Week 9 Rankings
1. x-The Dirty Yankees (8-1)
2. Sons of Liberty (6-3)
3. Deep Snappers (4-5); beat Swerve
4. Freedom Factory (7-2)
5. Multiple Scoregasms (5-3)
6. Electric Mayhem (4-5); 1-1 vs Maulers/Swerve, outscored Swerve by 34.5
7. DoubleSwerve (4-5); beat Maulers
8. Maulers (4-5); beat Torpedoes
9. Damn The Torpedoes (4-5)
10. Season 26 Champs (3-6); beat Guns
11. Big Guns (3-6)
12. Weasels (2-7)
Yankees has clinched a playoff spot. I’m not calling it for Factory yet but it’s hard to believe a seven win team wouldn’t make the playoffs.
Yankees 117, Torpedoes 97.5: Talk about a top heavy lineup – Yankees’ top five players accounted for 91% of their points. I would list all the bench players that Torpedoes should have started but the blog doesn’t have enough space.
SOL 108, Guns 74.5: Imagine if Jalen Hurts hadn’t gotten stopped on like ten tush pushes.
Mayhem 99.5, Weasels 81: Hey look at that, Joe Burrow can score points without Ja’Marr Chase. Playing the Raiders probably had a lot to do with that.
Swerve 98.5, MSG 74: MSG with the dreaded double goose-egg.
Snappers 97, Maulers 92: Will forever be known as the Puka Punch game.
Factory 95.5, Chumps 65.5: Jaylen Waddle had the weirdest stat line maybe ever: 2 catches, -4 yards, 1 TD.
Ruminations and Cogitations (London Baby! edition)
Programming note: there won’t be an R&C next week as your Commish is going on an overseas scouting trip. I heard they have football games in London now, so I’m headed to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to scout Sunday’s matchup. The teams are *checks ticket* – Tottenham Hotspur vs. Ipswich Town. Strange, those don’t sound like NFL teams but it says “football” so maybe they rebooted NFL Europe, or they’re some new NFL expansion teams I hadn’t heard about. Regardless, the edge I will undoubtably gain from my live scouting will certainly propel me to the league title. Suck it, losers!
Week 9 Awards
Torpedoes won their third Hard Luck award with 97.5 points, and Factory won their second Dumb Luck with 95.5. Torpedoes also came close to winning the Bench Mob with 94 bench points, which might be a record.
I haven’t watched Succession, but at one point the family patriarch tells his adult children “I love you, but you are not serious people”. That’s exactly how I feel about the Cowboys, except that “love” might be too strong a word.
How serious can they be when they didn’t extend Dak while neglecting to draft his replacement, leaving them no choice but to re-sign him for an NFL-record $60 million a year?
How serious can they be when they brought back a washed Ezekiel Elliott (and signed an equally washed Dalvin Cook) when they could have signed Derrick Henry or even Kareem Hunt for relative pocket change?
How serious can they be when they bring back Mike F*cking Zimmer instead of identifying and hiring any one out of dozens of younger, hungrier, and more talented defensive coaches?
How serious can they be when they kept Mike McCarthy and let Dan Quinn go?
How serious can they be when they acquired Jonathan Mingo for the same cost as the Chiefs spent for De’Andre Hopkins?
How serious can they be when they . . . you get the idea.
Zeke has to be first on the gots to go list, after he was left off the roster for the Atlanta game and word came down that he’s been habitually late to meetings, and possibly skipped some altogether. If that’s the case, it’s ridiculous that they waited until week 9 to suspend him, and it’s hard to believe any other NFL would have even kept him around.
Next on the list is McCarthy and the entire coaching staff, but thankfully most of them aren’t under contract after this year.
I’ve referred to the Cowboys as “they” in this rant, but we all know it’s really “he” – a “he” who shall not be named. At what point do we dare ask the question: were three Superb Owls worth almost thirty years of this crap?
Team of the Week
| QB | Jalen Hurts (SOL)/Joe Burrow (Mayhem) | 29 |
| RB | Saquon Barkley (Torpedoes) | 30 |
| RB | Derrick Henry (Yankees) | 25 |
| WR | Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Snappers) | 30 |
| WR | Zay Flowers (Yankees) | 24 |
| TE | Mike Gesicki (FA) | 24.5 |
| WR/TE | Garrett Wilson (Factory)/Demarcus Robinson (FA) | 21 |
| PK | Tyler Bass (Maulers) | 14 |
| DST | Chargers (MSG)/Rams (FA) | 18 |
| Total | 215.5 |
Every time I hear the name Jaxon Smith-Njigba I’m reminded of the East/West College Bowl
From the geniuses who brought us Hingle McCringleberry, Jackmerius Tacktheritrix, and my favorite . . .
Week 9 Overreactions
- Don’t look now but the Chargers are coming. Jim Harbaugh is working his magic a little sooner than some expected. They’re playing tough defense with largely the same guys that were so bad under Brandon Staley, and they’re not running the ball 400 times a game as predicted. They’ll be serious challengers to the Chiefs in another season or two.
- In the morass that is the NFC West, I’ll take the Rams.
- Right now my MVP votes would be
- Jared Goff
- Derrick Henry
- Lamar Jackson
- Josh Allen
- I want to believe that Drake Maye and Bo Nix will be the guys, but C.J. Stroud looked better than both of them last year and look how he’s doing now.
- Best OT formats
- Current NFL format
- Sudden death
- Both teams get the ball
- No OT, games end in a tie
- Field opens up and swallows both teams
- College OT
The questions were posed in the group chat – what were the best and worst season records in CFFL history?
The best record is 12-2, which was achieved twice – by TNT in 2000 and Deep Snappers in 2008.
TNT was drafted by me but owned and run by a former co-worker of mine who remains the only woman owner in league history. They were taken over the next year by some scrub and renamed Sons of Liberty.
The other team I drafted that year – my team – went 3-11.
The worst record is 2-12, which happened four times – Weasels (2001), Team Discovery Channel (2004), Big Guns (2007), and Corsairs (2022).
With five weeks left in 2024, either Yankees or Factory could get to 12-2, and Weasels could finish 2-12. The rest of us are incapable of reaching such heights (or depths).
Top 5 Plays of the Week
5. … and Famous Jameis taketh away.
4. Nothing about this Drake Maye game tying TD pass at the end of regulation should have worked.
3. From now on, Saquon’s nickname is Madden Glitch.
2. Buffalo’s Tyler Bass nailed a 61 yard FG to beat the Dolphins. That looked like it would have been good from 71.
1. That Garrett Wilson catch was amazing, even if it shouldn’t have counted (don’t give me any of that shin crap, his knee was out of bounds).
Stat of the Week, part 1: With his loss to the Panthers, Derek Carr became the first QB to lose to 31 different NFL teams. It will be 32 if he loses to the Raiders in week 17.
A few weeks back I correctly referred to Barry Switzer as a dumbass, which predictably set off our sensitive OU alum. He launched his defense of Switzer in the group chat, which I took as a challenge to defend my take. However, I’ll defer to another time as I’ve already gone on one Cowboys rant and we don’t need a negativity overload.
Tell you what, to balance things out I’ll go ahead and list Switzer’s positive accomplishments now and save the rest for later.
- Switzer is unquestionably one of the greatest college coaches of all time. His record and accomplishments stand on their own and he is understandably revered by OU fans everywhere, once they put down their meth pipes.
- However, the subject of this analysis is Switzer’s NFL career, so his college achievements mean nothing to me.
- By winning percentage, Ol’ Barry is the winningest coach in Cowboys history. His .625 is better than Wade Phillips .607, Tom Landry’s .605, and Mike McCarthy’s .600.
- His playoff winning percentage of .714 is exceeded only by Jimmy Johnson’s .875.
- He won a Superb Owl, the fifth and most recent Cowboys history.
- He is one of three coaches along with Johnson and Pete Carroll to win a college championship and a Superb Owl (Paul Brown did it in the pre-Superb Owl era).
That’s pretty impressive. As Kevin Bacon would say,
Of course, we all know how that case turned out for him.
Since Will Levis hasn’t graced the football universe with his mayonnaise-infused presence in a while, let’s give out the Bonehead Play of the Week in his honor to Jordan Love, for this corker against Detroit.
With any luck Levis will return in week 10 and we can have a proper Bonehead Play of the Week.
Stat of the Week, part 2:
Trivia question: Lamar Jackson is the first player in NFL history to have a perfect passer rating of 158.3 four times in games with at least 15 pass attempts. Who are the four QB’s to do it three times?1
The Commish Track is London Calling by The Clash. I’m calling a slight audible here, as it wasn’t in this year’s draft playlist but it’s been on it in previous years.
Week 9 Coaching Chowderheads
We’ll start with the lowest hanging fruit – Mike McCarthy’s disastrous fake punt. If it had worked we’d be praising him, but it never looked like it could have worked.
Were they expecting the receiver to be so open that the punter could sail a 20 yard throw over there, or did they figure he’d be covered but would outfight the defender for the ball? Spoiler alert – neither happened.
In McCarthy’s defense, he might not have called it. He sent Bones Fassel out to talk to the media, so maybe Bones was empowered to make the call. But the buck stops with the head coach as far as I’m concerned, which makes McCarthy a chowderhead.
Then there’s Matt Eberflus. You’d think it couldn’t get worse for the Bears’ defensive-minded head coach after last week’s Hail Mary, but you’d be wrong.
With :12 left in the first half and Chicago trailing by 5, the Bears defense committed this atrocity. The Cardinals were just trying to run out the clock, and the Bears let the backup RB bust a 53 yard TD run. Arizona didn’t need a Hail Mary pass, they just ran for one instead. Eberflus = Chowderhead.
But the most egregious chowderheadery came from Todd Bowles on MNF. Bowles has been a very good defensive coordinator in the past, which must have required boldness and daring, but he’s become passive and safe like so many head coaches do.
Exhibit A is his decision to not go for two after scoring a TD with :27 seconds left against the Chiefs. It’s not rocket science – you can’t give Hat Trick Cojones a chance in OT. If you have the chance to beat the Chiefs in regulation you have to take it, especially if you’re on the road. Sure, if you don’t convert it you lose, but you lose anyway if KC wins the coin toss in OT, which they did. So go for the win while you have control of the situation.
But no, Tampa Bay kicked the extra point, lost the coin flip, and gave up the winning TD in OT. The only thing worse than Bowles’ decision was his justification afterward.
“With the wet conditions on the field we felt like we had to go to overtime”. Come again? That’s all the more reason to end the game in regulation. I like the Bucs and I want to like Bowles, but that’s a Chowderhead move.
The 80s Babe of the Week is Jaclyn Smith, who was always my favorite Charlie’s Angel.
We’ll wrap with a Dad joke – what do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
I get back from London next Tuesday night, so hopefully I’ll be lucid enough to post the updated rankings next Wednesday.
Good luck to everyone (almost) in week 10,
The Commish
- Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger. ↩︎
Ruminations & Cogitations 
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