6. Write 800 words or more on something about anything in the league that interests you. It could be related to statistics, a league issue that you take seriously, or a niche part of history that doesn’t fit neatly into either of the above categories. This must be directly related to the league, so don’t wax 800 words about your team’s participation on a Werewolf server or something.
I've decided that I wanted to look at the curious case of the Yeti and how things seem to come down to sheer luck. I hate to put that out there, but as it turns out though, that is exactly the case overall. As we learned in Colorado this past season, you can do very little and have drastically different results. It really does come down to the dice rolls and when you look at how this season played out in comparison to the previous one for the Yeti. Last season the Yeti were 11th in points scored, 6th in yards offensively, 2nd in points allowed, and first in yards allowed. They had a middle of the pack offense and and an absolutely dominant shut down defense. Unfortunately, that didn't amount to much as Colorado only won half of their games and ended up missing the playoffs entirely after losing multiple close games and finding it difficult to close out against strong opponents in the conference.
This season was completely different for the Yeti though. They were 2nd in points scored, firs in offensive yards, 10th in points allowed, and 11th in yards allowed. They completely flipped the switch with a high flying offense that could score at will and defense that struggled to stop a stiff breeze, much less a football player. With this new style of play, the Yeti ended up winning 11 games, won their conference, and came second in the league in overall record, just barely missing taking Austin's spot as number one. The Yeti went from a middling team that struggled to win close games to being able to absolutely blow out teams that weren't on their level.
So you might ask what was different between these two teams. Did they drastically change strategies? Did they gain some incredible new talent to help bolster the roster? Why was it that they made such a dramatic shift in just one season?
Well you see it all started with our top running back, a talent with nearly 1000 TPE retired before the TDL last season, so we knew we wouldn't have him coming into this season. Instead, we'd be replacing him with his former backup that had 400 less TPE and calling up a new back up RB with less than 500 TPE. Next up our WR1 William Lim was looking a massive regression in the face and was looking at dropping well below 1000 TPE for the first time in his career and force long time backup Delacour to take his place. Then we were looking at three of our offensive linemen losing more than half of their total TPE. We were going from one of the best offensive lines in the league to one of the worst as Jenkins, Button, and Thruster all took massive hits as they descended into regression.
That wasn't all though. Long time defensive mainstays like Blackstone, Rikiya, and de Pengu were all hitting their second or more regression. This was seeing some of the top players on this team take massive strides backwards as their defense was looking at dropping nearly 1000 TPE from just those three players. Then you had stars like Drake and Murder-Moose starting their own regression journeys. Overall, it looked like this defense was losing a massive amount of power.
Through the offseason with regression, retirements, and players stepping away, the Colorado Yeti lost almost 4,000 TPE and their only respite was grabbing Buffalo Hunter, a young star that they hoped would boost their offense at tight end for a long while but to start wasn't much better than their previous player at the position. It all looked backwards for the Yeti and as such, the roster got worse between these two seasons.
They got better as a team though, so they had to make massive strategy changes, right? Wrong. The Yeti elected to run the same defensive strategy they always had. They changed not a single thing on that side of the ball. On the offense, all they did is make a small adjustment to the playbook they were running and left the passing ratios the exact same. After all, the Yeeti yeet and keeping all passing ratios at 80 just works for us. There is a reason we run two receiving backs.
All that to be said, it seemed pretty clear that the Yeti were supposed to get worse in the offseason. Especially as this season brought up shockers like the emergency of the Philadelphia roster finally playing well and a huge surge that no one saw coming from Chicago and their rookie quarterback. The NSFC looked like by far the best conference and they won over 75% of their games against the ASFC this season just to prove their dominance. There was no reason why the Yeti should have been better. But they were. Once more, it all comes down to luck and getting the right dice rolls.
I've decided that I wanted to look at the curious case of the Yeti and how things seem to come down to sheer luck. I hate to put that out there, but as it turns out though, that is exactly the case overall. As we learned in Colorado this past season, you can do very little and have drastically different results. It really does come down to the dice rolls and when you look at how this season played out in comparison to the previous one for the Yeti. Last season the Yeti were 11th in points scored, 6th in yards offensively, 2nd in points allowed, and first in yards allowed. They had a middle of the pack offense and and an absolutely dominant shut down defense. Unfortunately, that didn't amount to much as Colorado only won half of their games and ended up missing the playoffs entirely after losing multiple close games and finding it difficult to close out against strong opponents in the conference.
This season was completely different for the Yeti though. They were 2nd in points scored, firs in offensive yards, 10th in points allowed, and 11th in yards allowed. They completely flipped the switch with a high flying offense that could score at will and defense that struggled to stop a stiff breeze, much less a football player. With this new style of play, the Yeti ended up winning 11 games, won their conference, and came second in the league in overall record, just barely missing taking Austin's spot as number one. The Yeti went from a middling team that struggled to win close games to being able to absolutely blow out teams that weren't on their level.
So you might ask what was different between these two teams. Did they drastically change strategies? Did they gain some incredible new talent to help bolster the roster? Why was it that they made such a dramatic shift in just one season?
Well you see it all started with our top running back, a talent with nearly 1000 TPE retired before the TDL last season, so we knew we wouldn't have him coming into this season. Instead, we'd be replacing him with his former backup that had 400 less TPE and calling up a new back up RB with less than 500 TPE. Next up our WR1 William Lim was looking a massive regression in the face and was looking at dropping well below 1000 TPE for the first time in his career and force long time backup Delacour to take his place. Then we were looking at three of our offensive linemen losing more than half of their total TPE. We were going from one of the best offensive lines in the league to one of the worst as Jenkins, Button, and Thruster all took massive hits as they descended into regression.
That wasn't all though. Long time defensive mainstays like Blackstone, Rikiya, and de Pengu were all hitting their second or more regression. This was seeing some of the top players on this team take massive strides backwards as their defense was looking at dropping nearly 1000 TPE from just those three players. Then you had stars like Drake and Murder-Moose starting their own regression journeys. Overall, it looked like this defense was losing a massive amount of power.
Through the offseason with regression, retirements, and players stepping away, the Colorado Yeti lost almost 4,000 TPE and their only respite was grabbing Buffalo Hunter, a young star that they hoped would boost their offense at tight end for a long while but to start wasn't much better than their previous player at the position. It all looked backwards for the Yeti and as such, the roster got worse between these two seasons.
They got better as a team though, so they had to make massive strategy changes, right? Wrong. The Yeti elected to run the same defensive strategy they always had. They changed not a single thing on that side of the ball. On the offense, all they did is make a small adjustment to the playbook they were running and left the passing ratios the exact same. After all, the Yeeti yeet and keeping all passing ratios at 80 just works for us. There is a reason we run two receiving backs.
All that to be said, it seemed pretty clear that the Yeti were supposed to get worse in the offseason. Especially as this season brought up shockers like the emergency of the Philadelphia roster finally playing well and a huge surge that no one saw coming from Chicago and their rookie quarterback. The NSFC looked like by far the best conference and they won over 75% of their games against the ASFC this season just to prove their dominance. There was no reason why the Yeti should have been better. But they were. Once more, it all comes down to luck and getting the right dice rolls.