2024, Week 2 Newsletter

10 Sep 2024

Press Box Observations

Now that we have a website for everything, we can highlight some of the things happening in the league. These newsletters will be lighthearted and fun. If you want to contribute anything to the newsletter, just let me know.

Overview

For some of us, Week 1 means a fresh new start. For the rest of us, we’re already seeing flashbacks.

As they say “any given Sunday: anything can happen”. In fantasy football, how you start doesn’t reflect how it’ll end. We’re all optimistic, shrugging off these first few weeks as “outliers” to help us sleep at night.

Coming into the sesaon with a single 1st round pick, Todd is starting strong by topping the point charts. In a hot second, Mike is holding steady to second place powered by his three 1st round picks. Josh practically sits CMC to take third place.

Clearly, the trend is giving your team a punny name based on your roster: “Stroudy with a chance of Deep”, “Caleb + Rome stack”, “Pink Patty Club”, “Your friendly Nabers”, and a slight stretch for “Atlanta Falcons”. Missing the key player to complete their name, “Watashi Wa Carr” and “They not like Russ” aren’t able to live up to the trend.

Needless to say, the results speak for themselves.

Power Rankings

To prove that I’m unlucky, I decided to create a “Power Ranking” of everyone.

It’s a modified formula based on the OIL Power Rankings system. It needs 3 weeks to normalize, so it’s going to heavily assume that Week 1 is consistent with how the teams will play the rest of the season.

Even then, there is some truth in the power rankings. For starters, I am a complete fraud: with the points my team put up for Week 1, I would have only beaten 36% of the rest of the league. Had I played anyone else, I would’ve came away with a rightful “L”. Scientifically (if you can call this rating system that) Ryan is simply unlucky. His Week 1 performance beats 73% of the league, but he just so happened to be matching up against Josh.

Again, a single week isn’t enough data, so I still have plenty of time to prove how unlucky I am.

If you care about the columns and what they mean, we can take a quick moment to talk about moneyball.

Standing - Where in the league standings you are.
Power Rank - Based on the math, what your power ranking is.
Win % - Your win percentage for the season.
"All Play" Win % - If you had played everyone else in the league, what your win percentage would be. This is a off-brand way of calculating “strength of season” from college football.
Luck - How lucky you are to have the wins you have. This is a comparison between your “Win %” and “‘All Play’ Win %”.
Average PPG - Your average points per-game.
Change Power Rank - How your power rank has changed since the previous week.
Power Score - Your power rank in numbers form. This shows how close your rank is compared to the next slots.

Matchup of the Week

If the power rankings mean anything, then we’ll be seeing the two biggest teams going against each other this week. Yahoo sports thinks that Week 1 is a fluke and claims Todd is the underdog going into Week 2.

Even with Mike having multiple 1st round picks, it’s surprising to see how close these projections even get. With or without Caleb Williams, Da Bears are going to find a way to put points on the board. And I sure love to see some defensive touchdowns.

I know I’m not, but if I were a betting man, I’d take the odds that we see an upset with this matchup.

Some fun posts I thought would reflect how the week went. Send me your best ones for next week and I’ll include them into the list.

Blasting Off Again

With the excitement and energy going strong, we have Week 1 in the bag. Looking forward to see what trades & waiver wire moves everyone makes to keep the momentum going. And some parting words for our first newsletter: