CFFL Playoff Rankings
1. z-The Dirty Yankees (12-2)
2. y-Sons of Liberty (11-3)
3. y-Deep Snappers (6-8); 2-0 vs Swerve; 1-1 vs Guns, 4-2 div record, outscored Guns by 126.5
4. x-Freedom Factory (10-4)
5. x-Electric Mayhem (7-7); 2-0 vs MSG, beat Torpedoes
6. x-Multiple Scoregasms (7-7); beat Torpedoes
7. x-Damn The Torpedoes (7-7)
8. x-Maulers (6-8); beat Guns
Gator Bowl
9. e-Big Guns (6-8); 2-0 vs Swerve; 1-1 vs Snappers, 4-2 div record, outscored by Snappers
10. e-DoubleSwerve (6-8)
11. e-Weasels (3-11); beat Champs
12. e-Season 26 Champs (3-11)
CFFL Playoffs
#1 The Dirty Yankees vs. #8 Maulers
Prior Result: Yankees beat Maulers 93 – 79.5, week 4
Power Rankings: Yankees #2, Maulers #7
#2 Sons of Liberty vs. #7 Damn the Torpedoes
Prior Results: Torpedoes beat SOL 100 – 81, week 3; SOL beat Torpedoes 92 – 83.5, week 14
Power Rankings: SOL #1, Torpedoes #3 (tie)
#3 Deep Snappers vs. #6 Multiple Scoregasms
Prior Result: MSG beat Snappers 99 – 91.5
Power Rankings: Snappers #5, MSG #8
#4 Freedom Factory vs. #5 Electric Mayhem
Prior Results: Factory beat Mayhem 88.5 – 60, week 2 and 95.5 – 89.5, week 13
Power Rankings: Mayhem #3 (tie), Factory #6
Gator Bowl
#1 Season 27 Champs vs. #4 Big Guns
Prior Results: Champs beat Guns 98.5 – 85, week 2; Guns beat Champs 98.5 – 87.5, week 13
Power Rankings: Guns #9 (tie), Champs #11
#2 Weasels vs. #3 DoubleSwerve
Prior Result: Weasels beat Swerve 94.5 – 63.5, week 10
Power Rankings: Swerve #9 (tie), Weasels #12
The higher seed in all postseason games receives a 3.75 point bonus for home field advantage.
Mayhem 127, MSG 86: Talk about your top-heavy lineups – 80% of Mayhem’s scoring came from four guys.
Maulers 122.5, Weasels 90.5: The defending champs are still alive.
Snappers 100.5, Chumps 91.5: Chumps had a good week but were undone by three players that combined for -1.5 points.
Guns 97, Swerve 79.5: Guns established that the template for overcoming a dreaded double goose-egg is to have your starting QB score 51 points.
SOL 92, Torpedoes 83.5: Torps started the wrong Bears WR.
Factory 80.5, Yankees 67.5: Yankees couldn’t navigate through their bye week hell so they’ll settle for a tie for best single season record.
Ruminations and Cogitations (All My Favorite Colors edition)
Week 14 Awards: Hard Luck to Chumps (91.5), Dumb Luck to Factory (80.5).
Totals for the year:
Hard Luck
3 – Snappers, Torpedoes
2 – Mayhem
1 – Guns/Weasels/Swerve/Chumps
Dumb Luck
5 – Factory (!)
2 – Yankees, Mayhem
1 – Maulers/Weasels/Swerve
I’ve only been handing out the weekly awards for about ten years, but in that time no one had won more than four until Factory this year. I can only hope they don’t win a sixth this week.
Team of the Week
| QB | Josh Allen | Guns | 51 |
| RB | Zach Charbonnet | Maulers | 31 |
| RB | Isaac Guerendo/Josh Jacobs | Mayhem/MSG | 24 |
| WR | Ja’Marr Chase | Mayhem | 31 |
| WR | Jordan Addison | Weasels | 31 |
| TE | George Kittle | Yankees | 18 |
| WR/TE | Puka Nacua | Maulers | 29 |
| PK | Matthew Wright/Anders Carlson | Maulers/FA | 16 |
| DST | 49ers | Factory | 16 |
| Total | 247 |
In case anyone needed a reminder why we put ourselves through this every year, here’s what the payouts look like as of this writing.
| Draft fees | $900.00 |
| Transaction fees | $746.00 |
| Total | $1646.00 |
| Champion | $698.00 |
| Runner-up | $386.50 |
| Semi-finalist | $193.25 |
| Semi-finalist | $193.25 |
| #1 seed (Yankees) | $100.00 |
| Gator Bowl | $75.00 |
Top 5 Plays of the Week
5. Justin Jefferson scored a wide open TD, but what was the corner doing?
4. Only the Cowboys can block a punt and turn the ball over on the same play. Too bad Buck and Aikman weren’t on top of what happened. I couldn’t find the Cowboys’ radio broadcast on YouTube but Sham and Laufenberg were all over it.
3. The Rams on the other hand know how to block a punt.
2. Khalil Shakir split two sets of defenders on his way into the end zone. Actually one defender was part of both sets but it didn’t diminish the effect.
1. After the punt block fiasco, Ja’Marr Chase finished the Cowboys off.
Here it is in Simpsons form:
Non-NFL Play of the Week: Aston Villa’s Jhon Duran scored a banger in Champions League play today vs RB Leipzig
Back in week 5 I posted an analysis of defense/special teams scoring and promised that another update would follow. Lucky you, dear reader, for that time is now.
You will recall that the point of this was to see what the effect would be if we doubled the scoring for defensive yards allowed and points allowed. Only positive scoring would be doubled, the negative scoring would be left alone.
I’ve heard it said that the fewer numbers you put on a slide or graphic the better. Balls. Take a look at this beauty …
Yellow is the current scoring, green is the proposed new scoring, blue is the increase. Blank spaces are bye weeks.
The red column at the end is the average score increase per game, so the biggest average increase is the Eagles with four points per game. The top eight teams increased between three and four points per game. The average increase for all 32 teams is 2.4 points per game.
The biggest increase in any given week is nine points, which happened several times (see Eagles in weeks 7 and 10).
My opinion is that we should make the change for next year. DST scoring will go up a little but not anything too crazy. We’ll vote on it at next year’s draft.
(And I’ll send out the full spreadsheet so you can actually see it.)
Week 14 Overreactions
- My NFL MVP vote
- Josh Allen
- Saquon Barkley
- Jared Goff
- Sam Darnold
- Buffalo’s loss was crushing to their Superb Owl hopes. It all but guarantees the AFC Championship will go through Kansas City, and I don’t see anyone beating the Chiefs at Arrowhead.
- If a player has ever been dealt a crueler and more unfair blow than DeMarvion Overshown, I can’t think of it.
- If I had to choose right now between Jalen Hurts and Sam Darnold, I’m leaning toward Darnold.
- I haven’t gone to a movie a theater in a long time but I might have to break that streak to catch the Bob Dylan biopic.
Stat of the Week: Josh Allen has more career rushing TDs (62) than O.J. Simpson (61) and Terrell Davis (60).
Further musing on the Cowboys:
- Immediately after the punt block fiasco, I felt everyone should go easy on Amani Oruwariye. I figured he was a young kid who had no time to think and just instinctively reached for the ball. Then I saw that 1) he saw the ball coming for at least five yards, maybe more, and thus had time to think, and 2) he’s not a kid, he’s a six-year NFL vet, and should have known what to do. So screw going easy on him. He’s a dumbass that cost the Cowboys a shot at a win, and should be out of a job.
- I’ve been tired of Mike McCarthy’s BS for a long time, but it’s his outright lying about wanting to run the ball that burns me the most. He talks and talks about how they need to run the ball, saying things like “we didn’t get enough reps at it” and that they need to “just continue to give him (Rico Dowdle) opportunities”. He even fired Kellen Moore because he wasn’t running the ball enough.
Never has a coach talked more about running the ball while having absolutely no desire to do so. He didn’t run it in Green Bay but at least he had AA-Ron in his Hall of Fame prime. Until the last few weeks the Cowboys were near or at the bottom of most rushing stats this year. But things had started to tick up, and against the Bengals it looked like the run game was working. Dowdle had 131 yards on more than seven yards per carry.
But … with the score 20-20 and 6:31 left in the game, Dowdle got his last carry before Cooper Rush threw three straight incompletions. The Cowboys had to punt, and the punt block fiasco happened a few minutes later. By the time they got the ball back it was too late to run it anymore.
When McCarthy had the chance in crunch time, he abandoned the run, just like always.
- Then we have Jerry mouthing off after the game about how the coaching should have been better on the blocked punt, meaning that the Cowboys shouldn’t have called a punt block at all. But McCarthy said soon after that “actually (we) had a return called”.
So we’ve got an upset owner/GM who publicly threw his the coaching staff under the bus without knowing what actually happened, a coach that openly lies about his offensive strategy (probably to keep that same owner/GM happy), and players who are too dumb, and at the worst possible times. But I’m sure they’ll contend for a Superb Owl next year.
So, does anyone have any thoughts on the college playoff?
As you might expect, I was shocked and thrilled to see SMU get in. I previously said the committee would do everything they could to keep SMU out, and thankfully I was wrong. Could it be that the NCAA actually hasn’t been holding a grudge against SMU for the last 40+ years? Nah, I’m sure they still do.
But the Mustangs are in, and we are all the better for it. As for Bama, they may have valid arguments for getting in but I accept none of them. If Bama gets credit for stronger wins then they have to also get dinged for bad losses. Otherwise, why play the games? Just schedule the toughest teams and claim that your strength of schedule is enough to make the playoff without actually playing anyone.
There’s a quote from The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg says “The ‘Winklevii’ aren’t suing me for intellectual property theft. They’re suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn’t go exactly the way they were supposed to for them.” That’s how I feel about Alabama fans, those whiney little babies. Go cry to Paul Finebaum and let someone else play with the big boys for a change.
The Commish Track is Colors by Black Pumas.
Is it possible to win Comeback Player of the Year for starting the season abjectly awful, getting benched, returning to the lineup, and then kicking ass, all in the same season? If so, Bryce Young should win it hands down. Kurt Warner did a nice breakdown of Young’s dramatic improvement in last week’s game against Tampa Bay, and Young would’ve beaten the Eagles late if Xavier Legette could catch.
Next up for Young? The Cowboys. The way he’s playing I think he’s going to carve them up.
Trivia question: What do Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Geno Smith, and Brock Purdy have in common?1
Last week I said the 49ers had the best color combo in the NFL. That might have been overstating it a tad but they’re still one of my favorites.
Favorite NFL color combos
1. Bills – blue/red/white. There’s no blue like American flag blue. Accept no substitutes.
2. 49ers – red/gold/white. I like the road whites with the gold pants best, but it’s the helmet where the combo really pops for me.
3. Raiders – black/silver/white. Simple, elegant, classic.
4. Cowboys – navy blue/royal blue/silver/silver-green/white. They’d be at the top of the list if they would just simplify things a bit. Getting rid of the silver-green home pants would be a start. And maybe the royal blue.
I like the cleaner look of the navy blue/silver/white, but what do I know.
5. Bears – dark navy/orange/white. Their navy is so dark I thought it was black until I was in my 20s, and I’m a sucker for orange trim.
Our 80s Babe of the Week is Valerie Bertinelli. If last week’s 80s babe (Karen Allen) was the dictionary definition of “wholesome good looks”, this week’s cornered the market.
Ms. Bertinelli was the cutest thing on TV back in the day, which worked for her because “cute” was her overriding characteristic. Even when she tried to be sexy she just got cuter.
Exhibits A & B:
The big week is finally here. Winners finish in the money, losers prepare to PayPal Carl.
Before we get to the carnage, a Dad joke:
A guy walks into the bank, pulls out a gun, points it at the teller and screams, “Give me all your money or you’re geography!”
The teller replies, “Don’t you mean history?”
The robber says, “Don’t change the subject!”
Good luck to everyone (almost) in week 15, and may the best team win.
The Commish
- They’re the starting QBs for the Gator Bowl teams ↩︎
Ruminations & Cogitations 
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