Week 5 Power Rankings
Please join me in officially welcoming Samantha to The Worst League!
Okay, technically Samantha has already been a part of the league for four weeks now. But in Week 5, she definitively announced her presence.
Reversing course on a difficult 1-3 start in which she scored 81 points or fewer in three of four weeks, Samantha exploded in Week 5 with a career-high 128 points, taking down the league’s new leader in the Power Rankings (spoiler alert!) in the process. And that was with Isaiah Crowell’s 28 points on the bench. It’s the second-highest point total this season, and had Crowell replaced Nyheim Hines, it would have been the most.
While she might have been left for dead a week ago, her team suddenly has signs of life. In fact, the problem for Samantha has never been points. It’s been who to start. In the previous four weeks, she’s never had fewer than three double-digit flex scorers on the bench and now three times that’s included a 20+ point RB or WR.
But suddenly in Week 5, it seems as if things have begun to click as a reliable rotation has solidified itself with Cooper Kupp and Kenny Golladay emerging as top-12 WRs to pair opposite first-round pick Odell Beckham Jr. Even David Njoku has begun to emerge in Cleveland as one of Baker Mayfield’s favorite targets, leading the team this week with 11 targets. Combine that elite receiving group (she ranks second in the league in WR scoring) with Tom Brady and Christian McCaffrey and you’re just an RB2 away from the kind of dominance we saw this week. And maybe, just maybe, that RB is Isaiah Crowell whose 13.8 ppg ranks 8th among RBs.
Welcome, indeed.
The Scoreboard
The flip side of Samantha’s surprising victory is another painful loss for Alex who has now lost his second game this season in which he has scored over 100 points. Despite James Conner’s week-high 30 points, Alex was not able to overcome the deficit due in part to another negative point total from his defense—the third time this season his defense has posted a negative total.
Nick defeated JT in a 110-68 route and is now 4-1 and on a three-game win streak thanks to 20+ point games from Saquon Barkley and Eric Ebron. It’s officially the best start of Nick’s career, and he is now alone at the top of the standings as the only 4-1 team. Meanwhile, JT adds injury to insult with the news of Jay Ajayi’s torn ACL, which will sideline him for the rest of the season. Unfortunately Ajayi, who was JT’s fourth-round pick, was his first RB selected after starting WR-WR-WR. Now he’s left with Kerryon Johnson, Wendell Smallwood, Latavius Murray, Nick Chubb and C.J. Anderson as the only RBs available on his roster to help him climb out of a 1-4 hole and his first four-game losing streak in nearly five years.
In the Leaders Division, two key matchups saw a reversal of fortunes. Both Brandon and Trevor scored 104 points to upset Josh and Erik, respectively. The key figure in both of those games turned out to be Mark Ingram who returned to the Saints roster on MNF for the first time this season. As was noted last week, Trevor made a big bet on Ingram, trading away Phillip Lindsay and DeAndre Hopkins. Now after Ingram rushed for 53 yards and 2 TDs, scoring 19 fantasy points, it seems the bet has paid off at least in the short term. Of course, the return of Ingram dampened the performance of Alvin Kamara who was not able to muster the necessary 30 points (something he had already accomplished twice this season) to help Josh defeat Brandon. All are now tied in the standings with 3-2 records.
Geoff defeated Greco in a matchup of two of the league’s 1-3 teams. His fire sale of Mike Evans for parts yielded a modest 20 points from the trio of Derrick Henry, Sterling Shepard and George Kittle. But it was the performance of Aaron Rodgers that provided just enough points to get him over the top. For Greco, it’s her fourth loss in a row. As we alluded to last week, this is now her first four-game losing streak in league history.
Finally, perhaps the most enthralling matchup this week was the low-scoring nail-biter between Gray and Jess. Trailing by a score of 75-72 entering MNF, Jess needed just 4 points from Adrian Peterson to defeat Gray, something Peterson had already done in each of his three previous games. But after a hard hit to Peterson and an early deficit, the Redskins decided to essentially bench Peterson, providing him with just 4 carries for the game. The result? 3 points and a tie! It’s the league’s first tie since Week 12 of 2016 when Jess tied Trevor by a score of 93-93. It is the eighth tie in league history, the second for Gray and the third (!) for Jess, which is the most for any owner in league history.
The Power Rankings
For the first time this season, we have a new leader atop the Power Rankings—commissioner Alex! Despite his loss to Samantha, Alex still racked up the third-most points this week and 9 true wins, which was enough to push him past Josh.
In his draft preview, we commented on Alex’s penchant for bad luck, noting that entering the season he was “the unluckiest owner in league history.” Unfortunately for Alex, that trend appears to have continued in the early going here, as he leads the Power Rankings but with a losing record. Despite his three losses, he has scored triple digits in four of five weeks, is averaging 104.8 ppg (which ranks second), and has never scored fewer than 89 points in a game. By comparison, six other team owners have won games in which they scored fewer than 89 points. Geoff has done it twice. As you can probably estimate from Alex’s 41-14 true record, his team is much more deserving of a 4-1 record than the 2-3 record it currently possesses. Nevertheless, your record is your record.
Josh swaps places with Alex, falling to second in the Power Rankings. He is trailed by Brandon and Erik who remain third and fourth, respectively, though both have narrowed the gap on the two league frontrunners. After his 4-1 start, Nick moves up a spot into fifth place, switching positions with Jess whose low-scoring outing drops her to sixth.
In the back half of the rankings, we start with Trevor, who along with Nick has made up a little ground on Jess in the rankings thanks to 104 points in Week 5. Samantha, our prize winner this week, makes the biggest jump, rising two spots to eighth. Trending down are JT and Gray, the latter of whom dropped two spots after a subpar outing. Though he is just 1-4, JT still rates as the ninth overall team owner in the rankings. Of course, that was before the Ajayi injury.
Finally, Geoff and Greco occupy the league’s cellar and honestly Geoff is lucky to have two wins to his name at this point, which for what it’s worth is just as many as Alex has, the leader of our Power Rankings. He is doing whatever he can to hold that team together until Le’Veon Bell’s return. Both he and Greco are averaging fewer than 75 ppg for the season.
The Playoff Picture
After four weeks of fairly even displacement in the standings, chaos has broken out in Week 5 thanks in part to the unconventional tie between Jess and Gray.
In the Legends Division, Nick leads all teams as the only owner with a 4-1 record. He’s followed by the two owners with ties this week—Jess and Gray at 3-1-1 and 2-2-1. Then Power Rankings leader Alex and Samantha, both with 2-3 records. And finally JT at 1-4.
Meanwhile in the Leaders Division, there’s a four-way tie for first place between Josh, Brandon, Erik and Trevor, though Josh currently maintains a lead in tiebreaker scoring of 23 points. They are then trailed by Geoff and Greco with records of 2-3 and 1-4, respectively.
But of course, the playoff picture tells a slightly different story. After simulating the season 10,000 times (for a look at how we do that, check out this article from Sunday), it’s not Nick (4-1) or Alex (.745 TW%) with the greatest probability of making the playoffs, but Josh! Thanks in part to a 3-2 record, a solid standing in the Power Rankings and a lead in points (107.4 ppg), Josh is still the favorite to make the playoffs (95%) and win his division (51%).
Also with a better than 80% chance to make the playoffs are Brandon (3-2), Nick (4-1) and Erik (2-3). For Brandon and Erik, they are highly ranked within the Power Rankings with three wins apiece, while Nick is seen as a slightly inferior team but does have the benefit of 4 wins. Remember, teams with a 4-1 record would have made a six-team playoff 75% of the time according to our chart on the effect of playoff expansion.
Next up is Jess with a 79% chance to make the playoffs. Though it may suck to get a tie this week, especially the way it occurred (oh yeah, Mason Crosby missed four field goals AND AN EXTRA POINT and if he’d just made the stinkin’ extra point she’d have won…), a tie really can come in handy late. After all, a tie counts as one half of a win and one half of a loss. It truly is better than a loss. In fact, of the 16 teams that have had a tie in league history, five went on to make the playoffs and an additional three would have made the playoffs had a six-team playoff existed.
Alex (our Power Rankings leader) checks in with the sixth-greatest odds. Why so low? Well, he does have three losses. But beyond that, Alex also faces the most difficult schedule ahead including four games against Josh and Brandon, the two teams vying for the top spot in the Power Rankings and the only other two team owners currently averaging more than 100 ppg.
But were the playoffs to start today, Trevor, not Alex, would claim the final wildcard spot. (Note: I’ve added those seeds as superscript above the team owner’s name to indicate their current seeding if the playoffs started today.) Trevor in fact makes the biggest jump this week in chances to 53% up from 29% last week.
Gray, also with a tie, sees his odds dip slightly to 16%. Samantha’s odds rise to 8% thanks to her big week, though both she and Gray are classified as long shots to win their divisions. Finally, Geoff, JT and Greco round out the group, each with a less than 5% chance. And while Geoff and Greco have relatively easy schedules remaining (Greco gets Jess and Gray twice), JT has the second toughest schedule with four total games against Josh and Erik, both top-4 in the Power Rankings.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out again one of the caveats I mentioned Sunday as it relates to these projections. That caveat is that these numbers assume your team will continue playing at its current level. So if you have Le’Veon Bell returning (or possibly James Conner evaporating), an unexpected new injury (or perhaps a player on the mend), or better (or worse) matchups ahead for your actual football players, the model does not take that into account. It also does not consider any trades or free agent acquisitions you may or may not make. It’s simply the projection if the status quo is maintained. And in fantasy football, we know that’s often not for long.
So even though these numbers do look bleak for Geoff, JT and Greco, I must point out that there is most definitely still a good chance for each of them. After all, you don’t need to start worrying until you get to five losses. Even 64% of 7-6 teams make the playoffs. Heck it’s possible for a 6-6-1 team or even a 6-7 team with a points tiebreaker to sneak in. That means Greco or JT could go 5-3 down the stretch and still get in. And that’s doable for anybody.
Looking Ahead to Week 6
As we preview the games to come this week, we have quite possibly the biggest matchup of the season on the calendar—a game between our two early leaders in the Power Rankings, Alex and Josh. A win for Josh would help him keep pace with the other owners in his division while Alex is desperate for a win to avoid dropping to 2-4. In a bit of irony, Alex will be without QB Drew Brees who is on bye and must face Patrick Mahomes, the player he traded away after Week 2.
Other big matchups include Nick vs. Trevor, Geoff vs. Gray (a.k.a. Mike Evans’ revenge) and a battle between husband and wife as Brandon and Samantha face off for the first time in league history. Plus, JT and Greco both hope to avoid their first five-game losing streaks in league history while Nick hopes to keep the magic going by extending his winning streak to four. If he can get to 5-1, his first playoff appearance might be in the cards as no 5-1 team has ever missed the playoffs.
Nick in the playoffs? Now that would be a welcome sight.
