The Noisy Basterds are in and they’re the first team to clinch a division, winning the Ball-and-Chain Division. It is his first Divisional crown and he is guaranteed to be either the No. 1 or 2 seed in Office Space Conference. With the Jammers in front of the Golden Bear Division, the Noise would have to finish with one more win that the Jammers to attain the No. 1 seed.
The Jammers can clinch the Golden Bear Division with two wins and a Slackers loss in the final three weeks. The Slackers clinched a playoff berth, despite the loss, after Fear and Loathing lost.
The Stank was not eliminated after losses by both Houserville and Fear and Loathing, but the Stank must win out; must have Fear beat Houserville next week; and must have Houserville lose its final two games and Fear lose at least once.
A win by Houserville over Fear this week would clinch the fourth playoff spot, thus eliminating Stank and Fear.
In the Ron Burgundy Conference, the Toasters can clinch the Nittany North and the No. 1 seed with a win this week. He can also do it with a loss and loss by T-Money. The Nittany North is guaranteed to have the No. 1 seed due to head-to-head tie-breakers — and only the Toasters and T-Money are still alive for it.
The winner of the Nittany South, which could be one of three teams, will earn the No. 2 seed.
Boyer, trying to become the second team in as many years to come back from 0-5 to make the playoffs, can do so with three more wins. He controls his own destiny with the tiebreakers over the Organ Thieves and the Generals. However, he can still lose and make it in with help from other teams.
T-Money also controls his own destiny in the playoff hunt, as does the News Team, which can win out to win the Nittany South.
There are too many scenarios in the Ron Burgundy Conference to map out at this juncture, so right now, the key is to keep (or start) winning if you’re in the RBC.
Here's the playoff race as it stands:
Office Space Conference
1. Jimmy Jammers (7-3) y
2. World of Noise (8-2) z
Wild Card Race
3. Sunday Slackers (6-4) x
4. Real Houserville (4-6) x
5. Fear and Loathing (3-7)
6. Stanksta's Gangstas (2-8)
Ron Burgundy Conference
1. Dottsville Toasters (8-2) y
2. Channel 4 News Team (5-5) x
Wild Card Race
3. T-Money (5-5) x
4. *Team Boyer (4-6) x
5. *Chinese Organ Thieves (4-6)
6. *Graybill's Generals (4-6)
z - Division Winner
y – Clinched Playoff Berth
x - Clinched if playoffs started today
* - Boyer owns the head-to-head (2-0 against the other two teams, Thieves 1-1, Generals 0-2)
Toasters 105.6, Slackers 86.3
I know I’m not always right with things — not many fantasy writers or TV/radio personalities are — but damn did I nail the Toasters-Slackers matchup.
1. The Saints will score 27, 28 or 31 points in this game. Twenty-eight points, check.
2. The defense/special teams will score again, leaving only two or three TDs for the three Saints players owned by the Slackers. Kickoff returned for TD, check.
3. The Stephen Jackson will outperform Pierre Thomas. Jackson 133 yards and TD compared to 37 yards. Check.
4. Chris Johnson will score 30-plus points. He had 35.2, check.
5. Miles Austin was a good start because of the numbers, but I had a feeling Dallas was going to lay an egg in Green Bay. Yep, that happened, check.
6. Toasters win in a squeaker. They had to come back with Ray Rice on Monday Night Football and didn’t take the lead until the second half of that snooze-fest, check.
The Ravens defense also played a big part in the comeback, scoring 33.5 points on Monday night in a shutout of the Browns. That helped make up for the three combined points from Austin and Vincent Jackson, and the zero from a tight end on the bye week.
Clearly, though, the difference was Chris Johnson — who is making a strong bid to be the JFL’s 2009 MVP. He’s rushed for 495 yards and six touchdowns and caught 14 passes for 136 yards in the last three weeks. He had nine catches last week against Buffalo.
Averaging 22.1 points per week, clearly this is the best drafted player this season. The second best could easily be Ray Rice, who has had double-digit fantasy points every week but one when he had 8.2. That’s more than Chris Johnson can say.
Rice has scored in six of the last seven games — six rushing TDs, one receiving.
What a draft for the Toasters. In the first three rounds, he took (1) Johnson, (2) Rice, (3) Vincent Jackson. They have combined for 23 touchdowns this season — a big reason why the Toasters have 1,203.3 points this season, a JFL best through 10 weeks.
Boyer 120.7, Jammers 102.7
The streak is over, for both the Steelers and the Jammers. It is not clear whether I jinxed both the Steelers and in turn, my team.
Big Ben was only three points better than a horrid Jay Cutler, scoring 8.1 and together with WR Santonio Holmes (8.8) and Heath Miller (2.6), they were the downfall of the Jammers this week.
Failing in the red zone four times, the Jammers watched chance after chance to rout slip away.
The points were on the bench to win this matchup, but who would have thought that LaDainian Tomlinson would come alive and that the Steelers would falter.
Plus, the same could be said for Boyer, who made the interesting move to go with Matt Hasselbeck instead of Tom Brady. I said I’d comment on this later, because I didn’t want to persuade him to change, but against a banged up Indy secondary, why bench the guy who had single-handedly brought you back into the playoff race?
Brady had 36.8 points on the bench. Hasselbeck contributed with 18.2.
So the chance was there for the Jammers to continue his winning streak, but the chance was lost.
Good news, though, is that Jonathan Stewart, a waiver pickup two weeks ago, has scored 42.9 points in three weeks against teams that aren’t the Saints. He may not be of much help against Miami this week, but he does have two good matchups left in the season. Clearly, he’ll be benched in the playoffs, projecting matchups against NE, MIN and NYG in the three weeks slated for the playoffs.
While Team Boyer lost points with Brady on the bench, this matchup was won when Lee Evans and the Titans overachieved. Evans had two touchdowns in the first half and scored 17 fantasy points, something that was not expected at all. And the matchup was really won when the Titans returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the fourth quarter to go from 13.5 fantasy points, to 29.5.
Generals 90.6, Stank 83.5
Had Josh Cribbs had 10 more receiving or rushing yards — basically, one more point — I would have felt really bad.
I mean, REALLY bad.
So bad that Maurice Jones-Drew’s apology would never suffice.
This final score should be Generals 90.6, Stank 89.6, because Jones-Drew should have had one more yard and one more TD.
But instead, he knelt down on the 1 to set up the game-winning field goal.
While everyone compared this to Brian Westbrook of two/three years ago when he stopped at the 1 to run out the clock, I cannot agree with this at all — and I’m not the fantasy owner.
You cannot compare this to Westbrook. That was smart for the Eagles to do it because they were winning. Let me say that again, THEY WERE WINNING.
The Jags weren’t. And while a chip-shot field goal won the game and made them look like geniuses, I cannot agree with this whatsoever.
A field goal is never guaranteed, no matter how close you are. Anything can happen, right Tony Romo? Tell them.
Yes, the chances were good that they would take the lead on a field goal.
However, I have to believe the chances were better that they would have taken the lead on a TD. I’m guessing that since all he had to do was walk in, the chances of taking the lead without kneeling are 100 percent. I’m just guessing.
I’m no mathematician, but there has to be a lesser chance of making a field goal — especially in the Meadowlands, where swirling winds give kickers trouble all the time.
So shame on you Jacksonville. Not only did you nearly cost yourself a win; you nearly cost Stank a win.
But the Generals benefited from a great day by David Garrard and a Carolina revival with DeAngelo Williams scoring 12.2 and Steve Smith getting 15.4. Add in Garrard’s 22.1 points and that’s it for the Generals.
Still a win for Graybill keeps the Generals in the playoff race, and the divisional race.
Stank needs to win and needs to win now. He also needs some help.
And he also needs Jones-Drew to get off his knees.
Noise 112.7, T-Money 101.9
Again, I was really good with the preview this week.
McNabb went nuts — as predicted — and Romo sucked them — also predicted.
McNabb threw for 450 yards and two TDs (and the Eagles still lost), while Romo went for 252, a TD and three turnovers.
Thomas Jones duplicated Gore’s output with a good chunk of yards and a TD, while Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams returned to form to combine for 24 points.
Brown might have had more, but he went down with an ankle injury and that will have to be an area of concern for Noise. He has relied on their success to get his far, and with Brian Westbrook likely being shut down for a while, the RBs are a bit scary for the Noise.
Still, he’s clinched the division which means he can gun for the No. 1 seed, while having no fear that he’ll host a first-round matchup in Week 14. It’s nice to know that you’re up 2-0 in Week 14 already.
Getting back to Romo and the Cowboys, it will be great to listen to the radio this week and hear the silence of Cowboys fans who called Sirius NFL Kick all last week declaring themselves Super Bowl champions. They should at least wait until they clinch a playoff berth before doing something like that, because I still think there’s a good chance that they miss the playoffs with the Eagles and Giants finishing 1 and 2, in no particular order, in the NFC East.
Again, though, it’s a second-half brain fart by Romo that leads to a T-Money loss. Just wait until December comes around.
Organ Thieves 137, Fear and Loathing 128.8
Fear ran into the wrong team this week.
His 128.8 would have been good enough to beat anyone else in the JFL, yet he went up against the team that had 137.
And to think he would have scored more had either he started Fred Jackson or if Julius Jones, the replacement, had not injured himself in the first quarter.
Both teams had the wideouts of the day with Randy Moss scoring 31.9 and Brandon Marshall scoring 30.3.
Jamaal Charles and T.J. Housmandzadeh both must have read my column last week because they had a fire lit under them. Charles had 23.2 points and Houshy had 16.5.
Still, a championship is far away for Fear. He needs a huge win this week over Real Houserville to control his destiny. A win in Week 11 over the Villains and two wins in the final two weeks would clinch the fourth and final spot. With a win next week, all Fear would have to do is finish with the same record as Houserville to win the fourth spot.
The Thieves got back on the winning track and will look to keep it going and try to overtake the News Team for the division.
If only Adrian Peterson played the Lions from here on out.
News Team 105.8, Real Houserville 88
Well, Peyton Manning was awesome.
Everyone else? Where’d you go?
Houserville not only lost the game this week, but he might have lost a key cog in the RB department with Cedric Benson going down with a hip injury and Dwayne Bowe earning a four-game suspension for PEDs — not that we can really call it PED, because his performance hasn’t been enhanced. They should come up with a new acronym for players who suck after taking PEDs.
Houserville could use some PEDs after starting 0-3, then winning four straight, but now losing another three in a row. The playoffs are on the line for Houserville now after he was in contention for the division three weeks ago.
The Villains were without Steve Slaton this week and Rashard Mendenhall was not used properly by the Steelers, so points were missed out on there.
On the other side, News Team used the momentum from Forte on Thursday (16.1 points) to continue to pile on the points with Brett Favre, Cadillac Williams, Kellen Winslow and the Chiefs defense.
Wait. What? Williams, Winslow and the Chiefs?
They combined for 41.9 points? Are you serious?
The News Team will enjoy the resurgence of the Bucs, having Winslow and Williams, while the Chiefs were a one-week thing for certain, because they don’t play the Raiders again. They are ranked 29th in fantasy defenses including last week’s season-best 20.5.
News Team will certainly move back to the Giants defense, who were on the bye, this week.
The Jammers can clinch the Golden Bear Division with two wins and a Slackers loss in the final three weeks. The Slackers clinched a playoff berth, despite the loss, after Fear and Loathing lost.
The Stank was not eliminated after losses by both Houserville and Fear and Loathing, but the Stank must win out; must have Fear beat Houserville next week; and must have Houserville lose its final two games and Fear lose at least once.
A win by Houserville over Fear this week would clinch the fourth playoff spot, thus eliminating Stank and Fear.
In the Ron Burgundy Conference, the Toasters can clinch the Nittany North and the No. 1 seed with a win this week. He can also do it with a loss and loss by T-Money. The Nittany North is guaranteed to have the No. 1 seed due to head-to-head tie-breakers — and only the Toasters and T-Money are still alive for it.
The winner of the Nittany South, which could be one of three teams, will earn the No. 2 seed.
Boyer, trying to become the second team in as many years to come back from 0-5 to make the playoffs, can do so with three more wins. He controls his own destiny with the tiebreakers over the Organ Thieves and the Generals. However, he can still lose and make it in with help from other teams.
T-Money also controls his own destiny in the playoff hunt, as does the News Team, which can win out to win the Nittany South.
There are too many scenarios in the Ron Burgundy Conference to map out at this juncture, so right now, the key is to keep (or start) winning if you’re in the RBC.
Here's the playoff race as it stands:
Office Space Conference
1. Jimmy Jammers (7-3) y
2. World of Noise (8-2) z
Wild Card Race
3. Sunday Slackers (6-4) x
4. Real Houserville (4-6) x
5. Fear and Loathing (3-7)
6. Stanksta's Gangstas (2-8)
Ron Burgundy Conference
1. Dottsville Toasters (8-2) y
2. Channel 4 News Team (5-5) x
Wild Card Race
3. T-Money (5-5) x
4. *Team Boyer (4-6) x
5. *Chinese Organ Thieves (4-6)
6. *Graybill's Generals (4-6)
z - Division Winner
y – Clinched Playoff Berth
x - Clinched if playoffs started today
* - Boyer owns the head-to-head (2-0 against the other two teams, Thieves 1-1, Generals 0-2)
Toasters 105.6, Slackers 86.3
I know I’m not always right with things — not many fantasy writers or TV/radio personalities are — but damn did I nail the Toasters-Slackers matchup.
1. The Saints will score 27, 28 or 31 points in this game. Twenty-eight points, check.
2. The defense/special teams will score again, leaving only two or three TDs for the three Saints players owned by the Slackers. Kickoff returned for TD, check.
3. The Stephen Jackson will outperform Pierre Thomas. Jackson 133 yards and TD compared to 37 yards. Check.
4. Chris Johnson will score 30-plus points. He had 35.2, check.
5. Miles Austin was a good start because of the numbers, but I had a feeling Dallas was going to lay an egg in Green Bay. Yep, that happened, check.
6. Toasters win in a squeaker. They had to come back with Ray Rice on Monday Night Football and didn’t take the lead until the second half of that snooze-fest, check.
The Ravens defense also played a big part in the comeback, scoring 33.5 points on Monday night in a shutout of the Browns. That helped make up for the three combined points from Austin and Vincent Jackson, and the zero from a tight end on the bye week.
Clearly, though, the difference was Chris Johnson — who is making a strong bid to be the JFL’s 2009 MVP. He’s rushed for 495 yards and six touchdowns and caught 14 passes for 136 yards in the last three weeks. He had nine catches last week against Buffalo.
Averaging 22.1 points per week, clearly this is the best drafted player this season. The second best could easily be Ray Rice, who has had double-digit fantasy points every week but one when he had 8.2. That’s more than Chris Johnson can say.
Rice has scored in six of the last seven games — six rushing TDs, one receiving.
What a draft for the Toasters. In the first three rounds, he took (1) Johnson, (2) Rice, (3) Vincent Jackson. They have combined for 23 touchdowns this season — a big reason why the Toasters have 1,203.3 points this season, a JFL best through 10 weeks.
Boyer 120.7, Jammers 102.7
The streak is over, for both the Steelers and the Jammers. It is not clear whether I jinxed both the Steelers and in turn, my team.
Big Ben was only three points better than a horrid Jay Cutler, scoring 8.1 and together with WR Santonio Holmes (8.8) and Heath Miller (2.6), they were the downfall of the Jammers this week.
Failing in the red zone four times, the Jammers watched chance after chance to rout slip away.
The points were on the bench to win this matchup, but who would have thought that LaDainian Tomlinson would come alive and that the Steelers would falter.
Plus, the same could be said for Boyer, who made the interesting move to go with Matt Hasselbeck instead of Tom Brady. I said I’d comment on this later, because I didn’t want to persuade him to change, but against a banged up Indy secondary, why bench the guy who had single-handedly brought you back into the playoff race?
Brady had 36.8 points on the bench. Hasselbeck contributed with 18.2.
So the chance was there for the Jammers to continue his winning streak, but the chance was lost.
Good news, though, is that Jonathan Stewart, a waiver pickup two weeks ago, has scored 42.9 points in three weeks against teams that aren’t the Saints. He may not be of much help against Miami this week, but he does have two good matchups left in the season. Clearly, he’ll be benched in the playoffs, projecting matchups against NE, MIN and NYG in the three weeks slated for the playoffs.
While Team Boyer lost points with Brady on the bench, this matchup was won when Lee Evans and the Titans overachieved. Evans had two touchdowns in the first half and scored 17 fantasy points, something that was not expected at all. And the matchup was really won when the Titans returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the fourth quarter to go from 13.5 fantasy points, to 29.5.
Generals 90.6, Stank 83.5
Had Josh Cribbs had 10 more receiving or rushing yards — basically, one more point — I would have felt really bad.
I mean, REALLY bad.
So bad that Maurice Jones-Drew’s apology would never suffice.
This final score should be Generals 90.6, Stank 89.6, because Jones-Drew should have had one more yard and one more TD.
But instead, he knelt down on the 1 to set up the game-winning field goal.
While everyone compared this to Brian Westbrook of two/three years ago when he stopped at the 1 to run out the clock, I cannot agree with this at all — and I’m not the fantasy owner.
You cannot compare this to Westbrook. That was smart for the Eagles to do it because they were winning. Let me say that again, THEY WERE WINNING.
The Jags weren’t. And while a chip-shot field goal won the game and made them look like geniuses, I cannot agree with this whatsoever.
A field goal is never guaranteed, no matter how close you are. Anything can happen, right Tony Romo? Tell them.
Yes, the chances were good that they would take the lead on a field goal.
However, I have to believe the chances were better that they would have taken the lead on a TD. I’m guessing that since all he had to do was walk in, the chances of taking the lead without kneeling are 100 percent. I’m just guessing.
I’m no mathematician, but there has to be a lesser chance of making a field goal — especially in the Meadowlands, where swirling winds give kickers trouble all the time.
So shame on you Jacksonville. Not only did you nearly cost yourself a win; you nearly cost Stank a win.
But the Generals benefited from a great day by David Garrard and a Carolina revival with DeAngelo Williams scoring 12.2 and Steve Smith getting 15.4. Add in Garrard’s 22.1 points and that’s it for the Generals.
Still a win for Graybill keeps the Generals in the playoff race, and the divisional race.
Stank needs to win and needs to win now. He also needs some help.
And he also needs Jones-Drew to get off his knees.
Noise 112.7, T-Money 101.9
Again, I was really good with the preview this week.
McNabb went nuts — as predicted — and Romo sucked them — also predicted.
McNabb threw for 450 yards and two TDs (and the Eagles still lost), while Romo went for 252, a TD and three turnovers.
Thomas Jones duplicated Gore’s output with a good chunk of yards and a TD, while Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams returned to form to combine for 24 points.
Brown might have had more, but he went down with an ankle injury and that will have to be an area of concern for Noise. He has relied on their success to get his far, and with Brian Westbrook likely being shut down for a while, the RBs are a bit scary for the Noise.
Still, he’s clinched the division which means he can gun for the No. 1 seed, while having no fear that he’ll host a first-round matchup in Week 14. It’s nice to know that you’re up 2-0 in Week 14 already.
Getting back to Romo and the Cowboys, it will be great to listen to the radio this week and hear the silence of Cowboys fans who called Sirius NFL Kick all last week declaring themselves Super Bowl champions. They should at least wait until they clinch a playoff berth before doing something like that, because I still think there’s a good chance that they miss the playoffs with the Eagles and Giants finishing 1 and 2, in no particular order, in the NFC East.
Again, though, it’s a second-half brain fart by Romo that leads to a T-Money loss. Just wait until December comes around.
Organ Thieves 137, Fear and Loathing 128.8
Fear ran into the wrong team this week.
His 128.8 would have been good enough to beat anyone else in the JFL, yet he went up against the team that had 137.
And to think he would have scored more had either he started Fred Jackson or if Julius Jones, the replacement, had not injured himself in the first quarter.
Both teams had the wideouts of the day with Randy Moss scoring 31.9 and Brandon Marshall scoring 30.3.
Jamaal Charles and T.J. Housmandzadeh both must have read my column last week because they had a fire lit under them. Charles had 23.2 points and Houshy had 16.5.
Still, a championship is far away for Fear. He needs a huge win this week over Real Houserville to control his destiny. A win in Week 11 over the Villains and two wins in the final two weeks would clinch the fourth and final spot. With a win next week, all Fear would have to do is finish with the same record as Houserville to win the fourth spot.
The Thieves got back on the winning track and will look to keep it going and try to overtake the News Team for the division.
If only Adrian Peterson played the Lions from here on out.
News Team 105.8, Real Houserville 88
Well, Peyton Manning was awesome.
Everyone else? Where’d you go?
Houserville not only lost the game this week, but he might have lost a key cog in the RB department with Cedric Benson going down with a hip injury and Dwayne Bowe earning a four-game suspension for PEDs — not that we can really call it PED, because his performance hasn’t been enhanced. They should come up with a new acronym for players who suck after taking PEDs.
Houserville could use some PEDs after starting 0-3, then winning four straight, but now losing another three in a row. The playoffs are on the line for Houserville now after he was in contention for the division three weeks ago.
The Villains were without Steve Slaton this week and Rashard Mendenhall was not used properly by the Steelers, so points were missed out on there.
On the other side, News Team used the momentum from Forte on Thursday (16.1 points) to continue to pile on the points with Brett Favre, Cadillac Williams, Kellen Winslow and the Chiefs defense.
Wait. What? Williams, Winslow and the Chiefs?
They combined for 41.9 points? Are you serious?
The News Team will enjoy the resurgence of the Bucs, having Winslow and Williams, while the Chiefs were a one-week thing for certain, because they don’t play the Raiders again. They are ranked 29th in fantasy defenses including last week’s season-best 20.5.
News Team will certainly move back to the Giants defense, who were on the bye, this week.
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