2024 Season Wrapup
Oh how the mighty have fallen. One year you're on top of the world winning the Thumper Bowl Championship. The next year you're playing Kevin in the Toilet Bowl....
Don't feel bad for me guys. Let's take a look back at what is probably the most competitive season we've ever had. One that saw 10 teams finish the season between 8-6 and 6-8. A season that will wrap up with Austin fighting for his first championship versus Logan who is going for his record 4th Thumper Bowl victory.
Final Power Rankings
As you can see, Dom finished his dominant regular season atop the Power Rankings. Unfortunately, his team let him down when it mattered most last week.
Logan and Bruce closed the gap between Dom and the rest of the league as they both had very strong late surges fighting for the second bye.
Rankings 4-11 is where it gets interesting. Bryan, Aron, Brady and Clint were ranked between 4-8 but all missed the playoffs, while Chris, Austin, and Cord all got in even though they were ranked 7, 9, and 11 respectively. There must be some luck involved right?
Here's the final Luck Rankings of the 2024 Season (*Playoff Team):
Austin* 21.04
Chris* 12.73
Cord* 11.30
Kevin 6.62
Aron 5.56
Rusty 0.00
Dom* -2.14
Bruce* -3.70
Clint -4.78
Logan* -7.66
Bryan -9.74
Brady -14.42
As you can see, Austin was extremely lucky to even make the playoffs, let alone make the Thumper Bowl while Logan was the 3rd least lucky team this season.
2024 Record Book Updates
Overall Regular Season Record:
Dom has surpassed me to take over the best record - 65-51 (.560)
Biggest Blowout:
This one is actually a few years old and pointed out by Bruce.
Bryan beat Chris 182.06 to 62.46 in the 2nd Round of the 2021 Playoffs.
These have been updated in the Hall of Records along with everyone's overall regular season records.
Thumper Bowl XII Preview
Austin (9-5) vs Logan (8-6)
What a tale of the tape. On one side we have Logan who is 3-0 in his Thumper Bowl appearances. The most decorated team in Thumper history. On the other side we have Austin who is 0-2 in prior Thumper Bowl appearances but does share the record for most Golden Toilet Seats.
As mentioned earlier, they're also mirror images of each other on the luck scale this year with Logan being the 3rd least lucky team while Austin was the luckiest team this season.
Most importantly, these two teams have won games in opposite ways. Logan was lucky enough to draft a QB (Lamar) and RB (Saquon) who can carry a team all season basically by themselves. That's not to downplay the rest of his team. Jacobs RB6, Andrews TE5 have been great too, but Saquon and Lamar were game changers this season.
Austin on the other hand has won games mostly on luck, but also with a team effort. Baker has been an awesome surprise as the QB3 but Austin doesn't have another dominant player on this squad. Instead, he has a lot of guys that just happen to go off at the right time. Taylor, Cook, Reed, London, Pickens, and Laporta have each had huge games when needed, just not always all in the same week. Hey, it worked out right?
So I'm writing this a little late and we already know what Lamar did. ESPN predicts Logan will win this game by 15 points, but not so fast my friends. When I look at these two lineups, I can see the rest of Logan's team, aside from Saquon, having less than 10 point games. That would be huge for Austin since I think any and all of his players not named Baker left could easily average 15 points. The Bucs really need to win out, meaning Baker needs to ball out. They're playing a weak Panthers team. There is no reason Baker couldn't score 45 points this week.
There is no such thing as a commissioner's curse. With that, I'm feeling like ESPN has it wrong this week. I'm taking Austin to win his first Thumper Bowl today/ tomorrow depending if it comes down to LaPorta.
Commissioner's Pick: Austin - Congrats on the Thumper Bowl!