Week 12: All Tied Up

 

It's all tied up

Through an extremely unlikely chain of events, we now have 5 teams locked in for the playoffs, and they all share the exact same 8-4 record. In order to make this happen, we needed the following to occur:

• Only one of these teams could face another top 6 team (Ancient Allens)
• The #1 and #2 teams both needed to lose to lower bracket teams
• Everyone else in the group needed to win

So, we've got a lot of drama to unfold in the top half of our bracket surrounding the bye week positions, but unfortunately for 6/12 teams in the league, the door to the playoffs has essentially been slammed shut with 2 weeks still to play.

The only team who is technically catchable is The Loch Ness Burrow, but 7th place Ballderberg would need to close a 240 point scoring gap in addition to winning both games while Burrow loses them both.

Instead of talking about my frustrating loss to a team that's supposed to be a Bye Week, lets preview the important week 13 matchups for determining playoff seeding. 

Matchup Previews

How do we decide what's important? Lets use 2 metrics as our guide

• At least one of the teams in the Playoffs
• The projected point spread is 10 points or less

Kelsey Lohan's Ghost vs Ballderberg

Separated by just 1 point before lineups have been set, this matchup features the #1 team trying to hang onto bye week positioning, and our last "alive" team hoping to miraculously jump Burrow for 6th.

For Kelsey's side of the ball, a lot of this week comes down to RB health. Joe Mixon is still in the concussion protocol, Etienne left week 12 with a foot injury, and Kamara is questionable for reasons Yahoo didn't really make clear. The only one with a "good" matchup is Etienne, who is probably the least likely to play. There's a lot of WR depth here but choosing the correct WR2 between Kirk, Cooper, and newly unleashed Garret Wilson will be tricky.

Ballderberg has 2 RBs coming off disappointing weeks (Pollard, Dalvin) who should bounce back this week and put up good games. He's also been getting tons of value out of Higgins, who looks to be in a shoot-out vs KC. The biggest question mark on this team is the QB position. If Stafford really is done for the year they're going to need a better option than Goff.

My Pick: Ballderberg. Is this an anti-jynx? A little bit, but it mostly comes down to the RB health disparity

The Loch Ness Burrow vs Jets Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams

Early week projections have Burrow as a 6 point underdog to this 4-8 team, and diving into the lineups it's pretty easy to see why. Jets Fuel getting Rashaad White out of nowhere to pair with top end talents like Jefferson and Chubb has made them a strong team to finish the season. In addition, he's seeing the return of David Njoku just as Herbert regains his receiving weapons, putting up his first 30 point week of the season.

On Burrow's side, very streaky play from Mike Evans and Devonta Smith have made his WR position hard to project. If they both hit he should win this comfortably, but that feels unlikely at this point in the year. Zeke's recent resurgence is a welcome one for this team, but does making RB selection tricky. It's probable he outscores one of JT, KWIII, or Aaron Jones, but guessing which one to bench for him is impossible.

My Pick: Jets Fuel. If Burrow had Ja'Marr Chase healthy to fill a WR spot I would give this to him, but we don't know that's happening this week.

Oh Godwin He Can See vs Momo

One of our closest projected matchups of the week, Momo enters with a 3 point projected lead and a lot to play for as 1 of the 5 teams tied for best record.

On Momo's side the big question mark is Christian Watson. It feels impossible for him to continue catching touchdowns every week (6 in his last 3 games) on such low reception numbers, but then he hasn't been stopped yet. If he has a down week the WR depth on this team is not great. Momo has huge advantages at the QB and TE positions (Hurts and Kelce vs Garoppolo and Hurst) to make up for that weakness, however.

Godwin desperately needs Najee to be healthy enough to go again this week as the options behind him are bleak, but the return of Cordarrel Patterson has been helpful. Both Godwin and Waddle have the skillsets to put up a game breaking week and steal a win here.

Both of these teams could probably be playing better defenses this week, but as waivers have passed already it's unclear if they will.

My Pick: Oh Godwin He Can See. Yeah, I'm calling it. This is the week Watson catches 2 passes for 8 yards and people question if he's even startable for the playoffs before he dominates the rest of the way.

Hazers vs Ancient Allens

Finally! A matchup of two teams actually in the playoffs. The winner of this game has a great shot at a top 2 finish, and Allen enters with a 7 point projected lead.

Looking at Hazers' team, I feel like there's a real strength at RB thanks to Stevenson's breakout, but question marks at WR past Diggs. After a hot stretch of games, Duvernay has been pretty forgettable for the last 3, and Sutton is still being dragged down by whoever is impersonating Russel Wilson on the Broncos. Even though Trevor Lawrence has been doing well the last month or so we have to call this a weakness when he's staring down Josh Allen on the other side of the Matchup.

Allen has all the pieces to put together a win this week, thanks in large part to Singletary and Montgomery getting more consistent usage over the last month. They've both moved from "coin toss" to "solid starter" ground and when coupled with Derrick Henry create a very strong unit. DK and CD have mostly been consistent WRs with few misses or blow up games.

My Pick: Ancient Allens. WR/Flex disparity made up my mind here. I would much rather start Singletary over Sutton or CD over Duvernay

Pickup of the Week

Treylon Burks, Bye Week. Was his touchdown a huge fluke? Yes. But he still looks great out there and should close the year as the Titan's WR1 with potential to be a keeper value next season.

Note: No Shameful benching of the week this time as we didn't cover the past matchups and I don't want to dig through them just for this blurb. If you made a shameful decision that cost you your week, post about it in the slack so we can shame you appropriately. Thank you.