HardCorps Dynasty

Well folks after an EPIC semi final round the championship matchup is set. The two top place finishers for the regular season will now meet up in the Championship matchup. Let's see how we got there.

In the quarter finals Geoff and I sat out with byes.

4th vs 5th

Lance v Travis. Lance had strong performances from Amon Ra St. Brown and Bijan Robinson, but the rest of the team was lackluster and only notched him a total of 113. On the other side Travis had a trio of 20 point performers and another trio of double digit performers in the teens. When you get an all around performance like that, you're bound to put up a win, and he secured it with 127 points.

3rd vs 6th

This match had Steve going up against the last man in, Larry. While Steve got a solid performance out of Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs was uncharacteristically silent that week and sorely underperformed. BTJ seemed to come to life but his 15 points wasn't enough to get Steve over 100 point mark and you will have a tough time winning in this league if you don't pass 100. Meanwhile, Larry nearly had every single one of his players go for double digits excepting only Bucky Irving and Harold Fannin Jr who still got 7 and 8 points respectively. Again, when you get across the board double digit performances it's hard to lose. In this case it was good enough for a 123 to 98 Dub

Another interesting tidbit from the first round, Geoff and I, while on byes and not playing, put up the lowest and highest scores of the week. Geoff got lucky he had a bye that round!! Overall, a very exciting first round with performances on par with what we would expect from the 6 playoff contenders. On to the semis where the remaining managers did not disappoint.

1st vs 4th

Geoff was taking on Travis in the 1v4 slot. Both teams came out of the gate strong with each scoring at least 40 points in the Thursday game though Travis with a bit more at 50. Both managers scored nominal points in the Saturday game. Then, Geoff started to pull away after the Sunday afternoon games and by the time the Sunday night game was over, Geoff was sitting on a 40 point lead. Undeterred, Travis patiently awaited his Monday Football matchup in which he had both the No 1 overall running back this year, Jonathan Taylor, who has scored 28 points or more this year in 6 games and Jauan Jennings who has been San Francisco's most reliable receiver with multiple high teen performances. Their combined projection was 35 points so Trav was going to need a little help from the gods. Jennings delivered and beat his projection by 2 points, unfortunately, Taylor fell 6 points shy of his projection leaving Travis 13 points short of a trip to the finals.

2nd vs 3rd

The other Semifinal matchup was one for the ages and possibly the biggest comeback in the history of the league. Larry, after pulling an upset over Steve, now would face his own flesh and blood, the commissioner of the league, the patriarch of HardCorps dynasty, yours truly, DAAAAAANE PITTMAN!!!!! The projections stood at 121 for me and 114 for my Dad. I knew those projections were BS because I also knew my receivers have been little panzy bitches all year and haven't played for the last three weeks so the projected 30 points from Drake London and Rome Odunze inflated my projected score artificially. Odunze as per usual bitched out, and London only got 4 points. I scoured the waiver wire looking for a way to patch up my WR room but found none. Hoping to gamble and make up for crappy WRs, I pulled Croskey-Merrit in favor of Colby Parkinson who had been on a tear lately. Turns out that was a horrid decision. After the Thursday game I was sittin on just 3 points from Parkinson. Larry had nobody in the Thursday game, and neither of us had players from the Saturday tilt. Sunday early games arrive and I'm sitting on a 3 point lead with 1 player down. My horrid luck continues. With 3 players only getting me a total of 13.1 points more. Meanwhile pops still had Woody Marks in his lineup and I knew he wasn't playing. I could only hope he would mess up and I would catch a slight break. WRONG!!! Not only did he catch it, but turns out he got almost 10 points from Woody Marks' backup. Elsewhere in the early games Josh Allen dropped a 6.9 point game renewing my hope for a win. WRONG AGAIN!!! the Saints (one of the worst teams in the league) somehow put up 19 damn points, Derrick Henry puts up his best game of the season (since the opener), Harold Fannin benefits from a David Njoku injury and catches ALL the targets for 17 points and his Motown's WR's combine for 30 points. Slightly above average performances from Etienne and RJ Harvey didn't much help me and by the end of the Sunday night game I found myself in a 58.1 point deficit with two players left. Meanwhile I'm kicking myself for leaving Stafford and his 34 points on the bench. If I had just started him I would only need 14 more from McCaffery and come on, that's an easy day for C-Mac. Needless to say I was pretty dejected all day Monday. But there remained a glimmer of hope, I benched Stafford because I wanted the Purdy-McCaffery stack and I had faith! Going into the night I was on 10% chance to win. Queue Monday night football (you can play the music in your head). BOOM!!! within 30 mins of game start Purdy had 2 passing TD's one of which was to McCaffery. Just like that the matchup is close to 50-50, but the dynamic duo was not done. Purdy went on to throw 3 more Tuddies, with one more going to C-Mac. Just like that the dynamic duo combines for 66.5 points overcoming a nearly 60 point deficit and RE... RE-Set makes it back to the finals for the first time since the inaugural season. I think the Re ... set is finally complete, but can I make it perfect?!

Hat's off to both Travis and Larry for putting up extremely competitive games and making the semifinals exciting (unlike the first round of the CFP). Will post a pregame for the championship game and the 3rd place game later this week. Happy Holidays friends and family!!! PS-I didn't write anything about any of the consolation bracket matchups, but I do need to make a special announcement. While Missy was absolutely the shittiest manager in HardCorps this year, she is likely going to win the GrandPrix league (if you aren't in that one you should really consider getting in). I only mention this because she also benefitted from C-Mac performance we just discussed. His game just capped off a 182-point win over in her Grand Prix H2H division. That's insane. Imagine having Nacua, JSN, James Cook and C-Mac all on one team. Ironically the 182 points was scored against me... :(