The Curse of the WASP is over!
As I’ve mentioned before, the fact that Travis hasn’t won
the championship before this year is ludicrous. The look on my face every year
during his ultimate elimination in either the finals or semi-finals is the same
look I saved for Peyton Manning before he finally won a Super Bowl: slightly
surprised, kind of incredulous, but mostly resigned to the fact that the
universe just hates some people. Well, universe, the joke’s on you. After being
sucked into your wormhole of runner-ups, Travis has emerged on the other side,
and the D Cup will find its way down south.
I don’t expect anyone to cry for me. I rode a three game win
streak to squeak into the playoffs and then managed two more miraculous wins
before succumbing to the fact that my team, really, just wasn’t very good. I
regret nothing. And for the first time in my life, my Venmo account has a
non-zero balance. Winning pays, bitches.
I’m going to cut down on the fluff talk, because there is a lot
to talk about. But first, I want to indulge myself a little and analyze
something…
Second Place Sadness
In seven seasons, we’ve only had six people finish second. I
wanted to look at how well said finishers did in their ‘hangover’ seasons.
In Season 1, Scott finished second to Jason. It did not take
him long to take the trophy for himself, as the next season he won it all (from
a 4-seed and a 6-7 record, no less).
In Season 2, the person Scott beat was Jason, who had
already won the year before. The next year, Jason made the playoffs as a
3-seed, but lost out on his way to a 6th place finish. He would not
win another championship until Season 6, four years later.
In Season 3, Scott took the title again, and he beat out
Travis, the first of his two second place finishes (his other was in Season 5).
The next year, Travis ultimately finished in third place as the 3-seed, but he,
like Jason before him, would not be able to muster a team good enough to take
it all for four more years.
In Season 4 (Drew’s victory year), Donel was the runner-up.
Surprised? Aren’t we all. Donel hasn’t made the playoffs since.
In Season 6 (as you’ll recall, Travis repeated his runner-up
status in Season 5), Ryan Davis came out of nowhere to take the runner up
status before losing to Jason. You didn’t hear about his team much this year,
because it was resoundingly terrible on just about all fronts.
That brings us to this year, where I have the misfortune of
being the runner-up. With the exception of Scott, no team has gone from
runner-up to finally take it all in less than four years. In fact, it took both
Jason and Travis that exact amount of time to rise to the top. Using that
logic, Donel should be set for a big year in 2014, the 4-year anniversary of
his championship loss. Everyone should look out for Ryan Davis in 2016, as he
has already laid claim to that year. And 2017 seems like it’ll be my year, so
you all can just pay me my money then and forget actually playing it out. But don’t worry about me until then. My team
will be a pale shadow of this year’s…and given how pale and shadowy my team was
this year, I’m in for a rough stretch, I sense.
Record Keeping
I’ve been terrible at keeping the record log up to date
throughout the season, but I’ve attached it now for your viewing pleasure.
Before I get into the specifics, some trends:
We didn’t manage a single team with a top 10 or bottom 10
PF. Overall, for scarring, we had a very average year. So average, in fact,
that only Ryan Davis had a new personal best PF…which is not hard given the
fact that he’s had only one other season that he was actually present (I’ve
excised Season 1 Ryda from my memory. It’s too awful).
We also didn’t have many particularly high scoring games.
Peter’s 158.2 is the only one to make the all-time list, though Kyle (145.9)
and Davis (136.3) did both manage personal bests.
When looking at the overall records, I was surprised by one
of the top teams. Only three owners have broken 60 wins: Travis (big shock)
with 66, Jason with 60, and Drew (!) with 62. Even though I keep these log
books, I wasn’t aware Drew was the second winningest team within our league.
In fact, if you consider favorable W/L records to be markers
of success, the top five teams (Travis, Drew, Jason, Ryan Good, and Scott) are
the only ones with winning records (other than Dane…small sample size), and the
only five teams to have won the championship. These are our ‘Premier’ teams,
based on history. The teams fighting to become Premier, based on history, are
myself (2 games below .500) and Kyle (6 games below .500). If won of the big
five finally drops a championship, one of the two of us will hopefully be
around to snag it...
Another fun fact: since my team is 6-14 in the playoffs (up
from 4-13 before this season), if you take out the post-season I’m actually 6
games above .500 in the regular season.
Now, to the records…
As absolutely no one needs me to remind them, 2013 will not
be thought of as a time when RBs were dominant. Only one RB performance made
the Top 10 RB board, but what a doozy it was. Jamaal Charles’ Week 15 51.5 is
the #1 RB and #1 Overall performance of all time for our league. Hats off to
Ryan Davis. That will be the only time I take my hat off to Ryan Davis during
the next one hundred pages or so.
WRs, on the other hand, did have their time to shine. Four
of the top 5 WR performances in the history of our league happened between
weeks 8 and 13 this year: Erin Decker of team Peter (41.4 points, #1 WR, #7
Overall), Andre Johnson of team Donel (40.9 points, #2 WR, #9 Overall), Josh
Gordon (!) of team Dane (38.1 points, #4 WR, #15 Overall), and Calvin Johnson
of team Jason (36.9 points, #5 WR, #24 Overall). Fun fact: no WR has more than
one performance on the Top 10 WR list.
Travis proved you don’t need an elite QB to succeed in this
league (see: his starting QB Weeks 1-16). Overall, QBs had a good year, with
the most entrants to the QB Top 10 since Season 5. Scott had the best QB
performance of the year with Peyton Manning’s 46.9 points in week 1, good enough
for QB #2 and Overall #4. And Travis shocked everyone (or at least me) when he
road Josh McCown to a first round playoff victory to the tune of 39.5 points
(#4 QB, #11 Overall).
Tight Ends performed well early, with three entrants in the
TE Top 10 before Week 4, but none afterwards. Kyle’s Tony Gonzalez (26.9
points, #2 TE), Scott’s Jordan Cameron (24.6 points, #5 TE), and Ryan Good’s
Jimmy Graham (23.9 points, #8 TE) are the only TEs in the top ten who are not
Rob Gronkowski or Antonio Gates.
D/ST points this year were pretty paltry (I won’t get into
the details…see the spreadsheet if you’re interested), but we did have a big
year for kickers. I know absolutely no one cares about this but me, but Kim’s
Justin Tucker kicked himself to our #1 K with 23 points in week 15. Adam
Vinatieri (20 points, #3 K) and Steven Hauschka (19 point, #6 K) also deserve
mention.
Enforcement of Rules,
or Something
There isn’t much to talk about from a fines standpoint.
There’s really only two…
Dane: $2 for failing to start a Kicker in Week 9
Scott: $10 for finishing last in the consolation bracket.
I noticed today that the constitution has an error in the
fine section, in one place detailing a fine of $2 for failing to start a
player, and in another stating $5. I’ll give Dane the benefit of a doubt since
this is my fault. The $10 last place fine, however, is unambiguous. All of
these funds will channel back into the money we’re accumulating over time to do
god knows what with.
As for when these are due…also vague in the constitution. We’ve
always said by the start of next season, but I’ll likely propose an amendment
to make this date more firm.
Keep Thinking About
Amendments!
I need to draft them this weekend. Here’s what I’ve got,
just off the top of my head:
10 vs. 12 teams
Alteration to FAA
Fines Clarification
Fines Deadline
Last Place Trophy (a la the Sacko) with appropriate punishment
Draft pauses! (lets relive that fiasco, please)
Defensive scoring rejiggering (though I’ll need the people
who want this to happen to explain to me what they don’t like, since I’m
apparently too dumb to realize anything happened)
Probably about 100 others. I need to get this constitution
tight, damnit!
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