Hang On, It's About to Get Bloody

Wow.  I mean, just wow.

After my most recent update, I marveled at the balance in the league.  At the end of week 8, we had:

• One 7-1 team.
• Three 5-3 teams.
• Four 4-4 teams.
• Three 3-5 teams.
• One 1-7 team.

That kind of made sense.  One clear-cut leader, one clear-cut loser, and the rest of the teams spread out between 3 and 5 wins apiece.

Somehow, in just two weeks, the league has suddenly become top-heavy.  Jason has been dragged down a bit while the mighty Ninjas have recovered from their 0-5 start and are firmly in the middle of the pack.  With four weeks left in the regular season, NINE teams in the league sit at .500 or better (and it would have been ten if Kubicek hadn't made an opportunistic pickup of the Cowboys' DST before week 10 to drop the defending champ River Horses to 4-6), and only two games separate first and ninth place.

The playoff picture should clear up a bit in the next two weeks, as 8 of the 9 'big boys' square off against each other in week 11, and again in week 12. Three or four of us are going to be hurting come week 13.

In the 5 years I've been in the league, 8 wins has always been enough to guarantee a playoff berth.  This year there's a good chance that as many as TWO teams might finish 8-6 but miss the big dance.

Good luck gentlemen. You too, Merrill and Kubicek.

UPDATE: Taylor is fairly confident he missed the playoffs in 2009, the MyFantasyLeague year (otherwise known as the 'dark times'), with 8 wins.  Could be.  I know I made the playoffs as the #4 seed that year with a record of 8-5-1.  Maybe an 8-6 team or two did miss out that year.  But I know I was the #4 seed in 2007 with a 7-6-1 record, and in 2008 with a 6-7-1 record, if you can believe that.  And since we can look at the history since 2010, when we got on the ESPN site, you can check that 8 wins has been enough to qualify since then.

This year --- probably not so much.