2014 Power Rankings-Week 6

*Posted 10/9/14 at 6:54am*

Five weeks in to the season and we are a little closer to figuring out who the dominant teams in the league are and who will be fighting for a playoff spot down to the very end. Prior to Sunday’s matchup, a megatrade occurred between two teams looking to put the final piece of the puzzle together for their rosters. That Megatrade sent four-year franchise QB Tom Brady from Winter Soldiers to The Show Offs in a deal that also included Colin Kap-er-Nick (I’m tired of googling his name every time I want to write about him in my power rankings), Reggie Bush, and surprise fantasy presence Chris Ivory. Questions over who benefited the most from this trade were answered when every player involved in the trade sucked this weekend. Even Brady, who had the best game of his season, rode the pine and put up relatively average numbers.

More importantly, I have been getting chirped at all season over the weight that Kickers hold in this league. The Show Offs, losing their matchup by less than 0.1, owes his defeat to an outrageous 28 point performance from Gostkowski. I agree, something needs to be done.

The extra-curricular bits are taking a bye week this week as I want to focus on the kicker problem. Kicks over 50 yards garners 7 points, while 40-49 is 6. I propose reforming this rule so that kicks anywhere from 0-40 yards all count for 3 points, while 40-49 is worth 4 and 50+ worth 5. Please respond to the poll and weigh in. This rule would take effect for Week 7 (the essential half-way point of the season).

While you Christian Ponder that, let’s go to the Rankings.

10(0). Winter Soldiers: HA! Told you I’d find a way to get on top of the rankings. Okay, so I know this doesn’t count. But just for once I wanted to know what it was like up here, even if it meant counting down to #1. Winter Soldiers is in a tough spot. No team has ever made the playoffs with a record worse than 6-7, which means they will have to go 6-2 over their next 8 games to even have a shot. WS has failed to meet their projection literally every week this year. No time like the present, right?

9(0). Becky the Icebox: With the reemergence of Tony Romo, BTI has a chance to put up a win streak going forward, but this was not their week. The icing on the blowout cake this week was having Hunter, a major fantasy disappointment through the first four weeks, have a monster game on the bench.

8(0). The Show Offs: I hate to do this to them, because they deserve so much more than 8th. But overall the first five weeks of the season has been a huge disappointment. League sources tell me that the tension in the locker room is through the roof this week and if they can’t get an easy victory over Becky, we might see some heads roll. TSOs are the latest victims of a slew of close games this season, but still can’t beat the 0.02 loss by Papa’s Posse in Week 1.

7(-2). PeytoninthePlayoffs: This team is in trouble. They might actually be bad. Not only have they been playing like shit the past few weeks, but the Stafford/Johnson hookup is proving worthless as Stafford is having one of his worst fantasy seasons ever and now Johnson is having injury issues. PeytoninthePlayoffs has broken 185 only twice this season.

6(+1). IAMGROOT: Groot’s 200 would have won him matchups against most teams this week, but still has to hope for a little bit more production down the line in order to compete with the big dogs. Feeling fresh coming off of the bye, they have a big must win matchup against TheShottiBunch.

5(-2). Papa’s Posse: Obviously this team is all over the place in the rankings this year. He currently holds the all time record for largest average margin of victory, which means when he wins he wins big. Off week but if the Forte and Gore continue to perform at this high a level I don’t see how they don’t string together enough wins to make the post-season.

4(+2). The Shotti Bunch: Getting back on track with the dumping off of Peterson and the 237 point performance was an absolute necessity and now they hit a stretch of games where 3 of the next 5 opponents are below .500. Winning the easy matchups all but punches the post-season ticket.

3(+1). Flags on the Play: Aint no ‘mentum like mo’mentum. FOTP is starting to pile on the points and though they are the lone 4-1 team with less than 1000 points, two of their last three wins have been blowout victories and their roster is stacked with players who are on an absolute tear (Rivers, Maclin, Brown, Thomas, and...Cody Parker??).

2(-1). Money Manziel: How can a team lose their spot at the top following a win? Well, I was not convinced that the team as a whole played well enough. Strange Managerial decisions are keeping this team from becoming elite. Why would they be playing Chris Johnson (less than 5 points scored in 3 games this season) while Golden Tate continues to ride the bench (more than 20 points scored in 3 games this season)? Gostkowski will not be able to bail out MM all year.

1(+1). ma ma momma said: Hey, MMMS, be more of a bully. You can’t be. Not only do they have the record for largest margin of victory in 2014 (111), but they hold the all-time record for biggest blowout in the history of the league (188). Ma ma momma said has been an unstoppable force for years and I have a hard time picking a team in this league who can stand up to the challenge of taking them down. Wait...what’s that sound? It’s like..the marching of Soldiers….oh shit. Here they come!! Winter Soldiers, facing MMMS in the Week 6 matchup. Don’t worry everyone, I’ll take it from here.

Matchup of the Week: While I know everyone is looking forward to my beatdown of Jared, you might also want to keep an eye on the potential shift of power with the Shotti Bunch vs. IAMGROOT matchup that is projecting a margin of victory of less than 5. Papa’s Posse and PeytoninthePlayoffs is also projected to be close and I think we all know how we want that one to turn out.