With two weeks left in the season . . .
Week 12 Playoff Rankings*
1. y-The Dirty Yankees (11-1)
2. y-Sons of Liberty (9-3)
3. DoubleSwerve (6-6)
4. x-Freedom Factory (8-4)
5. x-Multiple Scoregasms (7-5)
6. Electric Mayhem (6-6); beat Torpedoes
7. Damn The Torpedoes (6-6)
8. Maulers (5-7)
Gator Bowl
9. Deep Snappers (4-8); outscored Guns by 108.5
10. Big Guns (4-8)
11. Weasels (3-9); beat Champs
12. Season 26 Champs (3-9)
* Rankings independently verified by the Deputy Commish
- Yankees has clinched the East and will clinch the #1 seed with a win OR an SOL loss.
- SOL has clinched the West and at least the #2 seed. They can still claim the #1 seed but need two wins AND two Yankees losses.
- Swerve will clinch the Central and the #3 seed with a win.
- Factory will clinch the #4 seed with a win AND an MSG loss.
- Mayhem and Torpedoes will clinch playoff spots with a win. In fact, any team that gets to seven wins is in.
MSG 120.5, Factory 58.5: The biggest blowout of the season.
SOL 106, Maulers 83: It’s a two team race, and SOL is the only team to beat Yankees – so far.
Yankees 100.5, Mayhem 93: The league’s luckiest team wins again.
Torpedoes 97, Weasels 91: Torpedoes got 42 from the Madden Glitch but still would have lost if Weasels’ kicker was any good.
Guns 81.5, Snappers 80.5: The league’s unluckiest team loses again.
Swerve 76, Chumps 70: Not the stinker of the year, but close.
Ruminations and Cogitations (Good Takedown edition)
Week 12 Awards: Hard Luck to Mayhem with 93, Dumb Luck to Swerve with 76.
This week we have two kicker-related Bad Beats. The first goes to Snappers for losing on a Justin Tucker 4th quarter PAT (and for their whole season in general), and the other to Weasels who lost because Washington PK Austin Seibert missed a field goal and two extra points.
Team of the Week
| QB | Jayden Daniels | SOL | 32 |
| RB | Saquon Barkley | Torpedoes | 42 |
| RB | Josh Jacobs | MSG | 28 |
| WR | Jordan Addison | Weasels | 22 |
| WR | Courtland Sutton | Yankees | 21 |
| TE | Noah Gray | FA | 20 |
| WR/TE | Jaylen Waddle | SOL | 20 |
| PK | Will Lutz | Chumps | 22 |
| DST | Cowboys/Seahawks (tie) | FA | 19 |
| Total | 226 |
After his wretched kicking display directly cost Washington their game against Dallas, the Commanders put kicker Austin Seibert on IR today, ostensibly because of a hip injury.
Yeah, right.
Top 5 Plays of the Week
5. Seattle’s Coby Bryant picked off Kyler Murray on 4th-and-1 and took it 69 yards for the score (nice).
4. Titans TE Chig Okonkwo rumbled 70 yards for the go ahead TD against the Texans. That’s what a 13.5 point play looks like.
3. Hat Trick Cojones ran for 34 yards with less than a minute to go to get the Chiefs in range for a game-winning FG.
2. KaVontae Turpin’s ridiculous kickoff return TD
1. Jayden Daniels found Terry McLaurin for an even more ridiculous 86 yard TD with 30 seconds left to (almost) tie the game against Dallas.
Week 12 Overreactions
- My NFL MVP votes
- Josh Allen
- Jared Goff
- Saquon Barkley
- Lamar Jackson
- On the NFL Futures market, I’m buying the Chargers and Colts and selling the Texans and Commanders.
- I hated Baker Mayfield at OU and disliked him in Cleveland, but I like the Tampa Bay version so far. I can’t even muster any faux anger over him mocking fellow Italian Tommy DeVito, since DeVito is himself a mockery of an NFL QB.
- Honest to God, I hope AA-Ron wants to play next year but nobody wants him. Not even the Raiders.
- Right now SMU is in the playoff, but even if they win the ACC Championship the committee will find a way to keep them out.
On MNF John Harbaugh made some waves by going for it and 4th & 1 deep in his own territory. The play reminded me of a similar call made by a certain dumbass Cowboys coach almost 29 years ago. The difference of course being that Harbaugh’s decision was successful.
(You see where this is headed right?)
The Takedown
Before we get started, in the interest of fairness I refer you back to the week 9 R&C where I listed Coach Switzer’s accomplishments. With that out of the way, let’s get to the dumbass stuff.
Barry Switzer was hired as the Cowboys head coach in 1994 after spending the previous five years not coaching anywhere in college or the NFL. To go from your couch to head coach of the two-time defending Superb Owl champs is the epitome of being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple. But in fairness the dumbass here was Jerry Jones for hiring Switzer in the first place.
That year the Cowboys’ dream of winning three straight Superb Owls came to an end when they lost to the 49ers in the NFC Championship game. In the 4th quarter with Dallas down 38-28 but driving, Switzer bumped an official while raving about a pass interference non-call and was assessed a 15 yard penalty, effectively killing the Cowboys’ chances of getting back in the game.
The next year was the above-mentioned 4th down debacle in Philadelphia, which the Cowboys admittedly did recover from as they went to win their third Superb Owl in four years.
In 1996, the defending champs lost a road playoff game to Carolina, a second year expansion franchise.
In August 1997, the wheels really came off. In his greatest dumbass moment, Switzer was arrested at DFW airport with a loaded gun in his bag.
You read that correctly. An NFL head coach was arrested for taking a loaded gun to the airport.
His excuse was that his grandkids were at his house, and he stuffed the gun in his travel bag so they wouldn’t find it, and then forgot about it. I don’t own a gun but it seems to me rule #1 is that you should always know the whereabouts of a loaded gun. And call me crazy but maybe he should have, I don’t know, UNLOADED IT FIRST before storing the gun and the ammo safely, like in a locked container on a high shelf. But that’s just me.
The word at the time was that Jerry wanted to fire Coach Dumbass on the spot but it was too close to the start of the season so he fined him $75,000 instead. Switzer had pretty much lost control of the team by then, but this incident finished him off. It was around the same time that Troy Aikman finally unloaded on the sidelines during a preseason game.
The 1997 season itself was a dumpster fire as a team with Superb Owl aspirations struggled to a 6-5 record before losing their last five games to finish 6-10, after which Jerry finally sent Coach Dumbass packing.
Epilogue: the next season, with an even weaker roster, new coach Chan Gailey led the Cowboys to a 10-6 record and an NFC East title.
The state rests, Your Honor.
Stat of the week: Saquon Barkley outgained the Rams by himself on Sunday (302-290).
The NFL announced last week that Eli Manning is a finalist for the Hall of Fame. I am not looking forward to the next several weeks of interminable debate over his credentials. We all know the truth – Eli was an average QB at best that had two great postseason runs that ended with two championships and two Superb Owl MVPs. Add the fact that he played in New York and the obvious result is that he will be elected easily.
I’m ok with it if the de facto rule becomes that winning two Superb Owls as a QB guarantees a Hall of Fame spot, but if that’s the case then Jim Plunkett needs to go in before Eli. Plunkett’s career is similar – otherwise unstellar except for two championships and one MVP. Plunkett is on the senior list so he has a chance but it’s more likely that Eli gets in first, which ain’t right.
The Commish Track is B-Movie Boxcar Blues by Delbert McClinton
I usually resist the urge to post about soccer. Last week I did but that was more about my trip to London and less about the actual game I went to, probably because Tottenham lost badly.
But if you know anything about Tottenham, it’s that their defining characteristic is the incredible gap between their worst game and their best, and that they often go from one extreme to the other from one game to the next. They’ve been that way for decades.
Case in point, in their next game after the debacle I attended they went out and crushed Manchester City 4-0. Even if you don’t do soccer highlights, check out this two minute vid. All four of Tottenham’s goals were beauties.
Stuff like this is the reason I switched allegiances from Aston Villa to Tottenham. That and Villa getting relegated.
Trivia question: Who is the only tight end with multiple 100-yard games this season?1
I just saw that today is the 30th anniversary of the craziest high school football game ever – Plano East vs. John Tyler in the third round of the 1994 playoffs at Texas Stadium. I’d recap it, but it’s getting late and this video does it better.
The 80s Babe of the Week is Veronica Hamel, who played sultry assistant DA Joyce Davenport on Hill Street Blues, for my money one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Joyce was all business and no nonsense when on the job, but once she let her hair down, hoo boy. The show pushed a lot of boundaries – violence, racism, social justice – but it was also very risqué for the 1980s, and that’s where she came in.
Let’s end with a Dad joke: Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail, and with his odd diet he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Good luck to everyone (almost) in week 13,
The Commish
- Trey McBride ↩︎
Ruminations & Cogitations 
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