PFFL 2011 week 1 news & notes

Pittsburgh Franchise Football League
2011 News & Notes

Week 1

Weekly Conference Winners						TEAM OF THE WEEK
East		Central		West		Cleantown
Cleantown	185	TD's	149	Bid 66 Bandits	150
Cousins Mc	159	JR's Boys	144	Smiley's Snipers	138

Pittsburgh Survival Football
Survivor 1: The 11th year of the contest sees not only a new record high entries of 597, but smashes last year's record high of 535. The contest actually hit 600 but 3 contestants failed to put in a pick and were removed. As far as point spreads go this was one of the hardest first weeks to pick as there were no double digit favorites and just two teams were favored by more than a touch down. Week 1 was the same as last year in the amount of teams being picked to win (19) but the opening week losses were nearly tripled that of last year (56 to 159); and it very nearly was almost an opening week massacre. Nearly half the teams picked to win (9 of 19) lost but of the three most heavily picked teams two were losing out right in the fourth quarter. Had Arizona (132) and San Diego (102) not come back in the final quarter to win their games the total losses would have been 393 or 65% of the contest.
Cleveland accounted for the most casualties at 93 but although I also thought they would beat Cincinnati, I was surprised at how many chose to pick them (93). Considering there were 19 different teams picked you know there would be some questionable picks but to the 3 that picked the Steelers in Baltimore, don't you think a nice home game against a weak opponent ...? Yea, hind sight is easy I know and since I have never won this thing I will stop right there and say after a huge week one loss there are still 438 survivors moving into week 2.

PFFL Trivia

Who was the oldest player that played on a team in the 2010 season?
John Carney	Jeff Feagles	Brett Favre	Donovan McNabb

PFFL 2011 Draft

In three of the last four years there was a consensus #1 pick over all conferences and I do believe if Foster hadn't gotten hurt it would have been four of five. The uncertainty of the severity of his injury and availability in week1 produced one of the most diverse drafts in a long time. If we include the Sandlot draft there isn't one player that was drafted in the top three of all four drafts. Peterson did go #1 in two of the four drafts but wasn't taken until fourth in the West. Foster was taken first in the West and third in the Central but didn't crack the top three in the other two drafts. Jamaal Charles went first in the Sandlot but wasn't picked in the top three of any of the other drafts. There wasn't even a consensus #1 receiver as Roddy White went before Andre Johnson in the Central. If you had to pick a winner it would be AP with an average draft position of 2.0 amongst the four drafts. Ray Rice would be second at 2.75 while CJ comes in third with a 3.0 average; Foster's injury pushed him down to a 3.50 average draft position in the PFFL. Not only was there no consensus #1 pick this year but there also wasn't a consensus choice of first pick. Two of the four teams drawing the ace chose to take a lower pick.

Regarding the information below, for the second year in a row - and this is according to MFL mind you - the Sharks have had the worst draft in the Central. And again for the second year in a row MFL says Little Johnny and Will's and TBA made the worst pick in their respective drafts. Now we have to remember all this is about average draft position because after all, the pick of Little Johnny's they said was the worst in their draft last year was Arian Foster in the third round. But I do have to agree with their assessment of TBA's pick this year of Heath Miller in the seventh round as being the worst in the Sandlot draft. Not so much because of Miller but more so because of Dean's hypocrisy. A Steeler Dean, really!

The information below was taken from MyFantasyLeague.com's draft-recap reports and the basis used for their deductions are their ADP stats.

East
Best Draft	Midquippa
Worst Draft	Syndicate
Best Pick	Cousins Mc - Aaron Rodgers rd 2
Worst Pick	Capital - Joseph Addai - rd 3
Central
Best Draft	Frannie's Train
Worst Draft	Sharks
Best Pick	Snake & Shake - Michael Vick rd 2
Worst Pick	Little Johnny & Will's - Michael Turner - rd 1
West
Best Draft	MNE
Worst Draft	B&B
Best Pick	MNE - Michael Vick rd 2
Worst Pick	B&B - Tashard Choice rd 7
Sandlot
Best Draft	JR's Boys
Worst Draft	Smokin Stogies
Best Pick	IC Lightning - Arian Foster rd 1
Worst Pick	TBA - Heath Miller rd 7

Note: If anyone is curious of the MFL message in red at the top of the Draft Recap report at the conference websites about a keeper or dynasty league it was generated because we changed our roster limits to 19, the MFL software construes this as an unfinished draft.

Welcome to the PFFL

The 2011 PFFL Welcomes four new teams:

East Conference: Dego's R Us, Capital and Midquippa

Sandlot League: Smokin Stogies and Capital (Capital joined both the East and the Sandlot League)

Three of the four can be labeled rookies as none of the owners were ever in the PFFL but the Midquippa team sees a previous owner returning to the league: Nick of the former Association team entered the league in the late 90's but left us in the 2006 season. He now returns after a six-year layoff to team up with the owners of last year's Coast to Coast Sandlot team.
Welcome to all the new teams and welcome back Nick!

Looking Back at 20 Years of the PFFL - 1992 thru 1994 The Early Years

The league originated with one 14-team league in 1992. Like most leagues back then it was total points only and the scoring was a very simple format of touchdowns only and kicker points. Actually the kicker was the highest scoring position and a kicker going as the first overall pick in a draft wasn't uncommon back then. The scoring average for the first three years was around 8 points a week. Anything above 10 usually won the week. The winning total in the first year was 180 points. The margin of victory that year was 1 1/2 points and the next two years a mere half point separated first and second place. Just 2 1/2 points separated the first three winners from second place.

The first year produced a record that will never be broken: A team failed to produce a single point scoring a Zero for the week. Kickers were given a half point for an extra point but this particular week not one of his players scored, his QB failed to throw a touch down and his kickers team was shut out.

The beginning of Fantasy Football can be traced back to 1962. The late Wilfred "Bill" Winkenbach, a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders, Scotty Stirling a reporter for the Oakland Tribune and George Ross a sports editor for the Oakland Tribune are credited for starting the first league - an 8-team league they named GOPPPL which stood for Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League.

To view all past champions and record holders go to the Hall of Champions:

Acquisitions and Barter

     PFFL transactions are now open. Teams may acquire as many as 2 free agents a week and may offer and accept trades until the trading deadline. A full explanation of PFFL transactions can be found in the General Rules. Information is also available at all MFL sites under the Help link. A reminder again for teams putting in for waivers: there are 2 rounds of waivers each week, in the first round you need only make as many requests as your number in the waiver order. For example: If you are fifth in the waiver order, you need only put in for 5 players to insure you get 1 player in that round.
    A reminder for trades: The trade voting period for this year is 1 day only. Also note there is a feature that allows owners to define a date in which their trade offer will expire. The default time is 1 week. Also new this year is trade arbitration: Should a trade get voted down it will be sent to an independent agency Fantasy Dispute.com who will render a decision of yes or no on the trade being allowed.

PFFL League Statistics
Weekly Winnings		League Leaders
First	Cleantown	Total Points	Cleantown	185
Second tie	TD's	Potential Points	JR's Boys	223
Second tie	Bid 66 Bandits	Power Rank	JR's Boys	45.11
Third tie	Snipers, JR's Boys, Cousins Mc	Efficiency Rating	Endzonerz	97.2
Fourth		High Week	Cleantown - Week 1	185

Sandlot League

Sandlot Score: Last year with 13 teams the Sandlot average was slightly below the Main league as was expected. This year however with the differences in rules and one less team, just the opposite is expected and delivered as week 1's 131 average demonstrates.

	Week 1	Yearly Ave	Beginning Ave
Sandlot	131	131	114.1
Main	124	124	116.9

The PFFL Sandlot League enters its second year with one 12-team league. To shake things up some changes were made this year to give it a different flavor than the main league: A tight end position was added upping the starting lineups to 10 players; The draft was 20 rounds and teams had no restrictions on who to draft. There was no set structure of players to draft as teams were free to draft whomever they wanted as long as they could field a starting lineup; the scoring was tweaked giving a -1 point for interceptions and the defensive points allowed were tweaked giving a little more credence to points allowed. We'll see how it goes...

Sandlot Statistics
Weekly Winners		League Leaders
First	Joey's Place	Total Points	Joey's Place	178
Second	Warriors	Potential Points	Joey's Place & Bozo's Circus	187
Third	NA	Power Rank	Joey's Place	35.9
Fourth	NA	Efficiency Rating	Joey's Place	95.2
Fifth	NA	High Week	Joey's Place - week 1	178

PFFL STUFF

The Score: This is now the sixth year of the current scoring system and I don't know if this is an indication of the way the year will go, but it was by far the highest scoring first week of the six. It is an indication of how the NFL has been going as they are all about scoring anymore. The 124 actually matched 2008's highest week of the year. Last year's high week was 129.7. According to the last five years an average week 1 is 113. To further illustrate how high this first week scoring was 124 was the second-highest week of all last year. Cleantown's 185-point explosion is the reason for the disparity of the East compared to the other two conferences.

Week 1				Overall	Beginning
East	Central	West	Ave	2011	5-year ave
128	122	122	124	124	116.9

● Congratulations on a fast start to Cleantown of the East 185 points and Joey's Place in the Sandlot 178.

● Frannie's Train was more like Frannie's Train Wreck as the only team not to break 100 for the week.

● The Trading Period is less than 24 hours old and Schleprock and the Detroit Lions have already made a trade in the West. Even though it is his son's team and not his you have to think Marty had something to do with it.

● Rosters may now increase to 19. This means you do not have to drop a player with your first waiver pickup.

● Those that follow the games on a computer might want to consider downloading the MFL Game Day Program available through the Live Scoring section on the web sites. This is a free download. It is a much more comprehensive program and also much faster with the updates. If you used it last year you must download the new version for this year. It is also a good idea to click on the program updates available under the "Options" tab of the program each week. And click on the player updates after the kickoff of each section of games like: Thursday, Sunday 1 pm, Sunday 4 pm etc. to download any changes that teams might have made to their rosters before the games began.

● All teams should visit their Franchise Setup section at the conference websites under the Owners tab and select their personal preference options for the year. Also in this section is the listing of each team's email addresses. It is a good idea to check all information for accuracy.

● We say it every year and until someone does it we will keep saying it every year: There still hasn't been a repeat champion in the PFFL - 19 years and 19 different champions.

● As he usually does Dean has come out of the gate fast with his illogical, disjointed, disconnected, disordered etc. etc. oh and lets not leave out misspelled message board posts but so far they have all been in the Sandlot League. We can only hope he stays there.

● There are 10 regular season games remaining.

● I would like to welcome everyone to the 20th season of the PFFL and thank all who are participating!

League Total Point Rankings
Rk	Franchise	PF
1	Cleantown	185
2	Cousins Mc	159
3	Bid 66 Bandits	150
4	TD's	149
5	Commish East	147
6	JR's Boys	144
7	Smiley's Snipers	138
8	Capital	136
9	Archie's	135
10	Schleprock	134
11	H Hammers	132
12	Dego's R Us	131
13	Park Valley	131
14	Syndicate	130
15	The Jolly Roger	129
16	French River	128
17	Arnie's Army	127
18	Snake & Shake	125
19	Twisted Helmets	123
20	TnT	120
21	Sharks	120
22	B&B	120
23	MNE	114
24	IC Lightning	112
25	Commish West	112
26	Detroit Lions	110
27	Brookline	109
28	Irish Talbots	109
29	Bartertown	107
30	Midquippa	106
31	Little Johnny & Will's	105
32	Endzonerz	105
33	T Bones	102
34	Nasty Aggravators	100
35	Weekend Warriors	100
36	Frannie's Train	85
	Average	124

PFFL Defending League Champion

Snake & Shake

Welcome to the 20th Season of the PFFL!

PFFL Trivia Answer	John Carney
Born on April 20, 1964, Carney was in his 23rd season in the NFL in 2010. He kicked field goals for the New Orleans Saints in the season. At the age of 46, he still made five of six field goals and all three extra points. John was a backup to Saints kicker, Garrett Hartley.