God bless the U.S.A!

Week 9 was the highest scoring week of the season thus far, with a total of 914 points scored!  Crazy to have an accomplishment like that in a week where six NFL teams were on byes.  The highest scoring week of all-time was Week 4, 2011 when 1,000 points were scored.  (Five teams scored over 100 points that week, and all but one team scored over 90 points.)

The congratulations this week go out to American BadAss, who topped everyone by scoring 121 points!  BadAss thrashed his head-to-head opponent, TrainWreck, by 54 points, and managed to hold off Young Guns who finished with 119 points.  BadAss’ runningbacks and quarterback were the key to victory, as Melvin Gordon had 34 points, Latavius Murray scored 30 and Aaron Rodgers added 25.  In all, 89 points from just three players, which by themselves would have defeated five other teams this week.  That’s some domination!  This is Jason’s first Weekly High Score Prize of the season, and it brings the total number of teams to win or tie for a high score to 7.  Well done senor!

Now, we have only four more regular season games to go, so the playoffs are right around the corner.  Here is a quick refresher on the playoff rules:

• Top two teams in each division automatically qualify.  The top team in each division receives a first round bye.
• Next two highest ranked teams receive Wildcards. (Wildcards are not division specific. Both can come from the same division.)
• Teams that do not qualify for the playoffs are still eligible to win the Weekly High Score prize, but do not compete in head-to-head games.
• Final standing at end of regular season determines standings for 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th place.  

Here are the tiebreakers for determining playoff qualifiers: (these may differ from what Yahoo! uses)
Divisional standing ranking
Overall record
Division record
Head-to-head record
Points scored
Coin flip

Wildcard standing ranking/tiebreakers
Overall record
Head-to-head record
Points scored
Coin flip

Next week I will start cranking through playoff scenarios for each team.


BEST BENCH
With six teams on byes this week, it was not surprising to see very few bench points sitting idle.  The lowest point total to ever claim the Best Bench title was 16, accomplished by the Midnight Maulers in Week 7, 2011.  This week’s winner wasn’t quite that low, but it did tie for the lowest one this season.  With a 28-point improvement possibility, claiming their 2nd Best Bench of the season, Week 9 goes to… the Coors Light Drunk Guys!  Shawn needed to only make two roster moves to make it happen:  C. Santos for C. Barth +15 and T. Taylor for A. Luck +13.  (Side note – Shawn, I would never recommend carrying a backup kicker, but if you do happen to have one, the one time it would come in handy is when your normal kicker is on a bye week!!!)


The push to the playoffs is on!  Let’s do this!!