Sacred Sundays 2019!! Version XVI

The 16th season of Sacred Sundays is underway!  Sixteen years of fantasy football… man how things have changed.  Back in 2004, players were extolled for big hits and collisions in ESPN’s ‘Jacked UP!’ segment, and now those players draw fines and suspensions for those hits.  In 2004, extra points were merely an afterthought after a touchdown, and now you’ve gotta hope and pray your kicker doesn’t F up an extra point and lose the game.  In 2004, Tom Brady was just coming off of leading the Patriots to a Superbowl title, and now, well… so yeah, I guess not everything has changed.

Week 1 2019 belongs to Attack of Mahomes!  Timmy had monster performances from Patrick Mahomes (30 pts), Dalvin Cook (23 pts) and his kicker, Harrison Butker (17 pts), to lead all scorers with 112 points!  This is the exact opposite start to Timmy’s season from last year-- in Week 1 2018 he only scored 60 points and was the week's lowest scorer.  Nice turnaround Timtim!!  Let's go Chiefs!

So this week we’ll take a look back at the Yahoo’s 2018 predictions to see how accurate they were, recap the draft with some additional stats and give out a Best Bench of a variety we haven’t seen in nearly a year.  But first, some observations…

BIG TIME
-Sammy Watkins, WR – Attack of Mahomes – 40 pts – Epic day for Watkins finishing with 9 catches for 198 yards and 3 TD’s!  It was the fifth best single-game receiving performance in Chiefs history.  Fantasy-wise, this also ranked as the fifth best wide receiver performance since 2009, and is only the 36th time a player has scored over 40 points since 2009.
-Dak Prescott, QB – American BadAss – 36 pts – QB perfection was achieved on Sunday, and it wasn’t by someone named Rodgers, Brady or Brees.  Nope, it was Dak, who completed 25 of 32 passes for 405 yards, 4 TD’s and zero picks, which equates to a QB rating of 158.3 (the highest QB rating possible).
-Austin Ekeler, RB – Vandelay Industries- 32 pts – Top running back performance of the week belonged to Ekeler (didn’t see that coming) who gashed the Colts to the tune of 154 yards and 3 TD’s.  Melvin Gordon could not have been happy to see this one…totally reminds me of the Le’Veon Bell hold out last year when it was James Conner who went off.
-Lamar Jackson, QB – Vandelay Industries – 32 pts – Jackson didn’t need many passes to do his damage... he threw only 20 passes, completing 17 for 324 yards and 5 TD’s!  He tied a record set by Peyton Manning for the most TD’s in an opening season game.  (Caveat – His opponent was the Miami Dolphins, so may need to temper expectations just a bit.)
-Christian McCaffrey, RB – Longshanks – 32 pts – This is the definition of a workhorse:  19 rushes for 128 yards, 10 catches for 81 yards and 2 TD’s.  Love it.
-San Francisco, DEF – Free Agent – 31 pts – The 49ers defense absolutely dominated the Bucs… 3 sacks, 3 interceptions, 1 fumble recovery, 2 4th down stops, 2 TD’s and only gave up 11 points.  They’ve now got the Bengals next week…could we see another performance like this?
-John Ross III, WR – Free Agent – 30 pts – Coming into this week, the best game of Ross’ career was a 3 catch 52 yard performance.  He tripled his yardage output this week, catching 7 balls for 158 yards and 2 TD’s.
-Patrick Mahomes, QB – Attack of Mahomes – 30 pts – Mahomes had what any other quarterback would consider a great game in just his first half.  For the first half, Mahomes had 313 yards and 2 TD’s.  Can you imagine?  On pace for over 600 yards!  He ending up adding just 60 yards but one more TD in the second, just for good measure.

COME ON MAN
-Mike Evans, WR – sprouts – 2 pts – Just a weak showing for Evans, catching only 2 passes for 28 yards.
-Philadelphia, DEF – Young Guns – 1 pt – Through 60 minutes of football, all the Eagles defense could muster was 1 sack.  One measly sack.
-Joe Mixon, RB – Joe’s Pats – 1 pt – Mixon did get hurt in the game, but he was never ruled out.  Up to the point when he got “injured” he had 6 carries for 10 yards, a whopping 1.6 yards per carry.
-OJ Howard, TE – Joe’s Pats – 1 pt – The Juice actually had 32 yards on the day, but lost a red zone fumble.  And most of his dignity.
-Donte Moncrief, WR – Longshanks – 0 pts – For being someone who is paid to catch a football, Moncrief is not very good at it.  He had multiple drops and the 3 he did catch only amounted to 7 yards.
-Denver, DEF – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 0 pts – Against Oakland, the Broncos had no sacks, no interceptions, no blocked kicks, no fumble recoveries, and gave up 24 points.  Against Oakland.

YAHOO! PREDICTIONS
Immediately following the draft, as they have done in prior years, the Yahoo! prediction machine predicted the season results for the entire upcoming season.  At the bottom of this year’s Yahoo! predictions are Big Sack and Joe’s Pats, with predicted records of 1-11-1 and 2-10-1 respectively.  At the top of the heap are sprouts and Attack of Mahomes with predicted records of 11-2 each. The team predicted to be highest scoring is sprouts with 1,520, and the lowest scoring team is the Coors Light Drunk Guys predicted to score only 1,320.

Now before you get too excited or depressed about how Yahoo! thinks your season will go, let’s look at how last year’s predictions fared.  Last year’s projected highest scoring team was Young Guns with 1,400 points.  Well, Young Guns finished with only 1,173 points ranking 7th.  The Bubble Craps Bandits were projected to be the lowest scoring team (1,251) and have the worst record (2-11).  Well the Bandits (renamed to Attack of Mahomes) ended up as the highest scoring team (1,299) with the BEST record (9-4).  So Yahoo! didn’t do so hot with those predictions.

How about with playoff predictions?  The top six predicted teams last season were:  Young Guns, Sofa King Back, Vandelay Industries, Joe’s Pats, American BadAss and sprouts.  Of those, Vandelay Industries and sprouts ended up missing the playoffs.  So playoff teams were predicted correct on 4 out of 6 (66.6%).  But the two teams not predicted to make the playoffs, Attack of Mahomes and Longshanks, finished 2nd and 4th respectively.  (This season the top six teams predicted are: sprouts, Attack of Mahomes, Young Guns, Longshanks, Bella Dancers and American BadAss.)

But not all of the predictions made last year were wildly wrong… Joe’s Pats was picked to be the 2nd highest scoring team and finished as the 2nd highest scoring team, sprouts was predicted to have a record of 6-7 and finished with a record of 6-7, and the Coors Light Drunk Guys were predicted to finish 9th but finished 10th.  (But lets be honest…predicting that the Coors Light Drunk Guys are going to finish at the bottom is not exactly a hot take.  Hahaha!  What do you know, Shawn!?!)

The most striking thing I noticed looking at the Yahoo! predictions from last year is how they predicted all scores to total 13,234, yet there were only 11,783 actual points scored.  That is a difference of 1,451 points or nearly 91 fewer actual points scored per week than predicted. 

DRAFT STATS
This year every NFL team had at least one player picked in our draft, with Miami, Buffalo and Washington each having just a single player selected.  On the other end of the spectrum, Kansas City led the way with 10 players picked, followed by Houston and LA Rams with 8, and Cleveland, LA Chargers, New England and New Orleans all had 7 players picked.

The most popular position picked was wide receiver with 50 taken, followed by running backs with 44.  American BadAss, Young Guns and Attack of Mahomes each picked 6 wide receivers in the draft.  There were only 18 quarterbacks selected because both Young Guns and Attack of Mahomes did not draft a back-up QB.  Tampa Bay was the only NFL team to not have a running back selected.  Four teams--Baltimore, Washington, Buffalo and Miami--did not have a wide receiver selected.  Lastly, the Chiefs and the Saints were the only two teams to have players selected in all positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K and DEF).

BEST BENCH
There was a close battle for the first best bench of the season, as four teams had bench improvement totals greater than 30 points.  Vandelay Industries, Joe’s Pats and American BadAss had improvement possibilities of 33, 31 and 30 points, but none could top the week’s high scorer… Attack of Mahomes!  Yep, it is a Double Crown week for Timmy as he takes the Best Bench, with a 36 point improvement possibility, along with the Weekly High Score Prize!  (Our last Double Crown winner was American BadAss in Week 3 last year).
Attack of Mahomes needed only two roster moves to get there:  S. Watkins for K. Golladay (+30 pts) and L. McCoy for A. Jones (+6 pts).  With those roster moves, Tim’s optimal line-up would have consisted of 6 Kansas City Chief players.  Do it Timmy!  Let’s see an all-Chiefs roster this season!!

Okay, so get those waiver claims in and get ready for Week 2!!

Champion x2!!

Re-peat!!  For only the second time in Sacred Sundays’ history, we have a repeat champion!  Congratulations to Joe’s Pats for taking home the 2018 title and dominating all season long!  Joe claimed five Weekly High Score Prizes on his way to the championship, which would have tied the record for most High Scores in a season had he not won six and set the record last year!  Well done once again sir!  This is Joe's third Sacred Sundays championship, and his 7th time finishing in the top 4.

Attack of Mahomes' second place finish marks the third time Timmy has finished as runner-up, and is also his 7th time finishing in the top 4.  Nice work Tim-may!  Young Guns finished in 3rd place, giving John 2 top 4 finishes out of the last three years (Young Guns was 2nd in 2016).  Finishing in 4th place was Longshanks, quite the improvement from my 8th place finish last year.  I finished 9th in 2016, 8th last year now 4th this year!  I'm coming for you Joe!  

For Week 16, the big congratulations go to Mr. Jens Bolleyer for being the only team in triple digits and claiming a SECOND Weekly High Score Prize!  Jens and his Big Sack also won the prize for best text with his “See I told you my team was built for the championship”.  Aaron Rodgers led the way for Big Sack with an incredible 45 point performance, and four other players scored double digits giving Big ol' Sack 107 points.  Nice work big guy!  Keep on building those championship teams.

Here are the official final standings for the 2018 season:

1)      Joe’s Pats – Joe

2)      Attack of Mahomes – Timmy

3)      Young Guns – John

4)      Longshanks – Jerry

5)      American BadAss – Jason

6)      Team I.R. & Holdout – James

7)      sprouts – Russ

8)      Vandelay Industries – Rob

9)      Big Sack – Jens

10)   Coors Light Drunk Guys – Shawn

The draft order will be the reverse of those standings.  Draft will be over Labor Day Weekend in Vegas.  Make your plans now!! No excuses Shawn!  There will be a bed for you to sleep in!

EVERYONE NEEDS MONEY, THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT MONEY

Here is the final money tally:

1)      Joe - $475 (5 Weekly High Score Prizes $250, Championship $225)

2)      John - $217 (3 Weekly High Score Prizes $150, Third Place $67)

3)      Jason - $200 (4 Weekly High Score Prizes)

4)      Timmy - $113 (Runner-up)

5)      Jens - $100 (2 Weekly High Score Prizes)

6)      Jerry - $95 (1 Weekly High Score Prize $50, 4^th Place $45)

7)      James - $50 (1 Weekly High Score Prize)

Congratulations to all!  I will contact all of the winners separately to see how you want your winnings.   (And Joe, I'll send you a 1099-form so you can start reporting this as income.  Good lord you are killing it!)

Joe meeting with his accountants

KEEPERS AND FINAL ROSTERS

For next season, the same keeper rules will apply… you can keep up to 2 players from your final roster this season as a keeper for next year.  Players count as a draft pick for whatever their draft pick was for the 2018 season.  Keepers being re-kept count as a first round pick, undrafted players as a 15^th round pick.  I’ll send out a spreadsheet with all final rosters and 2019 keeper values in the next couple days.

BEST BENCH

This season 7 different teams claimed the title of Best Bench.  The three elusive teams who avoided it were Team I.R. & Holdout (James), Joe’s Pats (Joe) and sprouts (Russ).  Of the Best Benches, American BadAss had it the most times with 4, and also led the way for the highest Best Bench of the season with a 66 point improvement possibility in Week 14.  (Side note - The record for the highest Best Bench was set Week 2-2009 when sprouts had an unprecedented 89-point improvement possibility.)

For the final Best Bench this year, we didn’t nearly get that high, but it was still a 62.5% roster overhaul (5 player swap!).  Collecting his third Best Bench of the season, Week 16 goes to… the Coors Light Drunk Guys!  Shawn needed to swap:  B. Roethlisberger for D. Brees +15, D. Njoku for T. Burton +10, Jacksonville for Houston +9, L. Fitzgerald for C. Davis +6 and C. Thompson for T. Riddick +2.

Another season has come and gone so quickly… I’m already looking forward to next year!!  

Happy New Year to everyone… may 2019 be a joyous and fruitful year!

A Championship Matchup Revisited

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:

1. Team with the highest scoring QB wins, 
2. Team with the highest scoring RB wins, 
3. Team with the highest scoring WR wins, 
4. 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".

This picture is a lot quieter than the real thing.

Not the most conducive blog-posting atmosphere.  By Friday I had replaced the subfloor and I finished the flooring on Saturday.  Happy to report every single fish lived through the ordeal.  And because we are just idiots or just gluttons for punishment, we went with a 15 gallon tank as a replacement.  Yeah, what are we thinking right?  But this time I bought a $12 water sensor from Home Depot that will start squawking if it detects as much as 1/32” of an inch of water.  I hope I never have to hear it.

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...

The seeds are set...let the playoffs begin!

After all the scenarios and what-ifs, it came down to wins from Young Guns, Team I.R. & Holdout, and Longshanks!  In a win-to-get-in scenario, those three teams came through in the clutch!  Young Guns breezed to a 30 point win, Team I.R. & Holdout won by 8, and in an emphatic victory, my Longshanks boys posted a 47 point victory to punch a ticket to the playoffs!  It was a blessing in disguise to have Melvin Gordon out with an injury as Philip Lindsay filled in and went crazy for 30 points.  Plus Christian McCaffrey added 21 and Russell Wilson racked up 24 giving me 119 points, 1 single solitary point more than Attack of Mahomes!  This was the first time this season I've claimed a high score prize, and amazingly through 13 weeks the "J" streak has stayed alive.    

Here are a couple tidbits from this week:  

- Attack of Mahomes enters the playoffs as the #1 overall seed, by virtue of having the best record at 9-4, yet has not had a weekly high score.  

-Joe's Pats came into the week red hot, averaging 103.5 points per week, yet barely scored half that with a 56 point performance.

-sprouts finishes as the 5^th highest scoring team, with 1,222 points scored, yet misses the playoffs by one spot. 

So lets get to the playoffs, here is how the seeding breaks down:

#1 – Attack of Mahomes – Timmy (9-4)

                North Division Champion, best record overall.

#2 – Joe’s Pats – Joe (8-5)

                South Division Champion, best record in South Division.

#3 – American BadAss – Jason (7-6)

                South Division Runner-up, Division record of 5-2.

#4 – Team I.R. & Holdout – James (7-6)

                North Division Runner-up, Division record of 4-3.

#5 – Young Guns – John (7-6)

1^st Wildcard team, Head-to-head victory over Longshanks.

#6 – Longshanks – Jerry (7-6)

                2^nd Wildcard team.

Yahoo! has finally enabled playoff seeding, so the site has been adjusted to reflect these seedings.  Attack of Mahomes and Joe’s Pats have 1^st round byes, and matchups will pit American BadAss versus Longshanks and Team I.R. & Holdout versus Young Guns.  (Playoff game note - in the case of a tie game, the winner will be the higher seeded team.)

All teams remain eligible to win the Weekly High Score Prize.  The remaining standings are as follows:

#7 – sprouts – Russ (6-7) – Points scored 1,222.

#8 – Vandelay Industries – Rob (6-7) – Better record.

#9 – Big Sack – Jens (4-9) – Points scored 1,000.

#10 – Coors Light Drunk Guys – Shawn

These standings will determine the draft order for next year, so Shawn Martin, you are on the clock!  Labor Day Weekend!  Mark your calendars.

Back in Week 5 I made my annual playoff predictions, and I'm pleased to report I was correct on 5 of 6.  Long ago on October 10th, the teams predicted to make the playoffs were: Joe's Pats, American BadAss, Young Guns, Team I.R. & Holdout, sprouts and Attack of Mahomes.  So I only missed on sprouts... not bad.  I'll see if I can make it 6 for 6 next year!

Lastly, I leave you with this week's Best Bench, which is a special one because it is a league-leading THIRD time this team has won Best Bench this season.  With a solid 32-point improvement possibility, the Week 13 Best Bench goes to… American BadAss!!  Jason needed four roster moves to make it happen:  K. Fairbairn for W. Lutz +17 (serves you right for having two kickers on your team!), R. Woods for T. Hill +9, K. Rudolph for M. Lacosse (+3) and C. Carson for D. Johnson (+3).  

Now is the time to shine!  Playoffs baby!!

Yoohoo! One week until the playoffs!

Crazy week!  In a weird timing of matchups, the six highest scoring teams ended up matched up with each other across three games, while the bottom four teams faced off in the other two games.  This resulted in two winning teams with point totals of just 79 and 75 points.  Meanwhile, Joe’s Pats lost after scoring 98, Attack of Mahomes lost with 102 points and sprouts lost in spite of scoring 111!  In the last two weeks, sprouts has lost with scores of 100 and 111… brutal!  Scoring over 100 points has normally carried with it a fairly certain victory, but not so this season.  This year currently sports the lowest winning percentage for teams scoring over 100 points since 2007 (the first year I started tracking this).  Factoring in all years, including 2018, teams scoring over 100 have won 87.3% of the time.  (Coming into 2018, the winning percentage was 88.6%).  The best year was 2008 which saw 100% of teams scoring over 100 win, and the previous worst season was 2012, which had only 83.3% of 100-pt teams win.  This season, though, the win percentage for teams scoring over 100 is currently at only 76.7%!  Nearly 25% of teams scoring over 100 points have lost their game this year.  That is just crazy!!   The official record this season is 33-10, which ties 2011 for the most scores in excess of 100 in a season (43). 

Scoring has been huge this season, as we are on pace to destroy the record for most points scored in a season.  2011 holds the record as the highest scoring season when there were 14,166 points scored.  This works out to a weekly average of 885.4 points.  This season, through 12 weeks we have scored 10,937 points for a weekly average of 911.4 points!  At our current rate, we are on track to score 14,582 total points!  The lowest scoring season was 2009 which only saw 11,066 points scored… we’ll pass that milestone by the upcoming Thursday night game.

Speaking of big scores, the big congratulations this week go to Young Guns, who countered a pathetic 1-point performance from Jordan Howard by having 3 players score over 26 points!  Saquon Barkley (26 pts), JuJu Smith-Schuster (27 pts) and Deshaun Watson (29 pts) came through big time and led the Young Guns to an impressive 129 points!  This is the 2^nd highest single week score this season, and is John’s second Weekly High Score Prize!  Well done sir!

 In the playoff race, two more items became known…

1) American BadAss is in, joining Attack of Mahomes and Joe’s Pats.  

2) Big Sack is out, joining the Coors Light Drunk Guys.  WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! 

The remaining five teams are still alive.  Team IR & Holdout, Longshanks, Vandelay Industries and Young Guns are all in control of their own fate—win in Week 13 and they will make it in.  sprouts needs to win and have losses from Team IR & Holdout or Young Guns to force some tie-breakers.

Now, there are two scenarios where we could end up with the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th & 8^th ranked teams with records of 6-7.  (In Scenario A teams tied at 6-7 would be Team IR, sprouts, Vandelay and Young Guns, and in Scenario B teams tied at 6-7 would be Team IR, spouts, Longshanks and Young Guns).  This would trigger a whole series of tie-breakers to figure out who gets in.  I honestly started working on figuring it all out, and yeah, let’s just say we will cross that bridge if we get there.

As a reminder, here are the tie-breakers we will use:

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

Yahoo! doesn’t exactly follow these tie-breakers, so I will send out an email on Monday night with the official playoff seeding.  Good luck to everyone!

BEST BENCH

No week is complete without awarding the Best Bench, and this week we have a good one!  Not good in the sense of the point improvement but in the sense of the number of players involved.  This week’s winner could’ve swapped five (yes FIVE!) players to improve their point total by 37 points.  Collecting his second Best Bench this season, Week 12 goes to… Big Sack!  Here is the laundry list of player swaps:  S. Michel for M. Ingram +14, M. Mariota for A. Rodgers +11, D. Cook for J. White +5, J. Reed for A. Hooper +4 and D. Thomas for D. Adams +3.

Are we seriously only one week away from the playoffs?!  Let’s do this!!

Make it two in a row for BadAss (again!)

Monday night was insane!  Chiefs @ Rams went in with an over-under line of 63 which at the time seemed like a big number to beat.  I think they might’ve passed that by midway through the 2nd quarter!  They ended up beating the line by 42 points (54-51 final score), which is, ironically, the over-under line you’d expect to see on a normal game.  There were 14 touchdowns, 56 first downs and an incredible 291 fantasy points scored between the two teams.  This was more like an NFL Blitz game (“Nice catch Tony!!”) than an NFL game!

For the second week in a row, the big congratulations go to American BadAss, who was a big beneficiary of the aforementioned Blitz game, as he had Tyreek Hill and Brandin Cooks both playing.  Hill went crazy with 36 points, while Cooks added 10, and Jason also got solid performance from his runningbacks (Elliott 25 pts and Johnson 14 pts) to finish with 121 points!  This marks Jason’s 4th Weekly High Score Prize this season, and the 2nd time he’s won back-to-back weeks.  Nice work bro!

So the big question on everyone’s mind this week has to be, ‘Am I going to make it into the playoffs’?  Short answer… not likely (Shawn only).  For the rest of you, it may be a bit more complicated, but I’ve got it all worked out below.  So without further ado, let’s get to it!!


BIG TIME

• Patrick Mahomes, QB – Attack of Mahomes – 38 pts – It’s not often you’ll see a guy commit 5 turnovers and still lead all fantasy scorers that week.  In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this is the first time ever.  Mahomes got there by throwing an incredible 6 TD’s to go along with 478 passing yards, and 28 rushing yards.  He is far and away the highest scoring player this season having scored 47 more points than the next closest player.
• Jared Goff, QB – Joe’s Pats – 37 pts – Speaking of which, here is your 2nd highest scoring player in fantasy.  Goff had an amazing day as well, going for 413 yards and 4 TD’s through the air, plus he added a rushing TD.
• Tyreek Hill, WR – American BadAss – 36 pts – Hill was a major part of the shootout between the Chiefs and the Rams, catching 10 passes for 215 yards and 2 TD’s.  Third time this season Hill has scored over 30 points.
• Saquon Barkley, RB – Young Guns – 33 pts – Barkley’s best game of the season (142 yards and 2 TD’s) puts him in a tie for 4th highest scoring running back.
• Drew Brees, QB – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 33 pts – If Mahomes wasn’t just destroying the NFL the way he is, there would be a lot more talk about Brees.  This was his third game over 30 points this year, and over the last 3 games, he is averaging 30.3 points per game.  That's just crazy!
• TY Hilton, WR – Joe’s Pats – 30 pts – Finally a breakout game for Tyrone’s Youngin’, hauling in 9 catches for 155 yards and 2 TD’s.

COME ON MAN

• Carson Wentz, QB – Longshanks – 0 pts – What in the flippin’ hell?  Wentz comes into the game averaging 21.4 ppg, and proceeds to throw 3 picks, 0 TD’s and only 153 yards.  Eat a damn dick.
• Dalvin Cook, RB – Big Sack – -1 pt – Jensy’s first round pick not living up to the hype.  Twelve yards and a lost fumble were all he could manage in this one.
• Tennessee, DEF – sprouts – -4 pts – The Titans only defensive stat… 35+ pts allowed.  Negative four points is the lowest single-week score so far this season, so there’s that.
• Graham Gano, K – Vandelay Industries – 0 pts – 1 PAT made, 1 PAT miss.  Yin and yang.
• Coors Light Drunk Guys – Four players scored zero points (Latavius Murray, Chris Thompson, Trey Burton and Stephen Gostkowski).  Come on Shawn, you're smarter than this!

HAIL TO THE CHIEFS!
All season I’ve been tracking weekly scoring by NFL team.  This week saw some crazy point totals.  A complete Colts roster would have scored 109 points…a complete Rams roster would have scored 122 points…a complete Saints roster would have scored 137 points… but none were better than a full Chiefs roster.  Check this out:
    QB Patrick Mahomes - 38
    WR Tyreek Hill - 36
    WR Chris Conley - 19
    RB Kareem Hunt - 17
    TE Travis Kelce - 18
    DEF Kansas City - 15
     K Harrison Butker - 8
Total                 151
That’s 151 points, plus you would still have an open roster spot for one more runningback!  All hail the Chiefs!


PLAYOFFS?!  DON’T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS!
Two more regular season games to go and then it’s PLAYOFF time!  At this point, teams fall into one of five categories:  Already In, 1 Win & In, 2 Wins & In, 2 Wins & Some Help, and Eliminated.  Remarkably, with only 2 weeks to go, 9 teams are still in contention to make it into the playoffs.  Here are the categories and some additional scenarios.

Already In

• Joe’s Pats
• Attack of Mahomes

1 Win & In

• Vandelay Industries – Win 1 game.  Or, 2 losses plus 2 losses from American BadAss and 2 losses from sprouts.
• American BadAss – Win 1 game.  Or, 2 losses plus 2 losses from Vandelay Industries and 2 losses from sprouts.

2 Wins & In 

• Team I.R. & Holdout – Win 2 games.  Or, Win 1 game plus 2 losses from Vandelay Industries, 2 losses from Young Guns, and 1 loss from sprouts (will still come down to tie-breakers).
• Longshanks – Win 2 games.  Or, Win 1 game plus 2 losses from Team I.R. & Holdout and 2 losses from Young Guns.
• sprouts – Win 2 games.  Or, Win 1 game plus 2 losses from Team I.R. & Holdout and 2 losses from Young Guns.
• Young Guns – Win 2 games.  Or, Win 1 game plus 2 losses from Team I.R. & Holdout and 2 losses from sprouts.

2 Wins & Some Help

• Big Sack – Win 2 games, plus 2 losses from Team I.R. & Holdout, 2 losses from Longshanks and 2 losses from sprouts.

Mathematically Eliminated

• Coors Light Drunk Guys – No path to the playoffs exists.

As always, the above scenarios may not represent the only way for teams to get in, just one of the possible ways.  And there still may be some tiebreakers that come into effect.  The key games to watch this week are 'Team I.R. & Holdout vs. Vandelay Industries' and 'sprouts vs. Young Guns'.  The outcomes of those games will have a big impact on who gets in.


WHY IS ENGLISH SO WEIRD?
So these four words don’t rhyme:
   Cough
   Rough
   Though
   Through
But these two do:
   Pony
   Bologna
Uh…what?


BEST BENCH
Not a lot of points left idle this week, as this week’s Best Bench tied for the 3rd lowest Best Bench total this year.  Claiming a second Best Bench of the season, Week 11 goes to… Longshanks!  Yep, I needed just two roster moves to improve my point total by 28 points:  R. Wilson for C. Wentz +17 and P. Lindsay for C. McCaffrey +11.

Get those waivers in and get set for Week 12!  Last week of byes!

Record Setter

Now I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but there are literally only 3 weeks left of the regular season, which means we are only 4 weeks away from the start of the playoffs and only 7 short weeks away from crowning a champion!  Good lord this season is flying by!  Flying by so fast, in fact, that I haven’t finished a write-up in three weeks.  (There are two half-started Word docs saved on my computer...d'oh!)  So we’ve got a lot to get to this week.

Weeks 7, 8 and 9 belonged to Joe’s Pats with scores of 127, 114 and 121 claiming all three weeks in a row, bringing Joe’s total number of Weekly High Score Prizes to four!  Pulling off a triplet and winning three weeks in a row is a feat which has been only accomplished three previous times since 2010.  Here’s a couple throwbacks for you:  Jensy’s “Boom Goes The Dynamite” did it back in 2012 (Weeks 13, 14 & 15), Timmy’s “Ch. 4 News Team” did it in 2013 (Weeks 2, 3 & 4), and Joe also did it last season (Weeks 14, 15 & 16).  Nice work Joe!

In Week 10 we had two record-setting performances… sprouts had a phenomenal game with six players scoring in excess of 13 points, led by Nick Chubb’s 35 points, and finished with 138 points.  But not to be outdone, American BadAss had a game for the ages with seven players scoring in excess of 17 points (four of those greater than 20!), led by Ezekiel Elliott’s 33 points, and finished with 158 points!  The 158 points by BadAss is the highest single-week score in Sacred Sundays history, breaking the 150 point record held by the Midnight Maulers since Week 4, 2016.  Why did I bring up sprouts score?  Well the 138 points scored by Russ is the highest score ever to not win a Weekly High Score Prize.  Fortunately, sprouts and BadAss were not playing head-to-head because to lose when scoring 138 would be a tough one to swallow.  Well done bro, and nice game as well Russ! 

As mentioned earlier, we have only three weeks left of the regular season, so it’s time to start talking about playoff scenarios.  More on that below…. So let’s do this!!

BIG TIME BABY!

• Mitchell Trubisky, QB – sprouts – 38 pts – Trubisky threw for 355 yards and 3 TD’s, plus added a rushing TD, plus added a 2-pt conversion.  This is the second time this season Trubisky has led all scorers in a week, and he still owns the highest single-game score of this season with his 46 point performance in Week4.
• Ben Roethlisberger, QB – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 35 pts – Big Ben is still getting it done, and currently ranks as the 4th highest scoring QB in fantasy.
• Nick Chubb, RB – sprouts – 35 pts – Quite the breakout game for Chubb, going for 176 yards on the ground, plus 33 yards through the air (over 200 yards of offense), plus added 2 TD’s. 
• Ezekiel Elliott, RB – American BadAss – 33 pts – Keep on feeding him!  151 yards on the ground and a TD, plus 33 yards receiving and a TD.  That’ll work.
• Christian McCaffrey, RB – Longshanks – 31 pts – Through his first six games, McCaffrey was averaging only 11.5 points per game.  In his last three, he’s averaging 24.7, with point totals of 17, 26 and 31.  Using Excel’s trending, he should score 39 points this week and 46 points in Week 12!  Bring it on!

COME ON MAN!

• Coors Light Drunk Guys – Starters included two players on byes (Latavius Murray and Houston Def) and one player on inactive list (Chris Thompson).  Set your roster Shawn!!  Come on man!
• David Njoku, TE – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 1 pt – Then you have your tight end only score 1 pt!  How did you only lose by 4 points??!
• OJ Howard, TE – Joe’s Pats – 1 pt – To his credit, he caught every ball thrown his way.  Unfortunately, that was 1 catch for 15 yards.
• Cody Parkey, K – Beats Shawn-not off! – 0 pts – Here’s a great stat line for a kicker:  2 PAT made, 2 PAT missed.  Wow.
• Jimmy Graham, TE – Young Guns – 1 pt – Another 1-for-1 guy… caught the only ball thrown to him for a meager 14 yards.
• New York Jets, DEF – Young Guns – 0 pts – In what looked like a sweet matchup for the Jets, playing at home against Buffalo, they got lit up for 41 points and managed only 1 sack on the day.

PLAYOFFS?!  DON’T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS!
Before we get into any scenario discussion, a quick refresher on the playoff rules: 
Six teams qualify for the playoffs:  Top two teams in each division automatically qualify.  The next two highest ranked teams receive Wildcards.  (The top team in each division receives a first round bye.) 
Wildcards are not division specific…both can come from the same division.
For divisional rankings, the following criteria will be used (in order): Overall record, Division record, Head-to-head record, Points scored, Coin flip.
For Wildcard rankings, the following criteria will be used (in order): Overall record, Head-to-head record, Points scored, Coin flip.

During the playoffs, all teams are still eligible to win the Weekly High Score Prize.   The final standings at the end of the regular season determine team standings for 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th place.

Finally, in playoff matchups there are no tie games.  Ties in any game prior to the Championship Game will automatically go to the higher seeded team.  If there is a tie in the Championship game, the following tie-breakers will be used (in order): team with highest scoring QB, team with highest scoring RB, team with highest scoring WR, Co-champions if still tied.

Now onto this season.  The standings are remarkably tight and remarkably similar to last season.  Last season going into Week 11 there were two 7 win teams and one 3 win team.  This season we again have two 7 win teams and two 3 win teams.  Last season, among the playoff qualifying teams, three had only 7 wins and one had only 6 wins.  This means any team who can get to 8 wins will assure themselves of a playoff spot, so 8 wins is the goal at this point.  There are seven teams with the potential to make it to eight wins (Attack of Mahomes, Joe’s Pats, Vandelay Industries, Team IR and Holdout!, Longshanks, American BadAss and sprouts).  So all of those teams are well in control of their own destiny.

Young Guns can win out to still finish with 7 wins, which I gotta think would almost definitely secure a playoff spot, and the fact that a 6 win team made it in last year means the Coors Light Drunk Guys and Beats Shawn-not off! still have a shot to make it in. 
I’m going to make a prediction right here, right now, that any team who wins out from this point will make it into the playoffs. 
Next week I’ll have full playoff scenarios for each team.

Why does Kid Rock look like Dr. Phil dressed up as Kid Rock?

WEEKLY RANDOMNESS
I think I want a job cleaning mirrors.  It’s just something I could really see myself doing.

What’s orange and sounds like a parrot.  A carrot.

Why was six afraid of seven?  Because seven was a registered six offender.

Two fish are in a tank.  One is driving and the other is operating the gun.

What’s something that’s red and bad for your teeth?  A brick.

My grandpa has the heart of a lion, and a lifetime ban from the zoo.

A horse walks into a bar.  The bartender says, “Why the long face?”  The horse replies, “My alcoholism is destroying my family.”

ALL UNWANTEDS
It has been an up and down season for the All Unwanteds, but mostly down.  It appears there was good reason we steered clear of drafting many Cardinals, Dolphins or Jets.  Their last four weekly point totals have been 66 (Week 7), 77 (Week 8), 63 (Week 9) and 57 (Week 10).  In head-to-head matchups with every team in the league across those four weeks, it adds up to 7 wins and 33 losses.  Ouch! 
But there was one bright spot I wanted to highlight… Week 6 was a magical week for the AU’s, check out this roster:
QB Brock Osweiler Mia   28
RB Frank Gore Mia          11
RB Bilal Powell NYJ        5
WR Albert Wilson Mia     30
WR Terrelle Pryor NYJ     11
TE Chris Herndon NYJ    11
 K Jason Myers NYJ       27
DEF Arizona Ari       15
Total                           138
Osweiler 28 points(!), Albert Wilson 30 points(!!) and kicker Jason Myers spinning the scoreboard for 27!!!  Go All Unwanteds!!  The 138 points scored would have defeated all teams that week (Weekly High Score was 127).


BEST BENCH(ES)
We’ve got three Best Benches to give out this week…
Week 8 saw a lot of points scored in the games and just a 36 point improvement possibility for Best Bench, which ended up going to first time recipient… Attack of Mahomes!  Timmy needed only 3 roster moves to get there:  M. Jones Jr. for A. Jeffrey +20, S. Watkins for D. Jackson +10, and K. Drake for K. Hunt +6.

In Week 9 it was one of the lower point improvement possibilities to take the crown at only 28 points.  Needing just three roster moves to get there, Week 9’s Best Bench went to… Young Guns!  John’s first Best Bench this season:  Miami for NY Jets +18, C. Ridley for J. Smith-Schuster +6, R. Fitzpatrick for D. Watson +4.

This week there were several teams with some solid bench play, but Timmy loved it so much in Week 8 he wanted to do it again in Week 10!  This time it was a solid 44 point improvement with three roster moves:  E. Ebron for T. Kelce +20, A. Jones for D. Jackson +19 and S. Shepard for A. Jeffrey +5.


Get those waivers in and get your rosters set!  Final push to the playoffs!!