What a topsy turvy season! In a year where we’ve seen crazy high team scores (158 from American BadAss in Week 10, 129 from Young Guns in Week 12), and a week where 6 teams score over 100 (Week 6), we go and have a week like this… only one team scored better than 80, and two teams didn’t even break 40! The bottom 9 scoring teams averaged a paltry 64.5 points and all 10 teams scored only 691 total points which ranks as the 3rd lowest single week total in Sacred Sunday history. But it wasn’t because of a bunch of injured or bench players still on active rosters…there were just not many points to be had. For the NFL, Week 15 had the 2nd fewest fantasy points this season (2,056), behind only Week 9’s 1,972 points. But Week 9 had six teams on byes! There were zero teams on bye this last week. If you look at total points for weeks with all 32 teams in action (Weeks 1, 2, 3, 13 & 14), the average coming into the week was 2,433 (~76 points per team), and the lowest score was Week 14 with 2,315 (~72 points per team). Week 15 was miles behind those figures at only 64 points per team! The most points scored in any week was 2,647 in Week 4 at that was even with two teams on bye. Dang. Week 15? Oh no, try Weak 15!
The one respectable squad this week, and the recipient of this week’s big congratulations is Joe’s Pats! Joe had huge games from DeAndre Hopkins (32), Marlon Mack (24) and Todd Gurley (23) en route to 110 points! That easily took care of Longshanks, moving Joe’s Pats to the championship game for the second year in a row. This marks Joe’s league-leading 5th Weekly High Score Prize this season, one shy of the record six he set last season. Well done senor!
In the other semi-final game, Attack of Mahomes edged out Young Guns. Alshon Jeffrey was the difference, scoring 19 points, and leading Attack of Mahomes to a 79-67 victory. This puts Timmy back in the championship game for the second year in a row as well! Nice work Tim-may!! The Yahoo! prediction right now has Joe’s Pats as a 101-90 favorite, so that should make for a close game. If Joe wins, it will be only the second time there has been a repeat champion of Sacred Sundays. If Timmy wins, it will be the first time a team wins the championship having not won a Weekly High Score Prize leading up to it. Joe is going for his third title, Timmy going for his second. Best of luck to both of you!
Just a reminder that all teams are still eligible to win the Weekly High Score Prize, so make sure you have your lineup set. Recap on winnings: High Scores are worth $50, 4th place = $45, 3rd place = $67, 2nd place = $113 and 1st place = $225. In the Championship game, in the event of a tie the following tiebreakers will be used:
- Team with the highest scoring QB wins,
- Team with the highest scoring RB wins,
- Team with the highest scoring WR wins,
- If still tied at that point, Co-Champions will be declared.
My apologies for lack of recap last week… not sure what it is with me and water in this house, but I had another ‘incident’. At about 4 a.m. Monday morning (last week) I got out of bed to check on a sound I thought was the ice maker. There was a knocking and grinding sound which I attributed to our p.o.s. ice machine, but it just kept going and going, so I finally climbed out of bed to shut it off. When I got into my kitchen, I realized the sound was not coming from the fridge but from the fish tank. I thought, huh?..that's weird, why is the fish tank glass foggy? And why IS THERE ONLY AN INCH OF WATER?! OH MY F. Apparently at some point after we had gone to bed the tank started leaking, nearly emptying itself out, and the noise was the filter running dry, rattling on the edge of the tank. Somehow the fish were still alive, sort of flopping around in the little bit of water left, so my wife and I spent the next 45 minutes saving fish and cleaning up water. By Tuesday the same company that had cleaned up and dried out my bathroom debacle came out to deal with my latest mess. They had to remove approx. 4 square feet of flooring and subfloor and run fans and a dehumidifier for two and a half days, both in my kitchen and under my house. This fish tank was only 10 gallons, but somehow it caused $846 worth of damage! You believe that shieznits?! F me! But in any event, this thing and two fans were running right next to my computer desk at a decibel level somewhere between "lawn mower" and "chain saw".
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| This picture is a lot quieter than the real thing. |
BEST BENCH
Wouldn’t be able to finish the write up this week without the Best Bench, and it’s a good one. Going back to Week 14, there were two players who posted massive numbers—Derrick Henry 50 pts & Amari Cooper 42 pts—and both were on teams' benches. Not the same bench…woah, that would’ve been even more amazing. But if you take those two players as the starting point, you knew we would see a big number, and boy did we ever! The winning team logged a season-high 66 point improvement possibility! Now, if you’ve been keeping tabs on the Best Bench this season, you probably already know who it’s gonna be… that’s right, one more time for American BadAss!! For his fourth Best Bench this year, Jason needed a big 5 player swap to get there: A. Cooper for B. Cooks +40, C. Carson for D. Johnson +10, Seattle for Pittsburgh +9, W. Lutz for K. Fairbairn +5 (still with the two kickers...), and M. Ryan for J. Winston +2.
Week 15 was low scoring, as mentioned earlier, so there were not a whole lot of points to be found on the benches. But one team still had a solid 49 point improvement possibility. Collecting a 2nd Best Bench award, the Week 15 crown goes to… Young Guns! John needed to swap four players: M. Williams for A. Thielen +27, K. Gollady for J. Smith-Schuster +10, J. Howard for S. Barkley +8, and Miami for NYG +4.
It all comes down to this! The Championship game! This week's Monday Night game is Denver @ Oakland, which will have no bearing on Attack of Mahomes or Joe's Pats, so we will be crowning a champion on Sunday night. Can't wait!!
Oh yeah, and hope Santa brings you everything you ask for...
