Week 13 Playoff Picture

Esco did a thorough summary of where things stood last week, so I'll keep it rolling without the same level of detail.

If the playoffs started today...

1. Ajay (Bye) - Alan Division Champion, Best Regular Season Record
2. Zacherman (Bye) - Levine Division Champion
3. Billy - Bennett Division Champion
4. Bennett - Wild Card 1
5. Marco - Wild Card 2
6. Esco - NiJo Spot

Nothing really changed above in the last week, but there are a few specific spots that will be hotly contested over the next 10 days.

Best Regular Season Record
Ajay can clinch with one win OR one loss each from Z and Billy over the next two weeks. This one seems like a wrap.

Byes

Related, Ajay clinches a bye with one win OR one loss from EITHER Z OR Billy over the next two weeks. Not a lot of drama there.

The second bye will be extremely interesting. Z and Billy are the leaders in the clubhouse, but they trail both Bennett and Marco in total points by at least 40 points, so the door is open for a tight race for the always important bye. Without looking it up at all, Alan is the only non-bye team to win a Stevens Bowl in the last 8 years.

Wild Cards

The top 5 seeds are very likely to stay the same in some order, as they have at least a one game lead on the rest of the league, and they're also the top five scoring teams for tiebreak purposes. Esco and I are hanging around, and I get to feast on a bye-depleted Gutman team this week before facing a heinously mismanaged Barndogs in Rivalry Week 2, so 8-6 is somehow on the table for me. I would have to make up over 75 points to win a tiebreak with the non-Ajay top 5, so I would likely need either Bennett or Marco to lose out. Esco has a massive matchup with Marco this week, but if he survives that, his Rivalry Week 2 with a spoiler-happy Weissbard team could be a play-in game for Esco.

NiJo Spot

Esco is up 37 on me, 64 on Alan, and everyone else is at least 82 points back which eliminates them in my book. If one of the top 5 loses out and falls to this spot, they have an even bigger lead on the rest of the pack. So Gutman/Nick/Levine/AGD/Barnard/Weissbard, if I'm breaking the news to you, I'm sorry that you haven't been paying attention. Good luck going for weekly high score and Rivalry Week prizes.

The Funniest Outcome

There is somehow a snowball's chance in hell that Barnard qualifies for the playoffs by record. It would require the following results:

Week 13

Barnard beats AGD (improving Barnard to 7-6)

Kumpf beats Gutman (eliminating Gutman officially)

Weissbard beats Bennett (dropping Bennett to 7-6)

Marco beats Esco (eliminating Esco from qualifying based on record)

Week 14

Barnard beats Kumpf (improving Barnard to 8-6 and eliminating Kumpf from qualifying based on record)

Billy beats Bennett (dropping Bennett to 7-7)

Gutman technically has about the same chance to qualify via record with basically the same results, but that's not as funny. There's another version where Marco drops out instead of Bennett, but the tiebreaks get messier and also not as funny.

Regardless, the Ajay vs. Z and Esco vs. Marco matchups this week have massive reverberations across the bracket. The Alan vs. Nick matchup...not so much.