Evans World – Week 8

Greetings, friends … take a look a the standings this week.  I love it.  75% of the league is still in this with 5 weeks left to go.  I’ll take a closer look at the upcoming schedule in a minute, but at we near the end of the bye weeks it’s still very much anyone’s league to win this year.  Any given Sunday means more this year than in most previous years.  I only hope that translates to keeping a close eye on your lineups and the waiver in the weeks ahead.

FIVE WEEKS LEFT AND HERE’S WHAT I SEE

Like I said, 75% of the league is sitting at .500 or above with 5 weeks left in the regular season.  That’s rare for this league that tends to only have about 50% of the teams in that solid of a position to make the playoffs.  Will points be the determining factor?  Maybe for some teams, but really I think it comes down to this:

• Nathan, Berk and Ritchie are pretty much a lock to get into the playoffs.  Looking at the teams they have to play in the next five weeks, they don’t have too many major challenges.  They can only beat themselves (which I hear Berk likes to do a lot) with a bad week.  Since Berk hasn’t had one yet, he should be safe.  Looking at the matchups ahead for those three, I don’t see any major bumps in their roads.
• Tony P, Marshall and Jason are going to have the roughest five weeks.  I hate to use terms like “must win” but they’d better not lose more than 1-2 matchups and hope to stay alive.  They have the most difficult matchups ahead, facing the top three or fellow 4-4 teams.  I won’t even try to predict which, if any, of these three will get in.
• Sorry, Tom and Tony G, but I’m sure you’re out of the picture this year.  I hate to call it so soon, but it is what it is.  Tom started strong but his 4-game losing streak came at the wrong time and knocked him out of this season.
• The rest of us are just too hard for me to predict.  As I said a few weeks ago, those of us in the middle of the standings will be going back and forth with each other to determine who ends up on top.  Looking at the matchups ahead, it’s too soon to call which of us will fill the last positions in the playoffs when the time comes.   All I can suggest is to start someone in every position every week.  You never know how many points difference there will be between us in the end.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• Nathan comes back from his worst week with a huge win over Ritchie to solidify his #2 position.  Nathan is also the league leader in team points and doesn’t have to face any of the top teams again between now and the playoffs.  But you know Nathan, he won’t just sit back and enjoy it.  Nathan wisely picked up Marvin Jones of the Bengals after his monster 2-week performance.  Solid pickup.  Nathan is also enjoying the benefits of Josh Gordon.  I’d bet if you asked Nathan who his #2 WR on his team would be, Gordon wouldn’t have entered his mind.  And yet the Browns, with as poor an offensive as they have, continue to rack up huge FF points.  It’s a mystery that Nathan is happily taking with him to the playoffs.
• Mike too demonstrated that he isn’t done quite yet with a huge win over league leader Berk.  I can only imagine Mike and Gary watching that Dallas-Detroit game with ravenous smiles as they watched player after player rack up the FF points.  Gary too refused to go quietly into the good night with a power win over last-place Tony G.  Will Mike and Gary be able to keep the point totals up and make it to the playoffs???
• Kevin returned to his own monster ways of Week 1-2 by obliterating me.  This is an “epic” victory that I can’t argue with.  I’ll give his players props in a minute, but Kevin has to feel better about his team looking to the weeks ahead.  First he’s got to survive this coming week’s matchup against Nathan.  Good luck, Kevin, we’re all counting on you.
• Ritchie is thankful for taking the Bengals DEF so early in the 10th round of the draft.  Huge week.
• Berk, Tom and my teams were all a little hamstrung by our bye weeks.  Of course, Tom didn’t make any waiver moves at all and scored another spot for himself on the list of lowest scored games ever.  You’d think Nathan would be tied up a bit by the bye week, but not so much given his monster week.  Good planning ahead, Nathan, especially since we know you weren’t thinking about it on draft night.
• Marshall is missing in action but staying alive.  Probably just as well considering what a horrible FF year Brady is having.  Of course, I see Brady having a big week against the Steelers’ pathetic DEF just in time to push me down to the bottom of the standings.  Grr.
• Anybody see the new NFL Shop commercial this weekend?  My favorite part … using NFL gear as a way for a teenager to rebel against their family.  I don’t know what it was but that grumpy teenage girl leaning against the arm of the couch wearing a Jets jersey, her eyes blazing with scorn for the family at the other end as they rejoice in their Patriots’ gear … hilarious!

WEEKLY AWARDS

• MVP – The winning teams all won big this week.  5 teams scoring more than 100 points.  Woof.  I give this week’s award to Kevin mostly for the Denver DEF which just seemed to keep racking up point after point against me.  What a lopsided game offensively for both Denver and Washington, but the DEF and Kevin won big.  Kudos also to Nathan and Brees finally having a monster week together.
• Honorable Mention – Calvin Johnson is by far the greatest WR in the game today, and Mike was happy to see him back in form this weekend.  You know what I like most about Johnson?  He’s so damn quiet.  He just goes out and plays the game.  If he has drama in his personal life, you never hear about it.  He’s the consummate professional.  Refreshing, especially in comparison to Dez Bryant.  Kudos also to Jordy Nelson (Gary) and Golden Tate (Tony P) who helped to seal the easy wins with huge weeks.
• Best Owner Choice – Mike made two simple, obvious and successful choices this week.  Ellington had his one good week at just the right time.  Boykin may be the WR of the future in Green Bay, especially if Jones and Cobb don’t come back soon.  Keep on an eye on both of those guys, although I don’t see Ellington repeating this week’s success soon.
• Unfortunate Bench – Not many picks here this week since most of the players on the bench were on bye.  I could give it to Gary or Tony P for benching Dalton and Newton respectively, but they both won their matchups.  Instead the award goes to Marshall who got caught with the season’s first real game-time decision with Jimmy Graham that bit him hard.  Wouldn’t have been enough to get the win against Jason, but it always stings when those calls go the wrong way.
• No Lawrence Philips Award this week.  If there are stupid people out there doing stupid things, they’re thankfully off my radar.

WE ARE A PART OF THE HUSKER NATION

• While it didn’t hurt as much as it did then, this past weekend’s loss to Minnesota reminded me a ton of our loss against Kansas in 2005 ending the winning streak there.  The 30-year winning streak against the Golden Gophers doesn’t hurt as much considering how little we’d played them during that time.  What hurts is the clear and unmistakable reason we lost the game: bad coaching.  You can point the fingers at the players’ performances plenty.  Martinez playing hurt. Receivers dropping passes. Defensive lineman getting beaten down at the line.  The secondary always out of position.  I could have lived a little more with those failures had I seen from the coaching staff any attempt to adjust and improve during the game. There was NONE.  Martinez stayed in, even when proven ineffective and hurt, while Armstrong and Kellogg waited on the sidelines to possibly spark some life in the offense and the whole team.  No adjustments made at the defensive line to get some pash rush or to help push that offensive line back.  No adjustments made as the secondary, particularly the linebackers, lined up waaaay out of position time and time again.  No adjustments made to counteract the offensive playcalling.  All of those things, ALL OF THEM, should be handled by the coaches.  They failed us, big time.
• That being said, it is time for Papuchis to go.  He is clearly incapable to running a defense at this level.  He has proven multiple times to be unable to make adjustments to his defense during the game.  He clearly hadn’t prepared the defense for Minnesota this week as they looked completely surprised by the play calling that the Gophers offense ran.  Papuchis should recognize it.  Wisconsin ran over us in the Big 10 Championship last year with the same plays.  No adjustments made.  No changes made. No progress.  It’s all on him, not the young players.  I love those young players.  I think they’ll do great things … under the right coach.  He needs to go. 
• I’m all for giving Pelini one more year but have Tim Beck develop the offense and then getting a DC in that can right the ship and develop the players.  Basically, I want the coordinators to build the team while Pelini serves as its heart.  I like what Beck is doing, and I think the players on offense that we have today will work incredibly well with his scheme.  Pelini needs to be hands off the defense and get the right guy in there to develop a better plan with the talent they have and bring the spark of dominating defense back to the Blackshirts.
• Remember, Scott Frost is out there too.  Just saying.
• I don’t know what the rest of the season will look like.  Any OC in the Big 10 can pick up a tape of last week’s game and the Big 10 Championship to figure out how to beat us on that side of the ball.  My only hope is that we bench Martinez at the right time or get him healthy again to put up as many points as possible.
• I hate to say it, but I really, really hope we don’t make it to the Big 10  Championship.

Good luck to you all this week!