Longshanks rolls in a wild week!

According to Wikipedia, this was Edward Longshanks wife... quite the looker huh?

What a crazy week!  Four teams scored over 100, including Joe’s Pats getting their first win on the season, and Attack of Mahomes continued the perfect run improving to 5-0.  But the crazy thing was the player scores… four players scored over 40 points and a defense scored 38!  I can’t remember any week where we had five players averaging 41.8 points between them.  Here is what you call an amazing line-up:

QB – Deshaun Watson, HOU (Golf and Fishing) – 44 pts – Perfect passer rating on 426 yards, 5 TD’s and 0 interceptions
RB – Christian McCaffrey, CAR (Longshanks) – 44 pts – 237 total yards (176 rushing, 61 receiving) and 3 TD’s
WR – Will Fuller V, HOU (Vandelay Industries) – 42 pts – Over half of Watson’s yardage went to fuller (217) and 3 of the TD’s as well!
RB – Adam Jones, GB (Attack of Mahomes) – 41 pts – Unbelievable day with 182 yards and 4 TD’s.
DEF – Philadelphia (Joe’s Pats) – 38 pts – 10 sacks, 3 turnovers, 2 TD’s in a blasting of the Jets.

With just those five players, if that was your roster you would have scored 209 points!  (That’s 51 points higher than any eight man roster has ever scored in Sacred Sundays history.)  Then you throw in one more receiver (Michael Thomas – 33 pts), the top tight end (George Kittle – 14 pts) and the best kicker (Dan Bailey – 16 pts), and you have a 272 point roster.  272 POINTS!!  That’s dang near more points than Big Sack has scored all season!  (What do you know, Jens!! hahaha)

Fortunately no one had all those players together, so my Longshanks boys led the way to my first Weekly High Score prize this season courtesy of a still impressive 144 point performance!  My big 4 players were the aforementioned Christian McCaffrey (44 pts), DJ Chark doo doo do do doo doo (31 pts), Tom Brady (23 pts) and Philip Lindsay (20 pts).  This is the second highest score we’ve seen this season (behind sprout’s 154 in Week 3), and I’m the fourth different team to win a high score so far.

Now, it has become an annual tradition for me to make playoff predictions after Week 5, so lets get right to it!  The same methodology and criterion are being applied this season, plus I’m adding one additional category “Utilization” which I’ll get to shortly.  Here are the categories analyzed:

• Overall Record – Playoff qualification percentages have been tracked for all starting records through the first 5 weeks of the season.  Teams 5-0 have made the playoffs 80% of the time, and teams starting off 0-5 have never made the playoffs.
• Total Points Scored – Playoff qualification percentages have been tracked based on the points scored ranking through 5 weeks.  The top 2 highest scoring teams have qualified for the playoffs every time, while the lowest scoring team has only qualified 18.2% of the time.
• Schedule Difficulty – Team by team ranking of how upcoming opponents rank in terms of points scored.  The team with the easiest remaining schedule… Big Sack.  Toughest remaining schedule… Coors Light Drunk Guys.
• Utilization – This is a new category this season.  I’ve been tracking the bench improvement for each team each week, and the top ranked teams here have been doing the best job to maximize their points each week.  Thus far the highest ranking team in this category is American BadAss, and the lowest ranking team is Vandelay Industries.

On to the predications...  The first two teams predicted to make the playoffs are:  Attack of Mahomes and American BadAss!  These are the top two highest scoring teams, plus Attack of Mahomes has a 5-0 record.  American BadAss also has the 2nd easiest upcoming schedule.

The next two teams predicted to make the playoffs are:  sprouts and Longshanks!  Sprouts has the 3rd easiest remaining schedule, has a 3-2 record (69% qualification), plus is the 3rd highest scoring team (66.7% qualification).  For Longshanks, I’m currently the 5th highest scoring team which has oddly qualified for the playoffs 77% of the time and my record of 3-2 has qualified 69% of the time.

The final two teams predicted to make the playoffs are:  Vandelay Industries and Golf and Fishing!  These were tough choices… Vandelay Industries gets a nod by being the 4th highest scoring team, which has qualified 58% of the time, and have the 4th easiest schedule remaining.  Golf and Fishing gets the final spot because of their 4-1 record (72% qualification), but are hurt by ranking 6th in points scored (27% qualification) and having a difficult remaining schedule (7th).

This means the teams predicted to not make it are:  Joe’s Pats, the Coors Light Drunk Guys, Young Guns and Big Sack.  In 2016 I was correct on 6 out of 6, but in 2017 I missed 2 and last year I missed one.  We’ll see how I do this season…

BEST BENCH
When you have a player score 42 points on your bench, it’s a tough task to not be the Best Bench for the week.  And that is just the case this week, as the Week 5 Best Bench goes to… Vandelay Industries!  Rob had a solid 43-point improvement possibility (highest of the season) but only needed two roster moves:  W. Fuller for J. Edelman (+25 pts) and R. Wilson for L. Jackson (+18 pts).

That’s all I’ve got for this week… get those waivers in and get ready for Week 6!!  Mid-term grades are just around the corner!