[League Update] Week 14: PLAYOFFS!

Here's our video preview of the championship playoffs. It's long, but worth it.

We made it! Well, some of us did.

The third regular season of the Royale with Cheese league is finished and it's time for the playoffs.

First off, congratulations to regular season champion and the season's top scorer Muscular Mathletes. They have come a long way from winning our first Sad Trombone award of the season.

Here are the brackets:

Championship

• (1) Muscular Mathletes (11-3, 1,394 points) vs. (4) Cant Be That Hard (8-6, 1,263)
• (2) Jeff Fisher's Mullet (9-5, 1,324) vs. (3) unc79michiganstate65 (8-6 1,393)

Consolation

• (5) Getting over the hump (8-6, 1,227) vs. (8) Correctamundo (7-7, 1,247)
• (6) Academic Probation (7-7, 1,318) vs. (7) The Reservoir Dogs (7-7, 1,284)

Some observations, about this past week and the season as a whole. 

• You had to be .500 to make the playoffs. All of the 7-7 teams made it. The first teams out were 6-8. I like when it breaks evenly like that. 
• Cant Be That Hard should be thanking unc79michiganstate65. Hard was the one playing unc when he had his "protest" and benched all of his players. Not saying that Hard wouldn't have won, but it's nice getting a guaranteed W. 
• Speaking of unc and the protest, that team was the second-highest scorer on the season, just one point behind the Mathletes. And it got 0 points one week. 
• Monday night was a big one for several teams. Cant Be That Hard and Getting over the hump were going head-to-head in Week 14, with the winner making the championship playoff. But GOTH couldn't get enough out of Romo and Gould to get the win. 
• The Reservoir Dogs must have been hurting the most after Monday night. A win would have put Dogs in the championship as the fourth seed, but they fell 5 points short of a win over Chicks Dig Scars. Dez Bryant just couldn't get that second touchdown.
• Speaking of Chicks, they finally broke the losing streak with a nice win in the last week of the season. Not to beat a dead horse, but the Chicks were in first place earlier this season and ended up missing both playoffs after a 7-game losing streak.
• Muscular Mathletes' league-high 1,394 points on the season is actually the lowest league-high total in the three-year history of the league. Correctamundo scored 1,431 last season and Gangster Teddy Bears (which actually finished fifth in the regular season) scored 1,438 points.
• The top seed going into the playoffs has only won the league championship once when Taking it to the next level did it in 2011, the first year. Last year's league champion, Blaupunkt, was the second seed coming into the playoffs.
• This is the first time in the short history of the league that the previous league champion hasn't made the championship playoff. Blaupunkt didn't even make the consolation playoffs.
• The best single-game performance by an individual player this season was in Week 1, when Peyton Manning scored 46.28 points. That's still less than the highest single-game performance by a individual player in league history, which came when Doug Martin scored 51.2 points in 2012.
• PerpetualMotionSquad had a strong finish to the season, winning three weeks in a row. It also had a strong finish last year and still started horribly this season. But after being alone in last place, PMS actually finished in a tie at the bottom with Blaupunkt and Something.
• PMS is also the only team that has been in the league more than one year and never made the playoffs. Four teams have made either the championship or consolation playoffs all three seasons: Correctamundo, Getting over the hump, Academic Probation and Jeff Fisher's Mullet.
• I think that's all I have, but I accidentally hit return on my bulleted list and don't feel like deleting it. 

There's a lot of business to take care of this week, so let's move straight to the awards. 

Everyone give a standing ovation to unc79michiganstate65. It scored a league-high 164.25 points this week. That's the highest single-week score in league history, easily passing Blaupunkt's 144.12 score from Week 2 in 2012. The stars aligned for unc. Josh McCown, Marques Colston, Jimmy Graham, LeSean McCoy and Matt Forte all had breakout games in Week 14. Unfortunately for Panthers fans, two of those teams helped Drew Brees slice-and-dice the Panthers' secondary. I may or may not have cussed out Mark in a text message because of that. 

This week's very Sad Trombone award goes to Correctamundo, which fell all to pieces when it mattered most, scoring 33 points in Week 14. It's no Blaupunkt Sad Orchestra, but it came at a worse time. 

The You Got Lucky Award goes to Something, which actually had the second-lowest point total of the weekend but was lucky enough to play Correctamundo. 

Now to other league business. 

I am putting forth two proposals for the league. When this post goes up, there will be two poll questions on this blog, in the right rail. I'd like for you to vote on them. Majority wins, whether I like it or not. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. 

Proposal 1: Make this a keeper league. 

There is functionality in NFL.com Fantasy that allows "keepers." That basically means that each team can keep a certain number of players from one season to the next. I propose we allow one keeper per season. That means that if you have a player that you want to keep going into next season, you can. For example, if I wanted to keep Peyton Manning, I could. I would still have to draft the rest of my team next year.

Note: To clear up some confusion, you don't have to keep a player each year. Those who don't keep a player will just have an extra draft pick. (Here's the keeper help section on NFL.com: http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball/help/custom-keepers.)

The keeper essentially takes the place of one of your draft picks. It looks like the default is that it takes the place of your first draft pick, but that could be changed. We can decide that if the vote comes out in favor of keepers.

Thanks, Katie, for asking the question. 

Proposal 2: League champion chooses the draft order. 

In the interest of giving us something to play for and something to win, I propose that the league champion is the one that sets the draft order for the next season. They can choose the order based on any rationale they choose. The only criteria is, obviously, every team must have a pick. To balance it out, I say that we still keep the "snake" system, where the draft order reverses between each round. So if you pick first in the first round, you'll pick last in the second round, and then first again in the third. 

Again, these polls are on the right side of the blog. Please vote by next Tuesday, if possible. It's only two clicks. 

This week's Thursday night game is between the Chargers and the Broncos. No teams have a bye week. 

Wishing you sure hands and strong ACLs, 

Corey