2021 Season Preview

Somehow, draft week is upon us. And while we crammed "Winter" Meetings, the Rivalry Week Draft, and the Room Draft into a monthlong period, it was all in preparation for the main event. This year's draft will be a little bit different, with a smaller crew, almost only comprised of league members (and I would probably bet against Bruno making it successfully to Asheville), and the first time we've all spent a week together during Delta since college.

Before we get to team rankings, I just want to do a quick review of the payout structure and rule changes from last year:

• Buy-In per team: $302 ($4200 prize pool + $28 for chef's coat/hat)
• Payouts
• Stevens Bowl Champion: $1500
• Stevens Bowl Runner-Up: $750
• Best Regular Season Record: $750
• Rivalry Week 1 Winners: $25 each ($175 total)
• Rivalry Week 2 Winners: $25 each ($175 total)
• High Score Week 1: $100
• High Score Week 14: $150
• High Score Weeks 2-13: $50 each ($600 total)
• We will handle the extra regular season game by adding a game to our regular season and keeping the playoffs Weeks 15-17. The extra game will be another Rivalry Week.
• IR Slots will be decreased from 3 to 2.
• Conditional Substitution threads will be created if games appear to be at risk of being postponed or cancelled out of the current week.

Now onto the usual franchise breakdown.

FALAFEL Team Power Rankings

All historical data has been updated on the sidebar, and thanks to a weird Blogger update, I had to actually learn some CSS code to get things to look relatively normal. The things I do for this league.

Just looking at standings, here are the usual fun facts:

• Most of our records have stabilized after 12 years in this league, so there wasn't much movement overall.
• AGD Reunion: Year 2 led to an 8-5 record, which only improved their overall winning percentage by .002, meaning they have basically averaged an 8-5 record over a decade together. Well done.
• Nick's 1-12 record drops him from second overall to 8th. No one else moved more than 2 slots other than Billy (-3).
• Billy and Nick winning a total of 4 games between them last year really boosted everyone else's winning percentage, so 8 of the 14 active franchises are above .500.
• The Stevens Bowl Paradox continues, as the franchises above .500 have combined for 3 championships, while those below .500 have 8. Donny has the remaining chef's coat and was fittingly right on .500 when he retired.
• Barnard and I are one tie away from having the same record after 12 years, though one of us has earned it more than the other as you will see below. I also tanked my game against him 2 years ago so I'm technically better.
• Bennett and Weissbard have the same winning percentage, but slightly different records thanks to Bennett's always hilarious 3 ties.

Getting away from overall records and to actual team performance, here is how things stand in the all-important Points Above Average race:

• Levine continues to be in a league of his own, which is only more impressive with each passing year.
• The Stevens Bowl performance is a little bit more evened out here, with Weissbard now in the black and Barnard falling into the negatives. But the imbalance is still there unless Gutman puts together a third straight strong season.
• Speaking of Weissbard, he appears to be the ultimate boom/bust candidate given how much better he ranks here than in overall record. 
• After a historically strong start to his career, Alan leans more toward bust in recent years. I would recommend that he consider getting his MBA.
• Billy has truly fallen off a cliff recently and rates nearly twice as poorly as any active team in this metric. When asked if he will still take two of the top RBs, as always this was his response.

That leaves us with Division Draft tiers, with captains listed:

1. Levine
2. AGD, Esco (Captain)
3. Joseph, Marco, Zacherman, Kumpf, Weissbard (Captain)
4. Gutman (Captain)
5. Barnard, Bennett, Ajay
6. Alan, Billy

Final statistical breakdown is the overall points scored in the 12 years of this hallowed league's existence:

I'll end this with the most likely draft pick at each position:

QB - Jalen Hurts - Bennett

RB - Christian McCaffrey/Derrick Henry (tie) - Billy

WR - Keenan Allen - Esco

TE - Kyle Pitts - Barnard

D/ST - Washington - Marco

See you in Asheville.

Rivalry Week 2021

With the addition of an extra game in this season Rivalry Week takes on double the importance. While the financial benefit is overall the same ($25 per matchup), it unbalances the schedule for the first time since we moved to 14 teams. I went over some of the logic behind picks in my email, but one team that I was very interested in seeing how people handled is Billy. 

Everyone knows he is going to go big on two RBs, which led to a Chef's Coat one time that is now 10 years in the past, as well as last year's debacle. With the outsized importance of 2-3 players who could very possibly be injured by Week 13, Billy seemed like an undervalued Rival in terms of ease. That changes this year, as (in all likelihood) his team will be at full strength for Week 1. Not sure anyone thought about this as much as I did, but just wanted to point out the varying strategies of Rivalry Week.

Here are the 2021 Rivalry Week(s) Matchups, ranked in order of the average points from each matchup:

1. Esco vs. Weissbard - 14.0 points - The Halloween Prank Bowl IV
2. (tie) AGD vs. Billy - 13.5 points - The Where's Marshall? Bowl II
2. (tie) Bennett vs. Nick - 13.5 points - The Ron Blomberg Bowl
4. (tie) Gutman vs. Marco - 13.0 points - The Dad Bowl IV aka The Father of Two Bowl II
4. (tie) Alan vs. Levine - 13.0 points - The Unexpected Shade Bowl
6. Barnard vs. Kumpf - 12.5 points - The One-Sided Rivalry Bowl II
7. Ajay vs. Zacherman - 8.0 points - The AARP Bowl III

Here is the raw data:

Some thoughts:

• Barnard and Weissbard complete the four-peat in finishing 1-2 in this exercise.
• Barnard ties his previous record for highest average score, with only Zacherman and Billy putting him as a below average Rival.
• Weissbard is a somewhat surprising second place given his recent success, but as we will see in next week's post, two good years does not erase a decade of disappointment (though Eli might disagree).
• Zacherman was by far the lowest rated Rival, and despite his lack of a Chef's Coat, he has a very strong historical record. The presence of Eleanor at Draft Weekend may have something to do with this as well.
• People were all over the place on AGD, with 4 teams putting them in their top three, and 5 teams putting them in their bottom three.
• Everyone was pretty consistent on Z and Billy, and Billy was especially consistent with 10/13 teams rating him between fourth and seventh.

Schedule will be updated in ESPN prior to Draft Weekend.