03-10-2024, 12:00 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2024, 08:23 AM by wetwilleh. Edited 1 time in total.)
There's a phrase that's become almost attached to a certain user in gameday chat at this point, despite him not even being in the ISFL server at the time of writing: "Sim hoed". It's something that gets tossed out about over 50% of all league games from one side or the other, and I think that's because there's multiple ways to be sim screwed. There's the way that over the course of a season, one team gets lucky or unlucky with results such that they have really lopsided 1 possession games. For a positive example, see the 2022 Minnesota Vikings completely insane 11-0 record in one possession games. For a negative example, S46 NOLA had a 2-8 record in one possession games.
That's more for a season, though. There's 2 ways that the phrase sim screwing applies for single games. First, you're a team that's massively better than the other team, they can't hang with you, you're testing over 70% against them, their TPE is thousands below yours and per player they're over 100 worse, and they win anyways. For a good example, see Honolulu beating Austin after selling about 75% of their players with good value and being a total shell of themselves at the start of the season. Second, there's the "sim has something completely stupid happen that makes the result go completely differently from the way the game was otherwise going". Really, this could be any number of things, considering how the sim operates. From the good old "WR drags a DB 30 yards downfield", to the sim deciding to go for it on 4th and long multiple times in no man's land instead of kicking a game tying or winning field goal, or even just punting, to the sim doggedly deciding to pass the ball on 3rd and short or on short goal to go opportunities over and over again, to one team recovering all the fumbles, there's many ways that the sim can screw you, some of which even show up in non-simulation football.
Yellowknife almost pulled off the greatest playoff run in league history in terms of both at once.
If you look at Yellowknife as a team in the simulation, they look like a perfectly average team. An 8-8 team with a 6-7 record in 1 score games, a +6 point differential on the season rounding to a +0.3 per game average. With the T-7th best record in the league, it's a team that would be lucky to make the playoffs in a vacuum. They were lucky, as the NSFC this season only had 2 teams with a winning record and 2 teams with a significantly positive point differential (and one of the latter teams didn't make the playoffs); the Wraiths would have needed 3 more wins to make the postseason in the ASFC but were able to get in as the 3rd seed via tiebreaker in the NSFC. If we look at TPE and ignore what the sim spouted out of its rear end, Yellowknife was far, far worse. With the 4th lowest TPE total in the league at season's end, the 4th lowest TPE per player in the league, boasting position groups such as a trio of WRs who combined for less than 1500 TPE, a QB below 1000 TPE, and safeties who topped out at 700 TPE, the Wraiths boasted a weak roster without a lot of high end talent outside of DLine and Running Back, and even that DLine was really only 2 great players; the 3rd player on the line was stuck at under 400 TPE. The Wraith have the 3rd lowest offense and 4th lowest defense by TPE, and it was probably worse at season's start; if nothing else Honolulu had a better offense and defense before the fire sale halfway through the season. Going into the season, a lot of people had Yellowknife as the worst team in the NSFC, if not the worst team in the entire league.
Despite that, they get to the playoffs. Once there, their first matchup was a team that, if you just looked at the sim, was a worse team. The only reason that Yellowknife was going to Sarasota for their first round matchup instead of hosting was due to their kicker missing 2 makeable field goals in the last game of the season. On the year, in the sim, Sarasota despite the better record was a notably worse team. Boasting a -2.4 point differential per game, with a 5-0 record in single possession games, Sarasota appears to be one of the luckiest and most undeserving playoff teams of all time if you just look at what the sim says. Of course, the sim is a pile of lies and disappointment, so it should probably not come as a shock that Sarasota was better than that in reality. By TPE, they had the 8th highest at the end of the season, the 3rd most in the NSFC, the 4th highest average TPE, and rated as the 3rd best defense in the league. Their roster was good enough to the point that my GM was debating putting them in the Ultimus over the seemingly superior Hawks; them beating the Wraiths was seemingly unquestioned.
We all remember how that turned out in the end, with the Wraiths getting only 7 first downs all game to the Sailfish's 19, being outgained by 150 yards, and being kept to under 4 yards per rushing attempt. But it didn't matter, as the Wraiths recovered 4 out of 5 fumbles, made a clutch 59 yard kick to tie the game, the Sailfish went for it on 4th down in no man's land twice and failed both times, and when given a chance to kick an almost game clinching field goal, instead spiked the ball on 3rd down with a timeout and went for it (and failed) on 4th down. This even came after they had done exactly that earlier in the drive, only to convert. Then, of course, Sarasota started Overtime with the ball only to fumble the ball away on the first play from scrimmage, setting up the Wraiths for the almost unmissable field goal to win that Sarasota decided not to take two minutes of gametime earlier. Step one of Xenos' goat sacrifice-powered plans done.
Step two was a Baltimore game that...honestly looks closer to the sim almost screwing the Wraiths than Baltimore getting screwed. Both teams recovered 2 fumbles, the Wraiths had 6 more first downs and were much better on 3rd down, outgained Baltimore by 50 yards, and had 16 more minutes of possession, only 9 of which came in OT. They even got bit by the 4th down bug, going for it on 4th and 8 on the 43, failing instead of punting or trying for a long field goal to take the lead. This belief ignores some key context of what happened during the game: Master Chief, the Baltimore Kicker, missed a 36 yard field goal in a game that went to Overtime, and more importantly, how backbreaking Baltimore's lone turnover on the day ended up being. It also ignores that the Wraiths are the 4th worst team by TPE and the Hawks are the 4th best. Albeit, the Hawks are one of the few teams with a lower average player than the Wraiths, but this still should have been nowhere close.
For the 2nd time in as many playoff games, the Wraiths were all but eliminated. The Hawks had been passing all over the Wraiths all day, and with under a minute to go and 2 timeouts, Yellowknife had just thrown away their chance to win the game before overtime right to Baltimore: they threw a pick that immediately put Baltimore in long field goal range. Surely, as long as the sim didn't roll snake eyes and have Baltimore miss a 2nd kick at the end of the half, the Hawks had just punched their ticket back to the Ultimus. 1st and 10, dropped pass. 2nd and 10, interception. Yellowknife dodges defeat yet again, and this time gets the ball first in OT. This time, the Wraiths took the other route to winning in overtime: taking the ball all the way down the field and scoring a touchdown, never letting Baltimore regain possession. Game over, Yellowknife is in the Ultimus.
Of course, in the Ultimus was the Wraiths' greatest opponent they'd face. After losing by 2 points in Arizona earlier in the season, it looked as if the Wraiths were surely going to lose this time. The Outlaws had just completely blitzed the much better (both on paper and in sim performance) Austin Copperheads in the ASFC Championship game, rushing out to a 31-3 halftime lead that shrunk a bit in the 2nd half but it's not like that really mattered in the end. In sim terms, the Outlaws had a slightly worse point differential than the Hawks (+6.4 to the Hawks' +8.5) but this was more than made up for by being in the more difficult conference and having a better record on the season. By TPE, the Outlaws were a top 2 team in the league, with the 2nd most TPE, the most TPE per player, and a top 2 offense including a single Wide Receiver with almost as much TPE as the entire WR corps of Yellowknife combined, along with the 3rd best QB in the league. So, naturally, said amazing offense went nowhere for most of the first half and when it did it almost immediately shot itself in the foot. The Wraiths were able to get a field goal first, and Arizona's response drive ended when they gave up a sack to put them just out of field goal range. Yellowknife managed to get another field goal on the following possession. Arizona followed that field goal up with a 62 yard pass play to Thomas Sutha that ended in a fumble, recovered by Yellowknife.
But the Wraiths were now tapped out on offense for the rest of the day; they finished out with under 300 yards and sub 6 yards per attempt. The rest of the half saw them unable to cross their own 35, and the Outlaws were able to get a long pass play to stick on the 2nd try, when Bertie Mannering Phipps caught a ball for a 69 yard pass play on the first play of the drive to give the Outlaws the lead. In the 2nd half, the Outlaws put together another drive that saw them sacked to bring them back outside field goal range, followed by maybe the worst thing the sim had happen to the Wraiths all playoffs: after a 3rd and inches pass play on the Arizona 36 led to a sack to bring Yellowknife well out of all but anything but an impossibly long field goal try, the sim decided that Yellowknife should try to run for a first down on 4th and 7. Money Tolliver didn't even get close, and Donovan Winters responded by putting together a surgical drive that ended just inside the 4th quarter with a touchdown pass to Thomas Sutha, somewhat making up for the fumble earlier in the day.
The Wraiths continued to be unable to get anywhere, failing to get into Arizona territory on either of their next 2 possessions, ending with a desperation 4th and 8 try with under 3 minutes left in the game down 8, only for an interception that really only moved the ball back 5 yards for the Outlaws. The game was all but over. It was truly all but over when Arizona ran the ball on 4th and inches on the Yellowknife 38, got the line to gain, fumbled, but was able to recover the fumble. And 2 plays later, Arizona, with the glitchy yard marker that gave them a 1st down with an incompletion, ran the ball for 3 more yards and fumbled again to give Yellowknife the ball. Impossibly, for the 3rd time in 3 games this postseason run, the Wraiths were put in a situation in which they were all but dead only to be given one more shot for glory.
It was much harder this time, though. They had 1:30 to go 75 yards, score a touchdown, and get a 2 point conversion without any timeouts, in this sim. It felt almost impossible, though it felt a lot more possible when Jimmy Ryder broke free from Ben Duvernay to gain 29 yards, bringing Yellowknife to the Arizona 44 with 58 seconds to go. The impossible, sim screwiest run seemed to have an outside chance at occurring. But Yellowknife took 2 plays and 24 seconds to go 9 1/2 yards, and a pass breakup on 4th down finally ended the Wraith's miracle run.
There are a few Ultimus participants in the same ballpark as Yellowknife in terms of all time mediocrity. I can't say in terms of TPE for any of them but one, I don't particularly remember most of them. There's the S1 Yeti and S2 Hawks, who each brought a barely negative point differential to the Ultimus mainly due to the structure of the league at the time easily allowing for mediocre teams to top the NSFC with the 2 best teams in the league hogging the ASFC playoff spots. Both won their 1st playoff game somewhat comfortably and then got blown out in the Ultimus by a cheating Outlaws side. There's the S23 Copperheads, who were also 8-8, were +4 on the season to these Wraiths' +6, but managed to win 2 playoff games (against NOLA due to getting a pick on their 1 yard line, and against OCO at least partly due to a pick six) before getting utterly stomped in the Ultimus. There's S33 OCO who infamously had a negative 2 point differential but managed to win single possession games and built a 24-0 1st quarter lead and a 38-24 lead with under 10 minutes to play, only to blow it all and lose 41-38 on a 51 yard field goal from a rookie kicker, there's S38 Berlin who had a +2 point differential on the season, still won the conference, went to double OT in a thriller with 4 INTs and a turnover on downs in Overtime alone to win off a field goal, and lost in the Ultimus to Arizona on a comeback attempt that needed at least more than 30 seconds after the score to bring the game to a 2 point margin.
Then there's the winners. There are two teams who performed about as averagely in the regular season as the Wraiths, and managed to win the Ultimus despite it all. The less notable team for this is the S45 Copperheads, who were a better team than their record and performance by TPE if I remember correctly, and managed to blow out the Outlaws in the 2nd half, outlast the Hahalua, and went on a minute long touchdown drive to tie the game against Sarasota in the Ultimus, and (after kicking a field goal) ended the game on an interception in OT. They're much less comparable to these Wraiths, as not only were they a better team on paper, their Ultimus opponent was not that much better, as the Sailfish only boasted a +21 point differential to the Copperheads +11. This Ultimus, featuring a +0.7 team and a +1.4 team, beat a record over a decade old for worst Ultimus by point differential, and quite comfortably, too (+2.1 for the S45 Ultimus vs +3.9 for the S33 Ultimus).
The team that almost everyone was hoping for the Wraiths to be wasn't the Copperheads from the season prior, it was the San Jose Sabercats from the Sim prior. In maybe the single most infamous playoff run in ISFL history, the S25 Sabercats forced overtime and won on a walkoff Pick Six against the Outlaws (+5.3), stopped a 4th and goal rush 1 yard short to maintain a 2 possession lead and eventual win against the Otters (+5.4), who ended the game well within field goal range but still needing a touchdown and a field goal, and made a complete fool out of the Yeti (+6.7), beating them by 3 possessions and holding them to 3.4 yards per pass, along with a sub spike-the-ball-every-play passer rating out of the 2nd best QB that year. For over a quarter, it even looked like that might come to pass. But we ended up not seeing the single biggest Ultimus upset in the history of the new sim. It ended one long completion short.
That's more for a season, though. There's 2 ways that the phrase sim screwing applies for single games. First, you're a team that's massively better than the other team, they can't hang with you, you're testing over 70% against them, their TPE is thousands below yours and per player they're over 100 worse, and they win anyways. For a good example, see Honolulu beating Austin after selling about 75% of their players with good value and being a total shell of themselves at the start of the season. Second, there's the "sim has something completely stupid happen that makes the result go completely differently from the way the game was otherwise going". Really, this could be any number of things, considering how the sim operates. From the good old "WR drags a DB 30 yards downfield", to the sim deciding to go for it on 4th and long multiple times in no man's land instead of kicking a game tying or winning field goal, or even just punting, to the sim doggedly deciding to pass the ball on 3rd and short or on short goal to go opportunities over and over again, to one team recovering all the fumbles, there's many ways that the sim can screw you, some of which even show up in non-simulation football.
Yellowknife almost pulled off the greatest playoff run in league history in terms of both at once.
If you look at Yellowknife as a team in the simulation, they look like a perfectly average team. An 8-8 team with a 6-7 record in 1 score games, a +6 point differential on the season rounding to a +0.3 per game average. With the T-7th best record in the league, it's a team that would be lucky to make the playoffs in a vacuum. They were lucky, as the NSFC this season only had 2 teams with a winning record and 2 teams with a significantly positive point differential (and one of the latter teams didn't make the playoffs); the Wraiths would have needed 3 more wins to make the postseason in the ASFC but were able to get in as the 3rd seed via tiebreaker in the NSFC. If we look at TPE and ignore what the sim spouted out of its rear end, Yellowknife was far, far worse. With the 4th lowest TPE total in the league at season's end, the 4th lowest TPE per player in the league, boasting position groups such as a trio of WRs who combined for less than 1500 TPE, a QB below 1000 TPE, and safeties who topped out at 700 TPE, the Wraiths boasted a weak roster without a lot of high end talent outside of DLine and Running Back, and even that DLine was really only 2 great players; the 3rd player on the line was stuck at under 400 TPE. The Wraith have the 3rd lowest offense and 4th lowest defense by TPE, and it was probably worse at season's start; if nothing else Honolulu had a better offense and defense before the fire sale halfway through the season. Going into the season, a lot of people had Yellowknife as the worst team in the NSFC, if not the worst team in the entire league.
Despite that, they get to the playoffs. Once there, their first matchup was a team that, if you just looked at the sim, was a worse team. The only reason that Yellowknife was going to Sarasota for their first round matchup instead of hosting was due to their kicker missing 2 makeable field goals in the last game of the season. On the year, in the sim, Sarasota despite the better record was a notably worse team. Boasting a -2.4 point differential per game, with a 5-0 record in single possession games, Sarasota appears to be one of the luckiest and most undeserving playoff teams of all time if you just look at what the sim says. Of course, the sim is a pile of lies and disappointment, so it should probably not come as a shock that Sarasota was better than that in reality. By TPE, they had the 8th highest at the end of the season, the 3rd most in the NSFC, the 4th highest average TPE, and rated as the 3rd best defense in the league. Their roster was good enough to the point that my GM was debating putting them in the Ultimus over the seemingly superior Hawks; them beating the Wraiths was seemingly unquestioned.
We all remember how that turned out in the end, with the Wraiths getting only 7 first downs all game to the Sailfish's 19, being outgained by 150 yards, and being kept to under 4 yards per rushing attempt. But it didn't matter, as the Wraiths recovered 4 out of 5 fumbles, made a clutch 59 yard kick to tie the game, the Sailfish went for it on 4th down in no man's land twice and failed both times, and when given a chance to kick an almost game clinching field goal, instead spiked the ball on 3rd down with a timeout and went for it (and failed) on 4th down. This even came after they had done exactly that earlier in the drive, only to convert. Then, of course, Sarasota started Overtime with the ball only to fumble the ball away on the first play from scrimmage, setting up the Wraiths for the almost unmissable field goal to win that Sarasota decided not to take two minutes of gametime earlier. Step one of Xenos' goat sacrifice-powered plans done.
Step two was a Baltimore game that...honestly looks closer to the sim almost screwing the Wraiths than Baltimore getting screwed. Both teams recovered 2 fumbles, the Wraiths had 6 more first downs and were much better on 3rd down, outgained Baltimore by 50 yards, and had 16 more minutes of possession, only 9 of which came in OT. They even got bit by the 4th down bug, going for it on 4th and 8 on the 43, failing instead of punting or trying for a long field goal to take the lead. This belief ignores some key context of what happened during the game: Master Chief, the Baltimore Kicker, missed a 36 yard field goal in a game that went to Overtime, and more importantly, how backbreaking Baltimore's lone turnover on the day ended up being. It also ignores that the Wraiths are the 4th worst team by TPE and the Hawks are the 4th best. Albeit, the Hawks are one of the few teams with a lower average player than the Wraiths, but this still should have been nowhere close.
For the 2nd time in as many playoff games, the Wraiths were all but eliminated. The Hawks had been passing all over the Wraiths all day, and with under a minute to go and 2 timeouts, Yellowknife had just thrown away their chance to win the game before overtime right to Baltimore: they threw a pick that immediately put Baltimore in long field goal range. Surely, as long as the sim didn't roll snake eyes and have Baltimore miss a 2nd kick at the end of the half, the Hawks had just punched their ticket back to the Ultimus. 1st and 10, dropped pass. 2nd and 10, interception. Yellowknife dodges defeat yet again, and this time gets the ball first in OT. This time, the Wraiths took the other route to winning in overtime: taking the ball all the way down the field and scoring a touchdown, never letting Baltimore regain possession. Game over, Yellowknife is in the Ultimus.
Of course, in the Ultimus was the Wraiths' greatest opponent they'd face. After losing by 2 points in Arizona earlier in the season, it looked as if the Wraiths were surely going to lose this time. The Outlaws had just completely blitzed the much better (both on paper and in sim performance) Austin Copperheads in the ASFC Championship game, rushing out to a 31-3 halftime lead that shrunk a bit in the 2nd half but it's not like that really mattered in the end. In sim terms, the Outlaws had a slightly worse point differential than the Hawks (+6.4 to the Hawks' +8.5) but this was more than made up for by being in the more difficult conference and having a better record on the season. By TPE, the Outlaws were a top 2 team in the league, with the 2nd most TPE, the most TPE per player, and a top 2 offense including a single Wide Receiver with almost as much TPE as the entire WR corps of Yellowknife combined, along with the 3rd best QB in the league. So, naturally, said amazing offense went nowhere for most of the first half and when it did it almost immediately shot itself in the foot. The Wraiths were able to get a field goal first, and Arizona's response drive ended when they gave up a sack to put them just out of field goal range. Yellowknife managed to get another field goal on the following possession. Arizona followed that field goal up with a 62 yard pass play to Thomas Sutha that ended in a fumble, recovered by Yellowknife.
But the Wraiths were now tapped out on offense for the rest of the day; they finished out with under 300 yards and sub 6 yards per attempt. The rest of the half saw them unable to cross their own 35, and the Outlaws were able to get a long pass play to stick on the 2nd try, when Bertie Mannering Phipps caught a ball for a 69 yard pass play on the first play of the drive to give the Outlaws the lead. In the 2nd half, the Outlaws put together another drive that saw them sacked to bring them back outside field goal range, followed by maybe the worst thing the sim had happen to the Wraiths all playoffs: after a 3rd and inches pass play on the Arizona 36 led to a sack to bring Yellowknife well out of all but anything but an impossibly long field goal try, the sim decided that Yellowknife should try to run for a first down on 4th and 7. Money Tolliver didn't even get close, and Donovan Winters responded by putting together a surgical drive that ended just inside the 4th quarter with a touchdown pass to Thomas Sutha, somewhat making up for the fumble earlier in the day.
The Wraiths continued to be unable to get anywhere, failing to get into Arizona territory on either of their next 2 possessions, ending with a desperation 4th and 8 try with under 3 minutes left in the game down 8, only for an interception that really only moved the ball back 5 yards for the Outlaws. The game was all but over. It was truly all but over when Arizona ran the ball on 4th and inches on the Yellowknife 38, got the line to gain, fumbled, but was able to recover the fumble. And 2 plays later, Arizona, with the glitchy yard marker that gave them a 1st down with an incompletion, ran the ball for 3 more yards and fumbled again to give Yellowknife the ball. Impossibly, for the 3rd time in 3 games this postseason run, the Wraiths were put in a situation in which they were all but dead only to be given one more shot for glory.
It was much harder this time, though. They had 1:30 to go 75 yards, score a touchdown, and get a 2 point conversion without any timeouts, in this sim. It felt almost impossible, though it felt a lot more possible when Jimmy Ryder broke free from Ben Duvernay to gain 29 yards, bringing Yellowknife to the Arizona 44 with 58 seconds to go. The impossible, sim screwiest run seemed to have an outside chance at occurring. But Yellowknife took 2 plays and 24 seconds to go 9 1/2 yards, and a pass breakup on 4th down finally ended the Wraith's miracle run.
There are a few Ultimus participants in the same ballpark as Yellowknife in terms of all time mediocrity. I can't say in terms of TPE for any of them but one, I don't particularly remember most of them. There's the S1 Yeti and S2 Hawks, who each brought a barely negative point differential to the Ultimus mainly due to the structure of the league at the time easily allowing for mediocre teams to top the NSFC with the 2 best teams in the league hogging the ASFC playoff spots. Both won their 1st playoff game somewhat comfortably and then got blown out in the Ultimus by a cheating Outlaws side. There's the S23 Copperheads, who were also 8-8, were +4 on the season to these Wraiths' +6, but managed to win 2 playoff games (against NOLA due to getting a pick on their 1 yard line, and against OCO at least partly due to a pick six) before getting utterly stomped in the Ultimus. There's S33 OCO who infamously had a negative 2 point differential but managed to win single possession games and built a 24-0 1st quarter lead and a 38-24 lead with under 10 minutes to play, only to blow it all and lose 41-38 on a 51 yard field goal from a rookie kicker, there's S38 Berlin who had a +2 point differential on the season, still won the conference, went to double OT in a thriller with 4 INTs and a turnover on downs in Overtime alone to win off a field goal, and lost in the Ultimus to Arizona on a comeback attempt that needed at least more than 30 seconds after the score to bring the game to a 2 point margin.
Then there's the winners. There are two teams who performed about as averagely in the regular season as the Wraiths, and managed to win the Ultimus despite it all. The less notable team for this is the S45 Copperheads, who were a better team than their record and performance by TPE if I remember correctly, and managed to blow out the Outlaws in the 2nd half, outlast the Hahalua, and went on a minute long touchdown drive to tie the game against Sarasota in the Ultimus, and (after kicking a field goal) ended the game on an interception in OT. They're much less comparable to these Wraiths, as not only were they a better team on paper, their Ultimus opponent was not that much better, as the Sailfish only boasted a +21 point differential to the Copperheads +11. This Ultimus, featuring a +0.7 team and a +1.4 team, beat a record over a decade old for worst Ultimus by point differential, and quite comfortably, too (+2.1 for the S45 Ultimus vs +3.9 for the S33 Ultimus).
The team that almost everyone was hoping for the Wraiths to be wasn't the Copperheads from the season prior, it was the San Jose Sabercats from the Sim prior. In maybe the single most infamous playoff run in ISFL history, the S25 Sabercats forced overtime and won on a walkoff Pick Six against the Outlaws (+5.3), stopped a 4th and goal rush 1 yard short to maintain a 2 possession lead and eventual win against the Otters (+5.4), who ended the game well within field goal range but still needing a touchdown and a field goal, and made a complete fool out of the Yeti (+6.7), beating them by 3 possessions and holding them to 3.4 yards per pass, along with a sub spike-the-ball-every-play passer rating out of the 2nd best QB that year. For over a quarter, it even looked like that might come to pass. But we ended up not seeing the single biggest Ultimus upset in the history of the new sim. It ended one long completion short.