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Week 4 MVP Award Winner –
Stinkerbell (28 Points)

Rookie player Stinkerbell continued her fairytale season by scoring 28 Points last week to win the Week 4 MVP Award.  That means she has won 2 of the first 4 MVP Awards, now logged 3 Weeks at #1, and increased her First Place lead to a staggering 18 Points.  One of the most impressive stats that Stinkerbell has achieved this season is getting all 7 possible Games of the Week correct (not counting the 1 tied Game of the Week which was impossible to get correct).  Last week, Stinkerbell picked both Houston and Oakland to add to her tally.  The only other club members last week to get both Games of the Week correct were resurgent players Hoosier Daddy and Drummer Boy.  Stinkerbell (along with freespirit and Fearless Tuna) also correctly picked the high-risk pick of Baltimore over Pittsburgh for the Sunday night game, which landed her another 6 Points.  One thing notable about Stinkerbell’s picks is that she does not pick conservatively.  She is not just sitting on her lead but she is trying to add to it, and that approach continues to get her further ahead of the rest of the pack.  Stinkerbell’s early season success has a lot of other club members stressed, wondering what they can possibly do to catch up.  The good news is that there are still 13 weeks left, which is plenty of time for people now at the bottom to end up at the top.  One player in particular who is probably now a bit nervous is 2010 Club Champion Slick Chick, who owns the Hall of Fame record for Most MVP Awards In A Season with 5 of them.  When Slick Chick set that record, she scored her first MVP Award for that season in Week 5.  Going into Week 5, Stinkerbell already has two in the bag.  In view of her success through the first four weeks, Stinkerbell has been named the September Player of the Month.  Looking at the rest of the results for Week 4, Fearless Tuna captured the Runner-Up MVP Award with 26 Points.  Right behind him was Hoosier Daddy with 25 Points on the week.  And Drummer Boy was not far behind with 23 Points.  These three players had all been bottom feeders, but they are now on the rise, starting to close in on getting into the Top Five.  The Top Five currently features #2 player Captain Insano (continuing to make very strong picks every week), #3 player Rad Dad (having one of his career best starts so far), #4 player Kip Possible (keeping up his momentum from last week), and a three-way tie for 5th Place between club legends The Cat, Double-Double, and Nighthawk.

Looking at Head to Head Weekly, we are down to having only 5 undefeated players.  Keep in mind that no player in club history has ever gone undefeated in the 10-week regular season of Head to Head play.  The best record ever posted was 9-1.  So these five players: Hoosier Daddy & Rad Dad (both 2-0-1), Stinkerbell (2-0-1), freespirit (3-0), and Captain Insano (3-0) are truly off to a great start.  There were a few interesting results last week.  In a battle between shipmates, Rad Dad def. Captain Jack Sparrow 22-19.  In a match that pitted long-time friends against each other, Double-Double tied MJD Hogg 18-18.  And in a rivalry battle, The Cat def. Slick Chick 16-15 in a match that was decided by a single point.  Over in Pro Bowl Team Weekly, we had three of the closest matches of the season.  In the battle of undefeated teams, McTriple Play def. Wild Animals 52-45.  McTriple Play (which is a father-mother-son team) is now 3-0 and off to a fantastic start.  The other two matches were even more closely contested with Transformers def. The Black Pearl 53-52, and Daddy & His Boys def. the winless and struggling Mega Powers 66-64.

Here are my picks for Week 4:  LAR, Dal TJ, Phil, Jax, Buf, LAC, KC und, Chi, Sea, Indy, Oak, Balt, NE, Atl, NO.

Week 3 MVP Award Winner –
Kip Possible (28 Points)

Kip Possible had a dominating showing last week, scoring 7 Points more than the next closest competitors.  This resulted in him taking a huge jump in the standings from 13th Place all the way to 4th Place.  Kip’s massive 27 Point week included getting the challenging Double Stakes of Wash-Car correct (the only other two players to get that correct were Stinkerbell and freespirit).  Kip also was the only player in the entire club to get the Triple Crown of Phil-NYG-Ten.    Then, he added one Game of the Week with Seattle and the Monday Night game of Pittsburgh.  Well done, Kip.  And in case anyone was wondering, he designed his own official club logo as seen above.  The Runner-Up MVP was a tie between three outstanding players: Bob Swerski, Double-Double, and Stinkerbell, who all scored 21 Points.  Bob Swerski now finds himself in 6th Place, Double-Double in 8th Place, and Stinkerbell remains in 1st Place.  After 3 weeks played, Stinkerbell has a commanding 11 Point lead over 2nd Place players Captain Insano and Nighthawk.  But one bad week can change everything, so Stinkerbell is hoping to find a way to continue making remarkable picks.  I’m not sure how she is doing it, but it’s been quite impressive to behold.  Stinkerbell has gotten all of the possible Games of the Week correct this season, picking 5 out of 6 correct (the only one she missed was the tie game which nobody got).  As a side note, Double-Double was dismayed last week to see the news that Raising Cane’s has been named California’s top fast food restaurant instead of In-N-Out.  Perhaps the slight will inspire Double-Double to make great picks once again this week.  Hopefully those of us who are currently bottom feeders (including myself) will have a better week this week, but we’ll see.

In Head to Head Weekly this past week, Hoosier Daddy tied Rad Dad 14-14 in a battle of great Head to Head players.  Another tie match happened when Club #1 player Stinkerbell tied Double-Double 21-21.  After two weeks, the remaining undefeated Head to Head players include Hoosier Daddy, Rad Dad, Bob Swerski, Stinkerbell, freespirit, The Rickster, Captain Insano, and Nighthawk.  That’s 2 players from each division for a total of 8 players.  In Pro Bowl Team Weekly, McTriple Play and Wild Animals both continued their hot starts and moved to 2-0.  Meanwhile, Daddy & His Boys and The Mega Powers are both struggling, starting out 0-2.

The Autopicker improved to 3-0 with the Cleveland Browns victory on the Thursday Night game.  Three club members, including myself, had switched over to NY Jets and ended up getting the game wrong.  Here are my Week 3 picks:

NYJ, Atl TJ, Mia, Chi, Min, KC, LAC, NE und, GB, Car, Balt, Sea, TB, Phil, Hou, Jax.

Week 2 MVP Award Winner –
Stinkerbell (22 Points)

Having not made football picks for the past five years, nearly all veteran club members have really struggled during the first two weeks of the season.  Going into the Monday night game last week, 14 out of 18 club members had single-digit scores.  I’m not really sure what has caused making picks once again to be so difficult, but many players have a total score in the Current Standings that is well below their past averages.  As one example of the struggles club members have been going through, last week 10 club members picked NY Jets with Triple Jeopardy.  Meanwhile, zero club members picked Miami with TJ.  Thus, 10 players ended up taking -2 Points from their final scores when Miami won the game.  As a second example, many club members continue to bail on the Autopicker when it comes to the Thursday night game.  The Autopicker is now 2-0 at picking games, but 8 club members switched over to Baltimore and started the week off on a very bad note by not getting the gimme 2 Points.  One club member who has been immune from the plague of bad picks is new rookie sensation Stinkerbell, who followed up a strong debut in Week 1 with another outstanding week in Week 2.  Stinkerbell did this by avoiding TJ, getting 2 out of 3 Point Spread games correct, correctly picking the Monday night game and Over/Under, getting 1 Game of the Week, and picking the Sunday night game correctly.  All of this resulted in her scoring 22 Points and winning the Week 2 MVP Award.  It also catapulted her into 1st Place in the standings with a huge 6 Point early season lead over current #2 player The Cat.  Stinkerbell’s success is quite impressive when you think about how she joined the club just a couple of weeks ago and was thrown into the mix with a large group of veteran players who have been making successful football picks for 10-15 years.  Many of these players are Club Champions.  Obviously the long layoff between Football Club seasons has not affected her negatively since she is new to our friendly competition.  Well done, Stinkerbell.  Now it is time to see how she will deal with the immense pressure of holding onto 1st Place.  Will she manage to stay in 1st Place for another week or will she fold under the pressure?  The Week 2 MVP Award Runner-Up was Captain Insano with 16 Points.  On most weeks, 16 Points would be considered a somewhat poor showing.  But on a challenging week with upsets everywhere, the good Captain had a strong showing.  Captain Insano is one of the few players who has not shown much rust when it comes to making picks.  Along with Stinkerbell being our new #1 player, The Cat staying strong at #2, and Captain Insano being tied for 3rd Place, the Top Five also includes Rad Dad (tied for 3rd) and Nighthawk sitting in 5th Place.

Head to Head Weekly got off to a good start last week with a few interesting results.  In Division One, Hoosier Daddy and Rad Dad picked up wins and started out 1-0.  In Division Two, Bob Swerski and Stinkerbell won and also began 1-0.  In Division Three, The Rickster won to start out 1-0.  And in a defensive struggle, freespirit managed to beat Drummer Boy by a final score of 4-3.  I don’t think we’ve ever seen a result that crazy with such low scores by both players.  In Division Four, Captain Insano and Nighthawk both picked up wins and began 1-0.  In the only cross-conference match, Captain Jack Sparrow tied Slick Chick 6-6.  These two friendly rivals are both active posters on Club Chat, with both of them making very entertaining posts on a regular basis.

Pro Bowl Team Weekly also started off last week with three team matches.  In the first match, The Black Pearl def. Daddy & His Boys 30-23.  Captain Jack had proclaimed that “It appears the Black Pearl has been grounded on a slick reef. Shiver me timbers I hope I can do better next week. Must
wait for high tide.”  However, even though the ship’s captain was indeed grounded with a tie, his ship’s cannons had enough firepower to still win their team match.  In the second match, McTriple Play def. The Mega Powers 43-36.  McTriple Play features three family members playing all together, led by 2008 Club Champion Nighthawk.  And in the third match, which was a rematch of the last Pro Bowl Final in 2012, Wild Animals got revenge for their championship loss by beating Transformers 35-19.  These two teams are the biggest rivals the club has ever seen and every time they play each other, it is a true grudge match.