2023 Southside Fantasy League

Playoff Preview & State of the League Address

Yes I made a webpage for this.

Let’s get into it.

The regular season is over and week 14 was as thrilling as any clinching weekend we’ve had in the rich history of our 11 year old league. The dust has settled, here’s the playoff picture.

BreeceCake Factory stormed their way to the top of the standings with a dominant 7 game win streak from Week 2 through Week 8. A few losses after that wasn’t enough to knock him off the pedestal. They’ll get to enjoy a bye week in round 1 and will have some small decisions to make, will they ride with Kincaid at the frought TE position? Did Drake London play his way onto the roster? Aside from that, this team is ready to roll with a favorable schedule on tilt.

And look who else will be enjoying a bye week? Team rtapia13 very lowkey has the same record (19-9) as the #1 seed BreeceCake Factory. What’s fueled Rene’s ascension to the top? A healthy dose of smack talking SIU Salukis and Dak Prescott making a veritable run at the NFL’s MVP award. It’s the debate as old as time, Rest vs Rust and Team rtapia13 will face it head on. Leading up to the playoffs, they’ve won 6 of their last 7 contests. We’ll see how they fare in round 2.

So who is actually playing in round 1?

Let’s Ride vs Team DRamblers11 and Belichick’s Dream vs What do i with my hands

Let’s Ride was one of the teams who made it into the dance on the last day of the regular season. Team owner Ruben wasn’t going to leave anything up to chance and had his analytics team in the lab making sure they knew where they stood.

Fans will be expecting a shootout between Let’s Ride and Team DRamblers11, as both teams scored over 140 points in their final games. It’ll be Justin Fields vs Russell Wilson just like we all drew it up. DRamblers11 is the oldheads crew with Kelce, Thielen and Deandre Hopkins leading the charge. On the other side of the field, it’s a team of waiver wire warriors. Kyren Williams, Russell Wilson and Isaiah Likely (who seemingly picked up Mark Andrews’ role with aplomb) that will try and lead Let’s Ride to the promised land.

The other matchup is already being labeled the How Did We End Up Here Bowl. Both Belichick’s Dream and What do i with my hands were in fantastic positions only a few weeks ago, now both somehow limped into the playoffs. Especially Belichick’s Dream who landed in the 6th seed after narrowly escaping the consolation bracket in a nail-biter proxy victory late Monday night. Belichick’s Dream survived by scoring a bunch of points in a stretch where they lost 6 of 7 head to head matchups. Truly the poster child for the median.

As the league’s #3 seed, What do i with my hands will face an uphill battle with a couple of injuries. Tyreek Hill, Isiah Pacheco and Keenan Allen will all be limited. Allen isn’t injured but he’ll be without quarterback Justin Herbert. Herbert is actually Belichick’s Dream QB1 so the playing field so is the playing field balanced?

Consolation Bracket

And then, the rest of the league.

The number 1 team you didn’t want to face in the playoffs actually did not make the playoffs. Losing 7 of their first 8 matchups was, in the end, too tall a hill to overcome. Henry thing is possible featured Derrick Henry, Amon-Ra St. Brown and David Montgomery among other dangerous players but it was an ill-fated matchup with the league’s last place finisher in week 14 that hammered the final nail in the coffin. Brandon Aubrey (a kicker) did everything in his power to clutch the win for Henry thing is possible but they came up inches away from victory. In as close a final as we’ve seen, 12th man went without a QB and without a RB and still managed to pull off the win by a mere 0.8 points.

When all was said and done, Chilango-Landia missed the playoffs by even less. They had the same record as the number 6 seed but just didn’t have the points necessary to secure their playoff berth. Led by Joe Mixon and DJ Moore, there just wasn’t enough surrounding talent to propel them, ultimately missing the playoffs by a total of 149 points.

At the number 9 seed, Its Joever can finally rest their collective weary head as injuries can no longer haunt them (unless they end up doing the punishment?). Losing the 1st overall pick to injury for SEVEN weeks really set this team back. Joe Burrow was hurt at the start of the year and James Conner was hurt for 4 weeks as well. Injuries paired with ineffective players will land you in the 9th seed.

The 10th and 11th seed, Big Diggs Rick and SIU Salukis just had shitty seasons. Big Diggs Rick put his faith in rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs who didn’t score more than 9 points until WEEK SEVEN of the season. The Salukis on the other hand, also drafted a rookie RB but he was a rousing success. Aaron Jones in the 3rd round, however, turned out to be a dud of a pick forcing the team owner to publicly announce a change in their draft philosophy in the years to come.

In last place, at the 12th seed, it was once again 12th Man. A couple of big ifs in what ended up being our league’s first ever back to back last place finisher. The first if: If 12th Man had read up on the rules or paid attention a little bit, they would have known that the regular season last place finisher was now responsible for doing the punishment. Probably would’ve tried harder in week 14, which leads to the second if. If 12th Man would’ve replaced Rhamondre Stevenson who was listed as OUT well before Sunday’s games he probably would’ve secured a median victory and finished in 11th place. But as the saying goes, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.”

Of the teams in the playoffs, only 2 teams have not been champions, Ruben and 2nd year Alex Nava. Pancho, Chris, Danny and Rene have all been the last man standing at least once. Good luck to the teams in the playoffs!

The Median

It was a banner year for the median. Truly generated not only hours of content but also created some incredibly entertaining Monday nights throughout the season. As the commissioner, I’ve strived to create a challenging league, a “tryhard” league, because we’re good at this game. I also enjoy the randomness of fantasy football, otherwise I would’ve pushed for a points league. A points league, though, removes so much from the game where— I’ll step off my soap box… we’ve gone over this. Because we like data, here’s what the median did and did not do in 2023…

Surprisingly, 8 of the 12 teams did not move (including Let’s Ride whose owner had been extremely critical (read: would incessantly bitch) of the rule throughout the year), including the top 5 seeds.

After a lot of shuffling in the standings, the median affected far less fewer teams than initially thought. However, there were 2 big glaring changes in the standings. The median giveth and the median taketh, in this year’s results it straight up took from Its Joever and gave to Bilichick’s Dream. It turned out to be a pretty straightforward swap in seeding.

Nava’s team was rewarded for scoring in the top 3, the only 3 teams to score more than 1,800 points. Oscar’s team was punished for being one of the only 4 teams to not reach the 1,600 points plateau.

Not to be taken lightly either, Mike was saved from the punishment. If it were not for the median, Mike would be wearing a dress in the summer.

State of the League

There’s still a lot of fun to be had this year, playoffs, consolation punishment (which is still TBD) and 1st overall pick. That being said, where does the league stand? I’m biased, but

I believe the league to be in a great place. We definitely had some hiccups this year with the pick trading fiasco, but in the end (by sheer dumbass luck) the future of the league remains healthy. With fantasy football fresh in our minds, I intend to survey league members at the end of the year instead of right before the 2024 season. Seemingly no one’s brain is in fantasy football mode yet so that has not worked out well. However, like one manager said “So much changing every season… Gotta stick to the game plan”. I don’t think much will change in 2024. I do want to move the trade deadline up a week or maybe even two weeks. I want to remove pick trading, seeing as how mostly everyone voted against it. Other than that, I don’t think much will change. We’ll obviously vote on the median, but even after massive campaigning against it, I think it will survive and make its return for its 3rd season.

Some fun stuff

Next year, week 14 we’ll go to a sports bar and check out the Monday night games. Hopefully the NFL blesses us with another doubleheader for the finale of the fantasy regular season, that was lit. I’m also open to doing the draft up. Carlos aka Florida Man, suggested we do the draft in Florida next year 👀. Maybe we do baby steps and get out to a bar first?

Payouts are coming and those are going to be fun. We obviously have the champ collecting the bulk of the pot, runner up collecting their share as well.

This year we had Survivor and Weekly Top Scorer also collecting funds. I dropped the ball on updating the league on the weekly top scorer throughout the season but I was keeping track. Honestly, I didn’t post this early in the year because I thought the graphic sucked lol and then I just never improved it. Anyway, here’s who won some money. A lot of calculations to be made, but I’ll wait until the season is actually over.

If this is new to you, we voted on this before the season.

Speaking of which, this is fun and maybe we add more payouts next year?? Maybe we give some to the little guy? Lowest score of the week gets $5? NOT BIASED AT ALL

That’s all I got and/or I’ve run out of steam. If you read to the end, you a real one and you love you this league and I love you. Now, it’s time for PLAYOFFS!