Armchair Thoughts

Sorry for the delay gentlemen, but I'm pretty sure most of you aren't even reading these anymore anyways and have checked out Tmac style. Alas, it is the match of the top two titans of the league this year for the right to declare themselves masters of all things fantasy football. I'm obviously writing this after three players have already played, so Jack has an eleven point lead. Seeing as it's already Sunday, I will post a summary of what I think about the matchup, and then sometime during the week I will post a whole slew of media for all of you who actually still look at this. So here goes...

1. As Jack has already said, I would not be in the position I am if I had been foolish enough to actually draft Felix Jones. Ray Rice has been a top 5 back for me, which is huge considering my keeper back Matt Forte has been a ghost the whole year. Pittsburgh's D has been a little suspect this year, and seeing as Rice had 7 points last time, I'm hoping for a little bit more this week. The way I see it though, Jack definitely has the advantage in running backs with LT and MJD. With that said, New England has only given up three rushing TD's on the year, so I have that to comfort me at least a little.

2. The big trade for Drew Brees has paid off for me tremendously, and Aaron Rodgers has been particularly solid for Jack as well. I would say the trade has paid off for both sides very well, as Vincent Jackson has become a tremendous receiver this year, LT has somehow regained what he was before he turned 30, and Brandon Marshall and Ray Rice have been very solid as well. Dwayne Bowe was the only bust, but it was tough to see a suspension coming. Either way, in the QB department, I'd say it's a toss up. With Brees playing the Bucs and Rodgers paying the lowly Seahawks, a ton of points will be scored, but I give the edge to Brees because he'll be in warm weather.

3. It's a little easier to talk about the receivers, seeing as Jackson has already played. The other Jackson on Jack(son)'s team is going up against one of the stud corners in the league, Champ Bailey, so I'm hoping he doesn't go off like he did last week. Brandon Marshall has been pretty productive, and as of right now, I think I'm going to stick with Robert Meachem as my number 2 and keep Steve Smith on the bench. With receivers it's pretty much hit or miss, so I think whoever's receivers go off today will be the champion of the league.

4. As far as the other positions go, Jack has the edge at tight end, but Witten is going up against a decent Redskins defense, albeit they just got shellacked versus the Giants last Monday. My kicker has obviously already gone and despite his team scoring 42 points, he only got six of them. So I will give the edge to Jack in that one as well, but kickers are more or less a coin flip. Jack made the slick move of picking up the Niners because of their matchup with the Lowly Lions. I'm hoping Drew Stanton becomes Tom Brady and has a huge day today, but I like my Saints matchup with the Bucs also.

So there's my take on the 'Ship today. Either way it has been a great season this year, and I look forward to some kind of monetary reward win or lose. Also Jack for the last time, we never put any money on baseball, so you have no money coming for that. I will collect the money for football, so for all of you reading this, the next time you see me I need twenty bucks from you. Enjoy break fellas, I'll post some clips later in the week.

And then there were two. It's all eyes on Deep Throw It and Primus Inter Pares this week after the two have chugged through the regular season and playoffs to get to the final game. For all you gambling types out there, here are my final odds for the championship game:


I've got the slight edge in this matchup if we go by past performance. There's a lot of variables that Dave may give his take on that could affect this single week, (Jones-Drew plays the Patriots in blizzard country, both of my DEF's play solid teams, Brees plays the Bucs ... ) so I can't quite equate how this week will play out. This is just a good baseline to start with. Dave, I know people can vote on our matchup page on who they think will win, but maybe put one up at the top, seeing as how more people might view our blog than matchup page. Just a thought.

But it should be an exciting week nonetheless (although I may be a bit biased). What's also funny is how there has been a lot leading up to this.

-Dave and myself started the year off with a blockbuster trade; LT for Brees and a swap of picks in the 2nd and 4th rounds.
-Dave received 90 extra fantasy points this year because of his inattentiveness by trying to tell me to select Felix Jones for him with only 5 seconds left on the clock, giving him the top guy on my queue, Ray Rice. It's funny how that worked out.
-Dave and I are the leading blog writers for the league.
-Dave and I were the regular season #1 and #2.
-There was that whole midseason uprising that we all were a part of. This championship game could be seen as Pro-Fractional Points vs Anti-Fractional Points, Communism vs Democracy (Spanishness vs Catalanism), Private vs Public, Blake Lively vs Kylie Bisutti (There's my pick. The only downfall is that she's married. However, weddings bring wedding pictures).

So cheer accordingly, everyone, because a lot more is at stake than you may think.

MEDIA!

Only one for ya'll this week. But I bring you one of my favorite television segments, Unnecessary Censorship:




I'm sure I'll be chatting on the message boards this week. For those of you who don't know. I will be leaving for Trinidad and Tobago next Monday. So I plan to celebrate my Armchair Championship on the beach, blowing money that I will (hope to) receive soon after I return. (Along with my Armchair Baseball 2009 money).

Until next time.

Well hey there Armchair participants and fans. Thanks for checking back in.

We had a few less games last week than usual, but they still brought about some interesting caveats. Firstly, the mighty have fallen. The era of The Renaissance has ended and they have crossed over into the Dark Ages. It really is a bit of a shame that they're gone, since they did outscore both teams in the other matchup. Nonetheless, they still get the 5th pick in the draft next despite having the best team this year already.

The other eliminated playoff team was quite disappointing in their own right, having only put up 28 points. Those types of numbers aren't going to cut it in the postseason. Even though they were the #4 seed, the Bulldogs can't quite chalk this season up as a success. They don't have a strong team (only TEAM RIHANNA had a worse Proj@%), they did not win any money, and they aren't going to get any help for next year by having the 6th slot in the draft.

Alas, we arrive at the Final Four. Three out of the four teams here even get money, so the competition gets a little higher. Let's take a look at the postseason odds based soley on individual matchups:



And the Postseason Odds based on ProjW%:



The far right column on both tables is the change in percentage of winning the championship from last week to this week. Again, the two aren't that different, and the only reason I've included both is because I haven't decided which one is more "correct".

As we can see, Primus Inter Pares is still the odds on favorite to win it all, but he didn't receive as much help as everyone else did when Joe's team went down. Deep Throw It sure received an early Christmas present from the Moops for putting up enough points to knock Joe out of playoff contention. Dave's and Andy's road the the championship got just got a bit easier.

Speaking of road to the championship, I'm going to throw out another suggestion for our league. Perhaps we could install a traveling trophy, or a championship belt, to the winner of the playoffs. Something else to consider.

Anyway, that's basically all of math I can lay on all of you for this week. We've got the championship preview next week. Oh and we've also got ...

MEDIA!

Let's take a look at a few outtakes from Bill Dance's outdoor show:




And seeing as how it's cold outside, let's take a look at this Miller Lite commercial:




Until next week, gentlemen, so long.

Well it's playoff time kiddies. You've come this far to seed yourselves, now it's time to play some more important games (excluding the bottom 4, sorry). I think we had quite an eventful season, with quite an exciting finish over final playoff spots. I'm still baffled how Tom got the #4 seed. Let's take a look at the standings:



As we can see, not much has changed over these final few weeks in terms of our overall Projected standings. In order to summarize this season's results, let's look at some awards:

Best Team ... The Renaissance
He started off very hot (almost immortal), but took a hit with that inconceivable 6-game losing streak. However, the numbers here showed us that it was a fluke and that, over the course of the season, this team consistently put up high numbers. Though, they placed 2nd in terms of overall points scored.

Worst Team ... TEAM RIHANNA
They were so close to avoiding this award until Bulldogs decided to go on a tear at the end. There are numerous reasons for this award that we've probably covered multiple times, but at the very least he also placed last in the league and gets the first overall pick in next season's draft. Something to look forward to.

Luckiest Team ... Bulldogs
The team that scored 9th out of 10 in points scored winds up as the #4 seed in the playoffs. Goodness. If not for his unlikely pair of 3-game win streaks, this team would be joining TEAM RIHANNA, searching google for "2010 fantasy football mock draft". He talked quite a bit of smack during our mid to late season uprising, we'll see how the 'Dogs bark in the playoffs.

Unluckiest Team ... The Renaissance and Boston TD Party
We all have heard the sob story that is Team Renaissance. I have covered it multiple times. However, Joe was fortunate enough to make the playoffs, while his co-award winner is sitting lonely in 7th place, with no playoff hopes, chances for money, and they don't even get a top 3 pick in next year's draft. Cry your tears not for Joe, who has the highest draft slot for next year out of all the playoff teams, but cry them for the Boston TD Party, who are most definitely not TD Partying on this cold night.

Alright so last week I promised a playoff edition. After much research and many epiphanies in the middle of my most boring class (Econ), I present to you all the 2009 Postseason Odds, which I have done in two ways:



These first odds only consider head to head matchups between the teams played. For instance here are the odds that The Moops advance to the Championship (which is 24%):

This season they went 8-5-0 against the Bulldogs, good for a W% of .615. As we can see, this is their odds of beating the Bulldogs and making it out of the 1st round. To advance past the 2nd round, they must beat a) Bulldogs and b) Primus Inter Pares. So we take a) times b). We already covered vs Bulldogs, but they also went 5-8-0 against Primus Inter Pares, a .385 W%. So the odds of The Moops beating Bulldogs and Primus Inter Pares is (.615)*(.385) = .237. So therefore, the odds of them making it to the championship is roughly 24%. I did this whole table based on head to head results.

But I also did another way of calculating postseason odds, solely based on a team's ProjW%. In the first table above, it assumed that I would beat Joe's team 61.5% of the time because that's our Head to Head record if we counted every week. However, Joe's team is better overall because when I lost to Joe, I lost by a large margin. I.e. my team was less consistent than Joe's. So I calculated another set of odds based on ProjW%.




This was tough to figure out. Basically I had to ask a theoretical question: If Team A wins 40% of the time and Team B wins 30% of the time, how likely is it that Team A beats Team B? From there I resorted back to The Log5 Method which has been so good to me. So one example of how even though Head to Head this season I win 61.5% of the time against Joe, Joe now wins 52.7% of the time because he now has a better ProjW% than me.

However, mathematics jargon aside, these numbers luckily aren't too different. I've got about a 35-37% chance of taking the ship (And collecting a handsome reward). Another thing that we could look at is what kind of a "draw" each team in the playoffs got. Nate Silver does a great piece on the World Cup Draw and basically provided the template for what I do here. But I have neither the time nor the resources to figure out mathematically who benefited the most or least from these seeds. If I were to guess, I would say the bottom half of the bracket is the "group of death" seeing as how they have 3 out of the top 4 teams in terms of ProjW%, and my side has two teams with ProjW% under .500. I'd say I got a good draw.

Onward to MEDIA!

Here's Taiwan's take on the Tiger Woods incident:




And although this student isn't as entertaining as our Georgia fan from a few weeks ago, he gets an A for passion:




And I was torn about what to do regarding the "Armchair Fantasy Girl" fiasco. For one, no one has submitted an entry, save for Dave's Leggy Blonde, Blake Lively. [Luke, once you make up your mind let us know ;-) ] I pondered long and hard about whether I should come forward with a serious pick and play by Dave's rules or wait until everyone comes forward with a choice. I mean, if no one's going to come forward with a pick, then this really comes down to (another) contest between Dave and myself. So I choose to hold off on my potential selection until I see compliance from others to follow suit.

Until next week, digest those numbers folks.

Oh and by the way, you're welcome.

Well boys, along with the new blog design comes the playoffs, and the story of the season has to be Joe sneaking into the playoffs. Yes he did score the most points in our league, but still it is amazing he came back and won, and to be completely honest, as the playoffs start, I can honestly say I am not very happy that I have Joe on my side of the bracket. With that being said, I was the one who didn't start Robert Meachem and so that's why Joe is in, so you are all welcome! And now here is the week recap...

The Moops 76, Duke Football 48
In the battle of win and you're in, The Moops completely dominated. I have to say I am very surprised that Luke's team did not make the playoffs. With AP and Peyton Manning, it's hard to believe that he couldn't scrounge up more points, but that's what happens when you have absolutely no receivers on your team. Luke's got a good chance to have a good team next though, as his two keepers will most likely be a top 5 running back and a top 5 quarterback. Not sold on The Moops though, especially if Michael Turner continues to be injured.

Bulldogs 80, Boston TD Party 58
After all the Tom bashing in the past couple of weeks, his team stepped up to the plate and scored the most points for the week. Again huge weeks by his kicker and defense led the way, but also very solid weeks courtesy of Anquan Boldin and Rashard Mendenhall. Not a great week for BTDP, and the cause of that was DeAngelo Williams being out. That's the main difference in JP's team this year and last year: Williams not being near as productive as he was last year.

Team Rihanna 54, Team Chris Brown 38
The Toliet Bowl goes to the guy who was starting a QB who didn't play and a running back who scored zero also. To add insult to injury, Tony McDonald also gets the first pick in the draft because he has scored less points than Cafferty's team. To prevent some of the same things that happened this year, I have a proposal for next year to prevent people from starting injured or players on a bye week. Read more about it after the recaps.

Primus Inter Pares 55, Super Consistency 44
Riley's team had been riding on the coattails of Mr. Chris Johnson's success the past couple of weeks, so it makes sense his team doesn't win when Johnson didn't go off this week against the Colts. Jack clinched the number one seed, and with that, does not have to pay his league due of 20 bucks. For all those that have forgotten, 50% goes to the winner of the playoffs, 30% to 2nd, 10% to third place, and 10% for the regular season winner. When we do meet for our little rules meeting over winter break, everyone's got to bring their 20 dollars. Consider this your warning.

The Renaissance 46, Deep Throw It 44
All I have to say is I wish I started Robert Meachem.

COMMISSIONER NEWS
OK so as I had said previously, it's come to my attention that there's been too many times that there have been bye week or injured players in the lineup this year. In order to solve this, I want to propose something: I think that we should have a fine for every bye week or injured player playing during a week. With a roster limit of 14 players, I think it is unreasonable to think there should be any circumstance where you can't either add a player or put a bye week player on your bench. So as of right now, I think for next year the fine should be $10 per incident, and this will go towards maybe a league party fund during the summer, or maybe towards our draft, in which case all of us (minus Tom) will be of the legal alcohol age, and so the fine money can go towards buying beer for the draft? What are your guy's thoughts? After our Armchair Fantasy Girl election, I will put this as the poll for the blog and there will be a week to vote on whether or not this fine should be instituted.

As for the Armchair Fantasy Girl, I was pretty disappointed at the amount of league participation. It's pretty hypocritical of all of you to criticize me when you want me to speak up, but when I call upon the league there is only one actual candidate (whoever Jack picks) that will come forth. Funny how these things work. Well I guess it'll be Jack's candidate versus mine, which seems pretty fitting seeing as we're about the only ones who are consistent posters on the message board. But I digress, to my candidate.......(drum roll)...............

BLAKE LIVELY

With playoffs just around the corner, it's crunch time. Last week saw the hopes of teams continue, the wrapping up of playoff spots, and some seasons come to and end (although I don't know if that team's owner knows it). I hope everyone's Thanksgiving breaks were enjoyable, and that the sprint to the finish that is finals goes as smooth as could be. Now, onto the recap...

The Renaissance 89, Team Rihanna 41
Joe's team performed at its highest level when it counted, but I have to say, I'm hoping it doesn't go as smoothly for him this week, as I would love that regular season number one, because if I do recall, #1 in regular season does get their money back. (yes I said money). P.S. It looks Tmac has reverted back to baseball form, so it's nice to see he has Jason Elam still on his team.

Deep Throw It 75, Duke Football 41
Well this one looked close going into Monday night, but then the Saints do what they do, and it was all over. Luke's team is still very dangerous if they make the playoffs, as they have the best QB and one of the best RB's in the league. I just happened to have a little luck that both did not go off this week.

Primus Inter Pares 72, Boston TD Party 50
Jack's team puts in another solid week, as the predraft trade he and I made has helped out both parties quite well. As the Patriots go, JP's team goes it seems, although it does hurt when your number one runner only gets ya two points.

Super Consistency 63, The Moops 41
This comes and no big surprise. If a team you are playing is starting Jason Snelling, you should win by no less than 20 points. Especially when you have the best running back in the league on your team. Yes, I said it, Chris Johnson is better than Adrian Peterson.

Bulldogs 62, Team Chris Brown 44
Although Tom may have ruffled some feathers this past week, his team performed relatively well for once. That'll happen when your kicker and defense lead your team in scoring. As much as I benefited from the Who Dat? Saints, Caff was hurt when his stud receivers only managed four points.

Now to address Jack's request for (MORE) rules changes. Let me first start by saying, I am perfectly fine with talking about changes to our league's rules, and am more than happy to meet up over winter break to figure things out once and for all. But to suggest that just because the team who scored the most points in our league is not in first place, and the team who scored the least points may make the playoffs, we have to find some way to make it so that that can't happen is pretty absurd. As Luke has said, that's part of what sports is all about, ESPECIALLY fantasy sports. Sometimes, the best team doesn't always win. That's just how it works, and to try to change this would completely undermine what sports are all about. I completely acknowledge your thirst for some way to completely eradicate luck from the equation Jack, but as LT said, what would be the point of even paying attention anymore?

(Double) Hot Clicks of the Week
It's one of the most anticipated nights in all of TV, so how could I not start off with a certain fashion show?

With the fashion show aside, I got to thinking. What if we anointed an Official Armchair Fantasy Girl for our blog? Now I'm not proposing turning this blog into all about big boobs and nice asses, but I think we should have a little competition of sorts? Here's what I propose, each guy nominates a particular female they find attractive, and we all cast votes. We narrow it down to five semifinalists, then three finalists, and then announce the winner the week of the championship? So by next week, I hope all of you nominate your favorite female, and see if we can make this happen. The more under the radar the better.

If this doesn't get you jacked up, nothing will.


Check out the Sports Fan's Bucket List. I might make it my life's personal goal to see everyone of these.

The usual crowd prank at half time of basketball game, but I think the best part is the guy goes and taunts Reggie Miller.


I think Chris Fowler and his gang just love finding people to make fun of at their games. Although this kind completely fails so it's pretty funny.


As much as I like Tiger Woods, I have to put in something about his wife kicking his ass.

Props to Kevin Love on his new girlfriend.

This is pretty scary, and downright idiotic


Alright well I think that will be enough to tide most of you over, but just in case, here are two songs of the week: Ain't No Reason by Brett Dennen and 40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes