Ok ok let me get this out of the way now before Tmo starts bitching at me for not paying enough attention to his team. We've officially passed the halfway point of the regular season, and its been quite fun so far (with the exception of my generally uninteresting performance) what with Mike being so terrible (but props to him for commenting on the posts and staying engaged, that's the energy we're looking for here). But yes Tmo currently sits in first place and has an impressive record with one week left before the gut check. But now that we're through the first half, lets take a stroll down memory lane and see how the standings after week 8 have typically correlated to the final standings. I took the top four teams in the standings after week 8 to see how they were doing, and how many made the playoffs from that year. In the chart below, the lines represent the number of wins from the top team and the top 4 teams after week 8, and the bars indicated whether or not that team made the playoffs (filled in gold) or missed (white). So what's to take away from this? Well for starters, if you're currently in the top 4 of the standings, you historically have juussstttt under a 50% chance of making the playoffs at this point. If you're in the top 2 you're almost guaranteed, only three times ever (12.5% of the time) has a team in 1st or 2nd after week 8 not made the playoffs:

Patrick was #2 at 6-2 after Week 8 in 2015, and went 0-7 in the final 7 weeks

Ryan was #2 at 6-2 after Week 8 in 2016, and went 2-5 in the final 7 weeks

Mike was #2 at 11-5 after Week 8 in 2020, and went 3-9 in the final 6 weeks

So yeah, you top teams, just relax. Take a breather, uninstall the app, have a mental health week. Don't fret about "setting your lineup" or "adding players", you're basically good anyways. You owe it to yourselves to just not care about fantasy for a week, you've earned it.

Okay whatever lets get on with it

Imperialism Map

Recaps

Fuck Off

Fuck this game and fuck you guys I'm not doing recaps this week