The Wacky, Wooly, Wildcard Weekend

What to make of the NFL Wildcard games this weekend? None of the favored teams everyone predicted to win actually won. Not that I pay much, if any, attention to the betting lines, mind you. I also didn't watch the talking heads on ESPN to see what they thought and which teams they predicted as this weekend's winners. I'm talking about my own estimations of the NFL teams playing this weekend, which regularly is one of the most unpredictable weekends of the NFL season.

In the AFC games, yesterday saw an 8-8 San Diego team taking on the 12-4 Indy Colts. Sure, both teams had been on a winning streak lately (the Chargers won their last four games just to make the playoffs, and the Colts won nine in a row after a shaky start to their season), but very few people expected San Diego to win, even playing at home. LaDanian Tomlinson, their star RB, was hurt and sidelined for the majority of the game. Norv Turner, the coach, has not proved his mettle in previous playoff games. For all the promise of Philip Rivers, he simply cannot compare to Peyton Manning at QB. Manning proved this year that he can will his team to win, despite the declining skills of his favorite WR, Marvin Harrison, and the inability of the Colt's offensive line to open holes for the Colts runners.

And yet, the Chargers proved victorious, winning in OT behind the superb running of their diminuitive RB, Darren Sproles. At times, the ability of the 5'6" Sproles to hide behind his blockers and shoot through the smallest of gaps in the Colts defense evoked the running of 5'7" Jaquizz Rodgers of Oregon State, when he shredded the USC defense in September.

In the other AFC game, a surprising 11-5 Baltimore team, playing with a rookie QB and a rookie head coach, soundly defeated an even more surprising 11-5 Miami team. Miami, of course, went from 1-15 just a year ago to winning their Division this year, despite strong performances by New England, NY Jets, and a fast start by the Buffalo Bills. The Ravens do have an incredible defense, and perhaps they found a way to bottle up the Wildcat offense run by Miami this year. Despite the similar records, Baltimore was the wildcard team, forced to win on the road in Miami to advance. This must have been another upset, as home teams usually get 7 points just for the home field advantage.

Over in the NFC, everyone had written off the Arizona Cardinals as DOA in the playoffs. At 9-7, they won a very weak NFC West Division despite being 2-3 in their last five games. They looked terrible on the road, going 3-5 on the season, yet they were 6-0 within their own Division. And yet, playing at home against an 11-5 Atlanta Falcons team that had been on a three-game winning streak, the Cardinals won fairly easily. They never seemed to be really threatened in their 30-24 victory, despite Atlanta's superior running game.

In the other NFC game today between the Eagles and Vikings, the Eagles at 9-6-1 once again used their crushing, ball-hawking (and TD-scoring!) defense to win 26-14 on the road. The Vikings were 10-6 going into this game, although they had to win their final game of the season in order to clinch a playoff spot and their Division. At one point, when the Vikings' QB, Tavaris Jackson, had one completion for his previous 11 attempts, it certainly seemed as though the Vikes' coach should have switched for another QB. Perhaps Gus Frerotte was still hurt, and perhaps the Vikes really had no better option than Jackson.

What we saw this weekend were mirrors in both Conferences: one home team (Division winner) with a weaker record beat a wildcard team with a stronger record, and one wildcard team beat the home team when the records were the same or very similar. The upsets, both at home and on the road, came when the presumably weaker NFC and AFC West Division-winners actually pulled out strong games against the favored wildcard teams, and when the other wildcard teams pulled off their upsets against Division winners.

Not being able to predict which teams were going to win this weekend causes much consternation for fantasy football players like me. Many of the playoff FFB-variety games involve picking one lineup of players for the entirety of the playoffs, so any time a player's real team loses, it knocks another person out of your fantasy lineup. Or, if you're like me, the Colts' loss knocked three players out of my lineup. In the NFL.com Playoff Challenge game I'm in currently, I do get a maximum of eight lineup changes I can make before the Super Bowl to remain competitive, but having to make six changes after the wildcard weekend (I also had several Falcons and Dolphins on my squad) pretty much dooms me to also-run status.

That remains the beauty of the NFL today, however. Parity means that virtually any team can beat any other team on any given Sunday. A team can rise from 1-15 to Division champ status in one season, even if that team can't win its playoff game. The Cardinals can actually win a playoff game for the first time in a generation. Anything seems possible at this point.

However, after the unpredictability of the wildcard weekend, the Division winners tend to assert themselves in the remaining games. Statistically speaking, wildcard matchups are the equivalent of a coin flip, with home teams winning only about 50% of the time. However, in the next round of the playoffs, home teams win about 70% of the time or better.* Arizona has to travel to Carolina, and the Eagles will travel to play the Giants. Expect the home teams to win both of those contests. Baltimore will travel to Tennessee, and San Diego has to play the Steelers in Pittsburgh, so both home teams have to be favored in those games, too. You can bet that my fantasy lineup will be modified to reflect the strengths of the Giants and the Titans, teams who have the best chance of making it to the Super Bowl. I really thought the Colts could perform a similar feat as the G-men did last year, winning the Super Bowl via the wildcard route, but they fell flat against San Diego.

* Update: TMQ on ESPN posted the win-loss record of home teams in the Divisional playoff round. It's 55-17 for home teams since the current playoff format was adopted in 1990, good for a 76.4% winning percentage, which is about as sure a thing as you can get in the NFL these days.

It's honestly hard to say which teams will make it all the way to the Super Bowl. Each team has its own weaknesses and strengths, and predicting which team will win it all is anyone's guess. Again, that's the beauty of the NFL playoffs. That's why they play the games, so the winner can be decided on the field.

Win or go home, as they say.

Victorious FFB Season

So, if you'll permit me to brag just a little bit, I wanted to wrap up this fantasy football (FFB) season with the announcement that I won my league on NFL.com this year. Now, I know full well that Joe Posnanski said in one of his blog posts in September that the relationship holds: "My fantasy team = interesting; your fantasy team = boring." That rationale was exactly why I decided against making my blog just be about FFB, to hopefully broaden the appeal somewhat. I probably should include more articles here about FFB strategy both before* and during the season, and perhaps I will do so next season.

* I had designs on a very illuminating article about tactics to use while drafting in a live draft when most of the other team owners are going the auto-pick route, but couldn't get it written in time to be relevant.

For now, I just want to provide the summary of my performance, and remember: I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last week! My team was named the Salarymen, and I used the band's logo up top for my icon. I could have used any number of photos available of actual salarymen in Japan for my logo, but the black and white logo looked best in the small format on the NFL.com website.

I ended the season with a 12-4 record (6-0 in my own Division), finishing with a six-game winning streak, meaning I was only 6-4 after ten games. I led the league with 1513 points scored, and the nearest competitor (the team I beat in the championship game) was 108 points back, even though I only led the league in scoring once during the regular season. I had the best record, best breakdown schedule against other teams, and most points scored, which meant I dominated the power rankings at the end of the season.

I did all this despite the fact I didn't have any top scorer on my team. To wit: I had the #4 (Jay Cutler) and #10 (Chad Pennington) QBs; the #7 (Maurice Jones-Drew), #10 (Chris Johnson), #18 (Pierre Thomas) and #38 (Joseph Addai) RBs; #8 (Randy Moss), #10 (Terrell Owens), #15 (Kevin Walter), #28 (Jerrico Cotchery) and #72 (Kevin Curtis) WRs; the #6 (Owen Daniels) TE; the #3 (John Carney) K; and the #4 (Eagles) Team Defense.

Of those players, the only ones I drafted and kept throughout the entire season were Cutler, MJD, Moss, Owens, Cotchery, and the Eagles. Yes, I do like to turn over my roster when needed. It never hurts to troll the waiver wire and make changes when a better player becomes available. Chris Johnson, obviously, was a huge find for me and I got very lucky there. I traded Willie Parker for Addai early in the season, but that was a wash for both teams involved in that trade. Mid-way through the season, I was ready to trade Moss, but no one wanted him at that time. Go figure!

The guys at NFL.com always provide a Coach Rating, which is simply a measure of how efficient a coach is when deciding who to start and who to sit during games. They take the highest scoring collection of players for a team based on the starter rules and actual points scored, and then compare your game points scored against that hypothetical maximum number of points possible in a given week. The result is delivered as a percentage and expressed as a Coach Rating. My rating for the season was a whopping 82%, good for only 8th in my 12-team league.

Another way of looking at coaching efficiency is to compare the player utilization statistics using the team scoring statistics available on the NFL.com website. For example, Cutler scored a grand total of 295 fantasy points this year, but I had him active in my starting lineup for only 237 of those 295 points. For Moss, I captured all 154 of his points, and likewise for T.O., I captured all of his 146 points scored for the season. Start your studs, as they say. For Chris Johnson, I played him for 127 of his 192 points scored; for MJD, I played him for 119 of his 195 points scored; and for Earnest Graham, I played him for 75 of his 93 points scored before losing him to Inactive Reserve (IR). I also kept the Eagles active throughout the entire season, capturing all 222 of their points scored.

In many regards, it's still better to be lucky than good. In the final, I won the game 116-87, despite the fact that my opponent had Donovan McNabb, Michael Turner and Brian Westbrook (#2 and #6 RBs, respectively), Mark Clayton, Larry Fitzgerald (#1 WR), and Antonio Gates (#4 TE, and had a big game on Sunday). The tables easily could have been turned if the Eagles had played a better game on offense against the Redskins. My opponent in the championship game also had a Coach Rating of 90%, which put him second in the league for the entire season.

So, now that college football season is over, and now that FFB season is over, it becomes time to settle back into that Barcalounger, and watch a few Bowl games and the NFL playoffs as a true fan again. When I say "few Bowl games," I mean FEW. I'll probably only really watch one or two of the big games on New Year's Day, including the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. I will watch the BCS National Championship Game, just to see which team I despise wins. Is it possible for both OU and Florida to lose?! I can dream, can't I?

And then, of course, the NFL playoffs are absolutely riveting football, 95 percent of the time. Every once in a while, you have one wild card team that lays a complete egg in the first round (I'm thinking Miami against the Broncos a while back, but can't pull up the actual game score... who do you think I am, the Worldwide Leader in Sports?!), but usually, every single game is exciting because all the coaches and players understand one simple principle rules all:

WIN OR GO HOME.

'Nuff said.

Paint the Whole End Zone!

A quick post tonight: I just saw this (pic below) while watching the Brownies play the Iggles tonight on ESPN. (For those of you who read my previous posts on my antenna-only digital TV at home, I'm on the road, in a Holiday Inn Express tonight, so I actually get to watch the MNF game this week.) The pic is a mostly-empty shot of the newish Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, which is the football-only stadium that replaced the old Veterans Stadium.


So, the picture makes me really wonder why they didn't use a couple other gallons of paint to finish the job in the end zones. Could it really cost them that much to make the end zones a uniform dark green, with the logo on top? As far as I know, this is the Field Turf stuff that plays like grass (only better!), so if you paint it once, it should be good for the whole season.

Maybe that's just it, exactly. If they also use this field for high school or college games, then perhaps they only replace those middle sections of the end zones to make it Eagle-neutral. I think they still play the Army-Navy game here, despite losing Veterans Stadium.

Oh, and the INT return for a TD by Asante Samuel for the Philly Team Defense pretty much assures I win my fantasy football game this week, so I'll make my league's championship game next week. I had the best regular-season record (10-4), best breakdown rating (beating other good teams in my league), and most points scored, so I owned the power rankings at the end of the regular season last Tuesday. But you never know how things will go from week to week, and the playoffs are single elimination, so I'm happy I'm not getting knocked out in the first round.

And hey, I might not be a FFB savant, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express!

Super Bowl Loser Curse Strikes Again

OK, by now, most people will have heard that Tom Brady appears to be lost for the season due to an ACL injury he sustained in week 1 against KC.  My condolences go out to Tom and his team, since no one likes to see a player get hurt, especially not one of Tom Brady's stature.  Yes, Tom was the first QB picked in most fantasy leagues this fall.  Yes, the Patsies were primed for another run at the Super Bowl and greatness.  Yes, numerous columnists wrote this summer how no one should expect the Patsies to fall victim to the Super Bowl loser curse.

Wait, what's that you say?  There's another curse on top of the Billy Goat curse, the SI cover jinx curse, and the Madden cover curse?*

* We will, of course, be holding our breath this entire season for Brett Favre, this year's EA Sports Madden NFL 2009 cover boy. 

Yes, yes there is.  Going back at least to the 2000 season, when the Titans lost to the Rams in the Super Bowl and then had a big drop-off the next season, every Super Bowl loser has had a tough time bouncing back from the loss.  The '01 Giants had several rough years before finally climbing back into prominence through the wildcard last year.  The '02 Rams have been shells of their former selves for the past five years and will probably continue that skid this year.  The '03 Raiders have, well, been the Raiders for the past four years.  The '04 Panthers have done OK, but have struggled to make it back to the playoffs.  The '05 Eagles also struggled in the year following their Super Bowl run.  The '06 Seahawks continue to win their Division, but how hard is that, really?  The '07 Bears completely fell apart on defense last year and notably cut or allowed to depart via free agency their top QB, RB, and WR from last year.  

Now, much of what people love about the NFL is its parity.  When a team like the Browns can bounce from 4-12 one season to a stunning 10-6 the next, really, anything can happen from season to season.  One good player from the April draft can add to a key free agent signing and a new coach...  ...and take the Saints from 3-13 in 2005 to 10-6 in 2006.  One lucky bounce, one fumble recovery, or one onside kick recovery can get an entire team of players believing in themselves and change the entire season.  That's the beauty of the NFL.

On the flip side, players do get hurt.  They get older, slightly slower, and lose a step.  Again, key players can depart via free agency, and it becomes harder and harder to field a competitive team year after year.  Gone are the days of the Broncos, Vikings, and Bills being able to get scramble back up to the peak of the NFL season, the Super Bowl, after each crushing defeat the previous year.  The difference from other Super Bowl losers is that the Patriots have shown they know how to refresh their roster and keep finding talented players that no one else wants (Corey Dillon, anyone?).  They've been to the Super Bowl four times this decade, and last year was their first loss in those four trips. 

What remains to be seen is how well Matt Cassel will perform this year.  Yes, he was able to connect with Randy Moss and guide the Patsies to a week 1 defeat of the Chiefs.  Randy Moss will become his new bestest friend, I think.  There is still a ton of talent on the New England roster.  They still sit atop the AFC East, but with the aforementioned Favre now competing in their Division, the road to the Super Bowl becomes much, much harder than it was before, no disrespect intended towards Chad Pennington.  As noted above, Farve is competing against his own curse, so it should be interesting to see which curse strikes hardest this season. 

Any votes for the Billy Goat curse?

Facebook Fantasy Football

When I learned a few weeks ago that Sports Illustrated had teamed with Citizen Sports to provide a free fantasy football application on Facebook, I thought "Eureka!" Finally, I thought, I can get my brother, who is incredibly busy running his own business yet still checks Facebook every day, into a league with me. He had always claimed to be too busy to keep up on fantasy football in years past. I also wanted to try my hand at being a league commissioner, setting the roster limits, tweaking the scoring rules, setting the playoff format, etc.

And yet, my league will not take off this fall. The problem seems to be inherent in a conflict between the social nature of Facebook and the social nature of fantasy football. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either, so let me try to explain.

From the outside, fantasy football probably seems like a totally loser thing to do. Team "owners" draft real players into a faux team, manage a lineup every week, keep track of the stats throughout the year, and determine a league winner from a playoff that ends before the regular NFL season comes to a close. Only a certain subset of NFL fans and geeks could possibly get into playing a game like this (see figure below). And before the internet came along, it was a really small subset of uber geeks getting together in their basements and tracking stats on spreadsheets, a la rotisserie baseball. Especially if there is no money involved, what's the point, right? Fantasy football is basically legalized gambling outside of Vegas and Atlantic City. Each owner is betting that his players will perform better on a given week than the opponent's players. Money doesn't have to be involved; plenty of fantasy enthusiasts play only for bragging rights. However, bragging rights are only valuable for a group of friends (trying not to be sexist here; women have been known to play fantasy football, too) who know each other and can give each other grief on a regular basis.

But there is still a social aspect to the game. As Bender might say, "...demented and sad, but social." If you have a group of guys who have grown up together, you're much more likely to care about who beats whom on a given week. The live draft is more enjoyable, because you can talk smack on almost every pick. "LT at number one? Norv Turner is killing his value!" For me, I started playing with a free Yahoo! league back in 1998. I was active on the waiver wire, and picked up players like Randy Moss, Randall Cunningham, and Fred Taylor as they exploded during that season. I won my league with 13 straight victories, but because it was a free league against people I didn't know, the victory was hollow. Plus, in free leagues, you almost always have at least one or two "dead" teams, where the owner has lost interest and simply stops setting his lineup or trying to improve his team every week.

In 1999, I played in a free league, but this time it was a private one with guys I knew at Dyess AFB, TX. We had the requisite 10 guys who stayed active, made roster moves, and generally had a great time playing against each other for that year and the next. We even played head-to-head and salary cap leagues at the same time for a change of pace. It was fun, and even though I didn't win, it thoroughly increased the value of the competition to play against people I knew.

Before the 2001 NFL season, I had moved away from Dyess and lost touch with the guys running that fantasy league. At my new base, I couldn't find another group of guys to play against, so I quit playing for the next five years. It was funny, walking away from a near obsession like that. I didn't miss it much, and figured I'd never really play fantasy football competitively again. Without the camaraderie of playing against people I knew, it wasn't worth the time and effort to be an active owner. But then I moved for work during the 2005 season to an office with a well-established fantasy league. I was unable to join them in mid-season, but the next year, I was one of 10 team owners competing once again for both cash and bragging rights.

I tell you all of this because I am no longer eligible to play in that league. They wanted to keep the league all under the same roof, and I understand that. Every week, they had two traveling trophies: a Nerf football for high score of the week, and a doormat for low score of the week. Even though I'm still in the local area, it wouldn't make any sense to try to rotate those trophies around to my new office since I no longer work for the same company.

Which brings me back to setting up my own league on Facebook. There are over 24,000 fantasy football leagues currently set up on Facebook, so you would think this would be a natural fit, right? Again, fantasy football is social, and Facebook is social, so what could go wrong? At first, I set up my league to be a private league with 10 owners, and I sent out only 9 invites to people I thought would want to play. Silence. I sent out a few more invites, plus a reminder or two. More silence. I sent out a few more invites, and finally got one of my old high school friends to join my league, even though he said he didn't know anything about how to play (see graph above). I made it so that anyone in the league could invite their friends to play, since friends of friends would make for a better social dynamic than playing against strangers. Still only two owners in the league. I flipped my league over to a public league, eventually got one more person to join, and then I discovered something.

Searching through all the public leagues on Facebook this fall, I saw a damning statistic: in almost every single public league, there were 1 or 2 of X teams in the league. I would say in about 95% of the leagues, only one or two teams had joined, like my own league. People on Facebook must either want to play just with their friends, or they want to run their own league. It's different from the public leagues on Yahoo!, ESPN, or NFL.com. Even when those leagues are public and free, there are usually enough players to fill up an open league. Not so on Facebook.

So, I will be deleting the teams and closing down my league on Facebook. I do have one team over on NFL.com's free public leagues this fall, and I'm in a 12-team league with guys who are mostly from Chicago, I think. Our "live" draft was interesting, and that's what I'll describe in a later post. I'll turn it into a strategy guide for other players, and I'll explain why in that post, too. Needless to say, I'm not happy to be playing against a bunch of guys I don't know, but I will still do my best to own this league.

The bottom line is that fantasy football can be a lot of fun, if you can find a group of 9 or 11 other like-minded souls who are active team owners throughout the season. I sincerely hope the SI and Citizen Sports guys do well with their application. There is too much money to be made on fantasy sports to not give it a try. The social dynamic of Facebook just seems to be a little off when it comes to fantasy football.

Everyone Else Can, Why Not Me?

I seem to remember the WSJ including a stat in one of their recent news items about the proliferation of individual blogs reaching 5 million per year. Or was that per day? Certainly, there are too many blogs to mention out there, so why add my own voice to that cacophonous chorus?

Good question, and BTW, the name on this blog isn't even original. My brother used it for his columns and editorial cartoons in college and in his early newspaper days. He has moved on to drawing educational comix (see the link at right), so I hope he doesn't sue me for copyright infringement.

More than anything else, if my 70-something father can have his own blog (again, link provided on the right), I figure the youngest of his three children can, too. I plan on reviewing my 2008 fantasy football season here, providing an online diary of what's going on in a league that no one cares about. If nothing else, it should be worth a chuckle to see what boneheaded player moves I make as the season progresses. Next up will be a review of my draft, which happened last Saturday. Cheers!