Week 11 Power Rankings
It’s feast week! 🦃
So grab your plate because we’ve got a lot to talk about as we quickly recap the action of the last week before turning our attention to the playoff race.
Erik beat Greco in a victory as bittersweet as cranberry sauce, setting a personal record with nine regular season wins but losing Joe Burrow in the process. Gray won a war of attrition over Jess as both DeVon Achane and Cooper Kupp went down like your uncle when the tryptophan hits. Squabbling like family, Josh narrowly thwarted Chelsie and a potential Patrick Mahomes’ revenge game despite not starting Saquon Barkley. Brandon defeated Nick and won his first weekly prize of the year. That’s just gravy! Alex finally piled his plate high with RB scoring as Tony Pollard scored a rare touchdown, sinking Geoff. And last year’s champ eliminated her predecessor when Samantha ended Beth Ann’s playoff hopes like your grandpa kills conversations when he inevitably brings up politics at the dinner table.
That’s Week 11 in a nut shell. Or perhaps stuffed inside a duck crammed inside a turkey.
Let’s get to the Power Rankings…
That’s six weeks in a row at #1 for Gray. But Erik and, yes, Brandon are just one true game back!
Is Gray mortal? After two duds in a row, Greased Lightnin’s hold on the #1 spot in the Power Rankings is suddenly tenuous. Erik is not far behind. And following his first weekly prize of the season, Brandon has also surged to within one true game of the top spot. That’s giving me some serious flashbacks to last year when Gray held the lead from Weeks 3-13 before being usurped by Brandon in the final week. Of course, both missed the playoffs in 2022 despite finishing 1-2 in the final rankings. But this year, that’s looking less likely. Wait, did I just jinx myself? 🤐
This week, rather than hitting the usual news and notes, I want to fast-forward straight to the conversation about the playoffs, which is what I’m sure is on everyone’s mind.
Here are the standings with current playoff teams in bold.
9-2: Erik
8-3: Gray
7-4: Alex, Josh
6-5: Brandon
5-6: Samantha, Nick, Greco
4-7: Jess, Chelsie, Geoff
2-9: Beth Ann
If the playoffs were to start today, Erik and Gray would have the first-round bye. Then Alex, Josh and Brandon would claim the next three spots with Samantha securing the final spot thanks to a points tiebreaker over Nick and Greco. With three weeks to go, the Playoff Picture paints a similar…well…picture.
Biggest riser: Samantha (+19%) | Biggest faller: Nick (-26%)
As you can see, this week was HUGE for the favorites. Wins for Erik, Gray, Alex, Brandon and Josh (who were all top-five in last week’s Playoff Picture) pushed them all up the standings while at the same time hurting the other contenders. As a result, all five have a 93% chance or greater of making the playoffs. Meanwhile, the bottom five are all at less than 10%. By comparison, last year at this time, there were only half as many teams in these two buckets.
So what does this mean for you? Let’s bring back the Wall of Destiny.
The Wall of DESTINY…destiny…destiny… 🔮
What’s the Wall of Destiny? It’s a handy-dandy chart that tells you what your playoff chances are based on how many games you win the rest of the season. Basically, it tells you how many games you need to win to feel safe and who controls their own destiny. Hence the name.
Let’s start with the locks (or near-locks):
Four games up on the final playoff spot with three games to go, Erik has clinched! This is Erik’s fifth career playoff appearance and his third in the last four years. 🎉
Gray hasn’t officially clinched, but he made the playoffs in all 10,000 simulations. The only way he misses is if (1) he loses out, (2) Nick wins out, (3) the winner of the Week 14 game between Samantha and Greco also wins out, (4) Josh and Brandon get to eight wins and (5) all eight-win teams pass Gray in points, which at minimum would require Nick to outscore him by 65 points per game over the last three weeks. So yeah…Gray is going to be fine.
Quick aside! Eight wins is often the magic number. Reminder that historically, 55 out of 56 teams to reach eight wins have made the playoffs with Beth Ann’s team last year being the only eight-win team in the history of the league to miss the playoffs. Granted, eight wins doesn’t quite mean what it used to now that we have a 14-game regular season. But it’s still a good benchmark for what denotes a playoff team.
With that in mind, let’s get to the teams that control their own destiny:
Given the eight-win rule, Alex needs just one more to get to eight wins and clinch. Even if he loses out, he still has a 93% chance of making the playoffs thanks to his points lead over likely competitors for the tiebreaker, including Nick and Greco.
That being said, Alex does have the toughest remaining schedule with games against both Gray and Erik, plus a resurgent Jess. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he ends his season on a three-game losing streak with both Nick and then either Samantha or Greco winning out. In that case, the tiebreaker wouldn’t come into play and Alex could miss the playoffs at 7-7. What are the chances? The Playoff Picture says just 1%. But better to win a game and remove all doubt.
Josh is also 7-4 but in a much different position than Alex. Currently, he trails Brandon and Samantha by a significant number of points (around 125 points). He trails Alex by about 55 points. And he’s narrowly behind Nick and even Jess. If he fails to win at least one more game, there’s a good chance (42%) that enough of those other teams catch him in wins and beat him in the tiebreaker.
Even if Josh does win one more game, the Wall of Destiny shows that he’s not a lock and could join Beth Ann from 2022 as an eight-win team that didn’t make the playoffs. Nick and Samantha could both win out and beat Josh in points. Given that, I would put Josh’s magic number at nine wins, not eight, to guarantee a spot in the playoffs.
After starting 2-4, Brandon has won four of his last five games, including three in a row, to get to 6-5. He’s also third in points and has the easiest schedule remaining with games against Josh, Beth Ann and Chelsie—all teams in the bottom half of the Power Rankings. All of those are reasons he’s a favorite to make the playoffs.
But…he still needs two wins to clinch. If he goes 1-2 down the stretch, he could miss the playoffs if Nick and then either Samantha or Greco wins out. And of course, Samantha might not even need to win out if she’s able to overtake Brandon in points as the two are neck and neck.
Speaking of Samantha, she is the last of the six team owners who control their own destiny. If she wins out, she’s in. But she probably needs to go 3-0 down the stretch to feel perfectly safe.
That being said, if she can win two more games to get to seven wins, that might be enough given her points advantage. Currently, she ranks fourth, which would give her the edge over Alex, Josh, Nick and Greco. And she could pass Brandon. If any of those teams fails to get to eight wins, she’d likely win the tiebreaker. So even at 7-7, the Wall says she’d have a 90% chance of making the playoffs.
Next, let’s look at the contenders who need to win and get help:
This week was a big loss for Nick. Now even if Nick wins out and gets to eight wins, he’s not a lock to make the playoffs. That’s because he trails almost every team ahead of him in the standings in points. He’s basically in the same situation as Samantha but without the points edge, which really matters when it comes to these tiebreakers for teams on the bubble.
Still, if he can go 3-0 down the stretch, there’s a 95% chance Nick is in. And that doesn’t include the possibility he catches Josh in points who leads him by less than three, which is very doable. If the playoffs started today, Nick is out. But he’s the most likely candidate to spoil the party.
Then there’s Greco. She has a 93% chance of making the playoffs if she can win out. Like Nick, she trails all the teams ahead of her in points. But unlike Nick, she has a pivotal Week 14 matchup against Samantha. If she wins out, that means she’ll have beat Samantha and passed her in the standings. Then it just comes down to how many other eight-win teams there are. Just gotta hope that one of Alex, Josh, Brandon or Nick doesn’t get there.
Then we come to the long shots on the brink of elimination:
Technically, Jess can still make the playoffs if she loses one more game. According to the Wall, she has a 0.4% chance of making the playoffs as a 6-8 team. In fact, there were 13 simulations where this occurred and in all 13 both Samantha and Nick lost all three of their final three games. She then tied Greco at 6-8 and won the tiebreaker, which she currently leads. So it’s possible. But in reality, Jess needs to win out.
Even if she does and gets to 7-7, the Wall says she has just a 38% chance of making the playoffs. That’s because she’d need the teams ahead of her to lose a lot of games. She needs Josh to lose out or any of the five-win teams to drop at least one game. The good news is she’s not that far behind in points. She’s in the same neighborhood as Josh and Nick in points and actually leads Greco. But she will need help to get the job done.
Unlike Jess, a loss would eliminate Chelsie. And worse, she faces the third-toughest schedule remaining with games against two of the top-four teams. Given that she trails everyone but Geoff and Beth Ann in points, she needs to win and root for the heavy favorites (Erik and Gray) to knock off her competition. Racking up a few more points for a potential tiebreaker wouldn’t hurt either. Though she trails currently, she’s not too far out of the mix. If she can win out, she still has a 24% chance. That’s not nothing.
Then we come to Geoff. He’s last in the Power Rankings, but because he does have four wins, he’s still got a fighting chance. If he can defeat Nick, Josh and Beth Ann, the Wall says he has a 14% chance of making the playoffs. The problem is I’m not sure he can make up the points given that he currently ranks dead last. So he needs to root for chaos. If he loses one more game, he’s out.
And finally, we come to our first eliminated team:
Beth Ann has officially been eliminated. With just two wins all season, the best she can do is get to 5-9. And because Samantha and Greco will play each other in Week 14, we are guaranteed to have at least six teams with six or more wins. As a result, there’s just no path.
It was a tough season for the former champion who had the first overall pick and ranked as high as fourth in the early-season Power Rankings. Unfortunately, Beth Ann lost Justin Jefferson in Week 5 and struggled all season to find a suitable replacement. It’s no surprise she ranked last in WR scoring with just 16.7 ppg from WRs after he went down. Throw in two “unlucky losses,” including one this week to Samantha, and you have a recipe for Beth Ann’s worst season since she went 4-8-1 in her debut year.
Though she is eliminated, Beth Ann still has the Poop Bowl to play for (or to play to avoid), not to mention the chance to play spoiler to Chelsie, Brandon and Geoff.
That’s it for Week 11 and a very detailed breakdown of the playoff picture. Good luck to everyone in the final three weeks of the regular season and happy Thanksgiving!
