will we see this week?
PWR projections give The Nibblonians the edge with a 57% chance of winning, in part due to the three straight weeks of raising their score. Despite the loss of Robert Woods the Nibblonians have the same 57% edge in player projections. The Bunnies have a slight edge at running back, and we’ll get to see revenge games from both Dion Lewis and DeMarco Murray. While Dez Bryant and Alshon Jeffery have been no slouches, Nibblonians get a huge boost at wide receiver thanks to Antonio Brown. With The Nibblonians’ Steelers playing late Sunday night, the Bunnies will have to hope that their early scoring is enough to fend of the Antonio Brown/Big Ben stack.
Final Prediction:
Who do you think will win? Make sure to leave a comment and vote on the game.
The gang is back this week to talk about waiver wire depth, some potential rule changes, and most importantly – which teams are which Game of Thrones families. Make sure you stick around to the end of this extended podcast.
Some of the studies I tried to reference about risk aversion:
4th Down: When to Go for It and Why
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I’ve always wanted to look at a breakdown of how each teams players were acquired, and today’s the day I can finally do that. The player scraper can now go in and see how each team acquired each player: Draft, Free Agency, and Trade. So now we can take a look at each team and see where they’re getting the most points from. First here’s a league-wide breakdown:
And here’s each team’s breakdown:
The highest scoring team, Butthole Surfers, have the greatest mix, with less than half of their points coming out of drafted players. On the other end we have the Shenanihads who are riding their core of drafted players all the way to the playoffs.
I thought for sure the Pumaskulls would have the most points earned from free agents, but the Surfers have been earning 40 points a week off dudes picked up from the waiver wire. While most of the Surfers FA points have come through the Ravens D/ST, Boomers have earned quite a few points off the WW as well with picks like Marqise Lee, Cameron Brate, Jared Cook, and Latavius Murray.
Giant Octopus has earned the most points from traded players with early trades for top receivers AJ Green and Brandin Cooks.
Check out the data yourself. These are the point totals from started players. The full data set is available on google sheets.
| Draft | Free Agency | Trade | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butthole Surfers | 587.5 | 439.3 | 247.9 |
| Dreadmetal Pumaskulls | 685 | 298.5 | 160.3 |
| Giant Octopus | 635 | 259.4 | 256.6 |
| Mega Shark | 768.7 | 87.1 | 114.9 |
| Nellis A.F.B. Boomers | 597.4 | 355.4 | 141.7 |
| Philadelphia Shenanihads | 1009.3 | 117.1 | 33.3 |
| Robot Unicorn | 649 | 342.6 | 0 |
| Shelbyville Shittysauruses | 904.1 | 264.2 | 0 |
| Springfield Atoms | 724.1 | 218.8 | 12.6 |
| Team GoInsanelyFast | 709.1 | 314.7 | 0 |
| The Fluffy Bunnies | 662.2 | 243 | 135.4 |
| The Nibblonians | 774.3 | 278.7 | 48.6 |
So this week I made an update to the clustering script and had it include playoff odds as well. It’s grouping the teams a little bit better now based on how strong they’ve performed so well, and what their playoff chances look like. I’m also including odds of hitting the #1/2 seed, but it’s just napkin math because I haven’t modified the PLAYOFF MACHINE to count stuff like that yet.
The Top Dogs: These teams are top in points, atop their division, and locked for playoffs.
Life, uh, finds a way: The Bunnies stand alone in this tier. Although they have a good shot to make playoffs and they’re most likely team to boot Surfers from the #2 seed, they also could just as easily drop to the #7 seed after week 11. Every 6-5 team has a chance to win this week and the Bunnies are facing the Nibblonians, another 6-5 team. The loss would immediately drop them to the bottom of the tie-breaker.
The Back Half: Four teams fighting for three spots. Although the Shittysauruses have the highest point total out of this group they also face Surfers in week 11, severely damping their playoff hopes. Like I mentioned above though, if Nibblinians beat Bunnies and the rest of the teams win, Bunnies will quickly be at the bottom of this pile. Everyone in this tier has a <1% chance at hitting the #2 seed.
Toilet Bowl Bound: The window is shrinking for these teams, and while they’re not all technically eliminated it’s a long shot for them to make playoffs. Time to prep for not going to the Toilet Bowl.
*Brett wanted everyone to know that Surfers are only a practical lock for playoffs, not a mathematical lock. In the scenario that every team below outscores them by 60-90 points a week and they lose the last two games, they will be eliminated from playoffs.