A bit of a different approach this week. Our noble critic and wise correspondent Phil has found himself snowed under with something called ‘work’ this week (I don’t know either) so in the spirit of keeping these awards ticking over we’ve taken to crowdsourcing.
Isn’t 2020 just the year of all working together! Apart from that time we all tried to buy all the toilet roll.
Dan’s Buzzsaw: Flitwick Fireflies
I hope I’ve worked this one out right, because otherwise I’m just gifting myself a Buzzsaw here. (Narrator: He hadn’t. Hereafter followed two paragraphs about the Oxford Seahawks winning the Buzzsaw when they didn’t.)
Has this ever happened before? I can’t find record of it. For most orphan teams, it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to be the highest scoring team on the week finally, two years after taking it over, but with the absolute dumpster fire that Mike inherited from the Bradford Championz it could easily have taken a lot longer than that to get over 100 points on a week.
Their 120.00 against the Chippenham Beavers, who just pipped them to a Buzzsaw last week with 144.58 over the Fireflies’ 141.82, was enough to take it and with the youthful exuberance on the roster it certainly won’t be their last.
I thought Devante Parker might have been a canny acquisition from Mike, but quite hilariously he was actually the 5th round startup pick of the original Bradford Championz. Suffice to say that was the only help that the roster Mike took over provided - the Buzzsaw-worthy points mostly came from players who have joined the Fireflies since Mike’s takeover with his rookie draft picks of Kyler Murray, Josh Jacobs, and Marquise Brown all contributing.
Hats off to you Mike, the team is unrecognisable.
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆🏆
Nottingham Bandits - 🏆
Flitwick Fireflies - 🏆
Dan’s Highest Point Scorer - Nottingham Bandits
The Pythons vs. Leopards matchup had the two highest scorers of the week in Chase “4TDs” Claypool and Ryan Tannehill. Alas, they were both sitting on the bench so the award goes to some QB I’ve vaguely heard of called Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes is at a point where his 20.24 points last week is almost a disappointment, but he was back closer to the 30 mark this week with 340 and 2 with a rushing touchdown to boot, helping the Bandits to their 5th straight victory despite some lacklustre performances at WR.
The Bandits are really rolling and would be the favourite for the title by a fair distance even without the overall QB2 on the season so far, but it certainly helps. They’ve added Le’Veon Bell this week since his surprise release from the Jets, so Mahomes will have even more weapons on offense going forward.
Wigan Wombats – 🏆
Chippenham Beavers – 🏆
Nottingham Bandits - 🏆
Lurgan Leopards - 🏆
Flitwick Fireflies - 🏆
Scott’s Unluckiest Loser - Andover Sandslashers
The most sought after award of Phil’s weekly awards was bestowed upon me, Owner, General Manager and Head Coach of the Sandslashers Scott Westwood, to decide.
The 6 finalists for Unluckiest Loser in no particular order are:
Andover Sandslashers -3.82
Chippenham Beavers -4.26
Wigan Wombats - 36.22
Oxford Pythons - 1.38
Hereford Chargers -28.74
Derby Otters -7.4
4 games with less than 8 points in it. But for me “unlucky” means that a player scores well below their predicted/average per game or that your opponent had a player do the opposite.
So in reverse order of unluckiest teams:
3rd. Oxford Pythons:
When you go up Miles Sanders who hasn’t broken 19 yards in 1 rush all season, the last thing you want to see is a 74 yard TD run on 3rd and 9. Oh, and you’ve got 39.1 points on your bench.
7.1/10 on the Unlucky scale
2nd. Chippenham Beavers:
39.80, 27.48, 37.28. These are the last 3 weeks of the number 1 player in fantasy over that period. I’m sure the Beavers are going to win an award elsewhere in this article for the same player, but when Dak went down with Ankle-wrong-way-alitis with 6.37 to go in the 3rd quarter, and at the end of the day you just need 4.26 points to win, well that’s the most rotten luck a fantasy owner can have. Either that or having 39.1 points on your bench.
7.9/10 on the Unlucky scale
1st. Andover Sandslashers:
Tyler Boyd, Joe Burrow, Devin Singletary, James Robinson. 4 of the starting 9 for the Sandslashers scored the lowest they have scored for 4 weeks. Andover just needed anyone of those 4 to perform at par for what was supposed to be an easy victory against the crumbling Coventry Eagles. Now yes, he could have started Deshaun Watson against the tissue paper defence of the Jaguars. But I guess it could be worse. You could have 39.1 points on your bench.
8.6/10 on the Unlucky scale
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆🏆
Coventry Eagles - 🏆
Andover Sandslashers - 🏆
Olly’s Closest Matchup - Oxford Pythons
This week was a close call for many of us and questions will be asked by fans around the league about certain line-up decisions. I’m sure my esteemed colleagues have gone into more detail about that.
Only 2 matchups were won by a margin greater than 8 points this week, which either shows how tight our league is, or how many of us simply fucked up. My glass is always half full, though.
The closest matchup award goes to the Oxford Pythons, who lost by a mere 2.62 points. I needed 13.12 points going into Tuesday nights match up between the Titans and Bills, with Derrick Henry on my side.
The Lurgan Leopards had Beasley who was non-existent in the first half, whereas the ever-reliable Henry was having a steady game with 1 touchdown before half time.
In the 2nd half, it seemed that when Josh Allen wasn’t throwing to the opposition, he was giving it to Dermy’s man. Though surely the 2nd touchdown by Henry was enough for the Pythons to feed on Henry’s 4th quarter carries?
Unfortunately, Henry’s backup began eating into the Kings carries and it was enough to give the Leopards a win.
I’d like to dedicate my award to Phil who gave me this opportunity to rub salt into my own wounds.
Oxford Seahawks – 🏆
Coventry Eagles – 🏆🏆
Flitwick Fireflies – 🏆
Oxford Pythons - 🏆
Mike’s Most Impactful Injury - Chippenham Beavers
“Injuries, injuries, injuries - that’s the only way we’re going to win this”
- Mike’s Dad coaching his Year 3 five-a-side football team.
The Chargers lost D.J. Chark in the 4th quarter to an ankle injury, which leaves Jason with a “will he/won’t he” decision for week 6. The Pythons had to reconcile themselves after a painful 2.6-point loss with Sammy Watkins hobbling out early with a hamstring issue that will leave him unavailable for a few weeks.
No team was hit quite as hard, and as often, as the Chippenham Beavers this week. After finding out early that they would be without Michael ‘Slant Boy’ Thomas due to a particularly zealous temper tantrum, Tom’s Beavers also went on to suffer 3 injuries: Dionte Johnson’s back went (due to the strain of holding back Chase Claypool’s fantasy day) before he ever got going, Dalvin Cook’s groin stopped him from finishing off what was looking to be a season best fantasy day, but it was Dak Prescott and that run that made the world wince that has won most impactful injury. This added up to an incredibly unlucky Week 5 for Tom (who even with all these setbacks was only 4.27-points away from a victory) and it leaves him without his preferred starting QB for the rest of the season. It was tempting to give this award to Olly, because, of course, we cannot ever be sure whether Dak was faking it.
Other more innocuous injuries included, A.J. Green, recent Lurgen Leopard’s acquisition, taking another knock to his comeback attempt with a hamstring issue and Kyle Allen making way (due to a head arm problem) for the most conflicted feel-good moment of the season so far: Alex Smith returning after horrific injury, multiple surgeries and 2 years off the football field only to be continually chased around his backfield by the league’s scariest defender play after play! Uplifting and terrifying – what more can you ask for?
Gateshead Spartans – 🏆🏆
Coventry Eagles – 🏆
Oxford Pythons – 🏆
Chippenham Beavers – 🏆
Chris’s Worst Decision - Andover Sandslashers
What is it they say about looking at yourself before you judge others? My Spartans had the lowest efficiency of the week with me picking the wrong QB, 2RB, 2 WR and TE, giving me 66% but I won so who cares about that. These wrong decisions had no impact on the week overall so that’s out of the window.
Chase Claypool certainly grabbed headlines this week, grabbed 4 TDs, but didn’t grab the W for the Pythons since he was sitting on the bench. Unfortunately Olly didn’t have the foresight to play someone who would probably have only started on the Otters or Wombats depleted rosters. I can’t blame the Pythons for going with a bigger name as the author of this section hadn’t even heard of Claypool before Sunday night. Had he started over anybody in Olly’s lineup he would have comfortably given the Pythons the win, as would starting Herbert over Jackson, but again, starting last seasons MVP is usually the correct play.
That leaves us with the most prolific bench the league has ever seen. The Sandslashers would tell you themselves that they are almost cursed to make the wrong lineup decisions no matter what they do and that was certainly the case again this week. There were a few choices for this award, and I would love nothing more than to mention how scott being a homer and starting Robinson over Gaskin cost him the match. However the real big decision was leaving Watson on his bench in favour of #1 pick Burrow. Had the sandslashers started the more experienced Watson they would have won their matchup by 20 points, however it wasn’t to be and the sandslashers longstanding relationship with bengals players has let him down on this occasion
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆
Andover Sandslashers – 🏆🏆
Lurgan Leopards – 🏆