NFL FANTASY THREAD

Next week’s fixtures:

The Night Trains 7-6 v 5-8 BearsCerealBowl

Shedite’s Silverados 7-6 v 6-7 Don’t give a Luck

Wingardium Le’Veon-sa 8-5 v 6-7 You like that

North Galway Tornadoes 6-7 v 3-10 AFC Shenhua Bills of Wicklow

The green wizards 5-8 v 12-1 Super Marino

After this week, it is now clear that 8-6 will be sufficient for the playoffs. However, a number of teams can still finish on 7-7, in numerous combinations. Among those six, the base head to head records are: The Night Trains (4-2), Shedite’s Silverados (3-3), North Galway Tornadoes (3-3), Don’t give a Luck (3-4), You like that (2-3).

That doesn’t answer very much, though, so a better way to look at it is to look at the various scenarios. The key games are The Night Trains v BearsCerealBowl and Shedite’s Silverados v Don’t give a Luck. Obviously enough, that gives four combinations of results (WW, WL, LW and LL), and then the other results that matter are for You like that and the North Galway Tornados. Anyway, there are effectively 16 combinations, although in the first four (where The Night Trains and Shedite’s Silverados both win), the only important thing is that those two teams win, as it knocks everyone else out. Anyway, here are the combinations, along with what each team probably wants. The first tiebreaker is head to head and the second, on default settings, is overall points scored.

1)      If The Night Trains and Shedite’s Silverados both win, both are into the playoffs, everyone below that is out. If either wins, then they are obviously into the playoffs as well.

2)      If The Night Trains win and Shedite’s Silverados lose, The Night Trains are in, plus:

a)       If You like that and the North Galway Tornados also win: Shedite’s Silverados (3-2), North Galway Tornados (3-2), Don’t give a Luck (2-3), You like that (1-2) – Shedite’s Silverados (1-1) v North Galway Tornados (1-1) – on overall points, North Galway Tornadoes are about 90 points ahead, so that’s close to guaranteed for them.

b)      If You like that win and North Galway Tornados lose: Shedite’s Silverados (2-1), Don’t give a Luck (2-1), You like that (0-2) – Shedite’s Silverados (1-1) v Don’t give a Luck (1-1) – on overall points, Don’t give a Luck are about 170 points ahead, and would have to beat Shedite’s Silverados in this scenario, so into the playoffs.

c)       If You like that lose and North Galway Tornados win: North Galway Tornados (3-1), Shedite’s Silverados (2-2), Don’t give a Luck (1-3) – North Galway Tornados into the playoffs.

d)      If You like that and North Galway Tornados both lose: Shedite’s Silverados (1-1), Don’t give a Luck (1-1) – on overall points, Don’t give a Luck are about 170 points ahead, and would have to beat the Silverados in this scenario, so into the playoffs.

3)      If The Night Trains lose and Shedite’s Silverados win, Shedite’s Silverados are in, plus:

a)       If You like that and North Galway Tornados also win: You like that (2-1), Night Trains (2-1), North Galway Tornados (0-2) – then You like that (1-1) v Night Trains (1-1) – on overall points, The Night Trains are about 34 points ahead currently, so it is up in the air, dependent on performance.

b)      If You like that win and North Galway Tornados lose: Night Trains (1-1), You like that (1-1) – on overall points, The Night Trains are about 34 points ahead currently, so it is up in the air, dependent on performance.

c)       If You like that lose and North Galway Tornados win: Night Trains (1-0), North Galway Tornados (0-1) – The Night Trains are in.

d)      If You like that and North Galway Tornados both lose: The Night Trains make the playoffs.

4)      If the Night Trains and Shedite’s Silverados both lose:

a)       If You like that and North Galway Tornados also win: Night Trains (4-2), Shedite’s Silverados (3-3), North Galway Tornados (3-3), Don’t give a Luck (3-4), You like that (2-3) – The Night Trains into the playoffs, then for the second spot Shedite’s Silverados (1-1) v North Galway Tornados (1-1) on overall points, North Galway Tornadoes are about 90 points ahead, so that’s close to guaranteed for them.

b)      If You like that win and North Galway Tornados lose: Night Trains (3-2), Don’t give a Luck (3-2), Shedite’s Silverados (2-2), You like that (1-3) – The Night Trains and Don’t give a Luck into the playoffs.

c)       If You like that lose and North Galway Tornados win: Night Trains (3-1), North Galway Tornados (3-2), Shedite’s Silverados (2-3), Don’t give a Luck (2-4) – The Night Trains and North Galway Tornados into the playoffs

d)      If You like that and North Galway Tornados both lose: Night Trains (2-1), Don’t give a Luck (2-2), Shedite’s Silverados (1-2) – The Night Trains and Don’t give a Luck into the playoffs.

On a team by team basis then, with odds assigned based not on the teams but on the number of possible ways of qualifying for the playoffs:

For the Night Trains: win and in. If The Night Trains lose, and Shedite’s Silverados also lose, then the Night Trains are also definitely in. If Shedite’s Silverados win, and You like that lose, then the Night Trains are also definitely in. It is only where the Night Trains lose, Shedite’s Silverados win and You like that win that the Night Trains could be knocked out. Then, however, they have about a 35 point advantage of points scored over You like that, being the second tiebreaker. The odds of making the playoffs are around 90-95%. 

For Shedite’s Silverados: win and in. If they lose, they are just about certainly out. There is the vanishingly unlikely scenario of the Night Trains losing, Shedite’s Silverados also losing, You like that winning, the North Galway Tornados winning, and Shedite’s Silverados still scoring over 90 points more than the North Galway Tornados. That is not going to happen. The odds of making the playoffs are an even 50%.

For Don’t give a Luck: they need to win and they need North Galway Tornadoes to lose. How the Night Trains do doesn’t matter. They need two results to go their way, so I’d say the odds of making the playoffs are about 25%

For North Galway Tornados: They need to win and they need Shedite’s Silverados to lose as well. How the Night Trains do doesn’t matter, barring Shedite’s Silverados somehow losing while scoring over 90 points more than them. They basically only need two results to go their way, so I’d say the odds of making the playoffs are about 25%.

For You like that: they need to win, and they also definitely need both The Night Trains to lose and Shedite’s Silverados to win. They then also need to outscore the Night Trains overall by more than 33.72 points. I’d say the odds of making the playoffs are around 5-10%.