You've seen this chart before, but we always like to make it the first one (and last one) of the season.  Here are your best (and worst) offenses, defenses, and point differentials in the TSL through the first half of the season.  As always, forfeit games have been excluded from the numbers (hi Cobblestone & Straw Hats!)

 

 

What did we learn?

 

For starters, there are five people who can claim absolute domination of the League right now, and the first four are Joey Batts, Melanie Linsmair, Taylor Pagano and Maddie Norton.  These players are on both Cunning Stunts and Wet Bandits, and those two teams have the best two offenses in the League AND the best two point differentials in the League.  The Stunts in particular have a 10+ point lead over the next non-Batts team in offensive points per game, and a 7+ point lead over the nexts non-Batts team in total point differential.  These teams are killing it.

 

The person who might have the BEST claim to domination of the League though is actually Katie Keller.  Katie is on the Stunts and Mix'n It Up, which means she can claim to be part of the best offense, best point differential AND best defense in the League.  It's Katie's world, and we're all just living in it.

 

We pointed out that the Stunts and Wet Bandits have the best and second best offenses and point differentials in the League, but it's also worth pointing out that Practice Squad is actually THIRD in both categories as well.  Has there ever been an identical top three in two categories at once?? We don't think so.  These three teams are doing something right.  Oh, and Practice Squad is also in the top ten in defense, the ONLY team in the League that's "top ten" in every category right now.  

 

So we know which teams are doing it right... Now let's look at which teams are doing it wrong.  Toppers All Stars & Todd are in the bottom ten in every category.  Is Todd to blame??  Cobblestone is also bottom ten, and they are the only team in the league that's scoring fewer than 20 points per game while allowing more than 40... and that's not even counting their two forfeit losses!  Grey Hair - Don't Care and GUCCI are the other two teams in all three "bottom tens"... so we have four teams in the bottom categories, and only one team in the top (Practice Squad).  It's harder to be great than it is to be bad!

 

Pit Harade has the worst offense in the league at 12.4 PPG.  Spinelli's Plumbing has the worst defense in the league at 49.8 PPG allowed (we had to look that up to make sure it was accurate; sadly, it is).  Cobblestone has the worst point differential at -26.3 PPG.  Ironically, it would only HELP Cobblestone's point differential if we included their forfeit losses, because those would only be -21 games instead of their average -26 when they actually play.

 

 

 

For now though, here are your TOP FIFTEEN Quarterbacks in the TSL (and, one might argue, the world):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So a little Q&A to refresh your memories:

 

Not even close.  At minimum, the Top Ten will be shown EVERY week.  We always expand as the season goes on, so you'll see a Top 15, Top 20... last season we got to a Top 30, so we do try to be inclusive.

 

In a word: yes.  The purpose of a Power Ranking is to highlight the absolute best in the League, and for the most part the best are competing AGAINST the best.  We will absolutely be acknowledging the performances (good and bad) of Quarterbacks in the lower divisions as well, but it's rare that a lower division QB will crack the Top Ten or Fifteen, and that's the way it should be.  Generally speaking if you don't like your ranking, our advice is to try moving up a division next session.  The better your competition, the more credibility you earn for beating it.

 

Not really.  A team's a team, and although gender team scores tend to be a little higher (every TD = minimum 8 points) we don't see much difference.  It takes skill to win with men; it takes skill to win with women.  The biggest knock on gender teams is that they tend to play in lower divisions and as we said above, we do factor THAT into our rankings.

 

Generally we're only ranking one QB per team, even if you've got a player on your bench that you think could be a successful starter elsewhere.  And for teams with unreliable QBs who don't show up often enough for us to even KNOW who the starter is, we often leave them out of our rankings entirely... as they say, the best "ability" is "availability".  If you want to get ranked, show up and play as often as you can.  

 

For starters, you should play really well.  If you're scoring a lot of points, we WILL notice you.  There are several new teams this session, so we probably DON'T know who you all are yet.  We no longer have our own email address due to some legal restructuring stuff, so if you want to tell us about your QB, why not email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and introduce yourself?  And please, please be patient.  If you're the highest scoring team in the League in Week 2, that doesn't mean we're anointing you as the next Mike Thomas just yet.  Keep at it, play well, and we promise eventually we will recognize you.

 

Breakfast Club is for fun, not crushing your opponents, so if you're running up the score to try to get noticed... well, that only makes you an asshole!  We don't put a lot of stock in the stats from Breakfast Club and don't factor that into our Rankings.

 

Oh, we didn’t forget about the rest of you.  In addition to the QB Rankings, we will do our best to put out other rankings that the rest of you can enjoy – best team offenses, best team defenses, best referees, best male receivers, best female receivers, best at bar …  ranking anything is always fun.  Unless we rank you last, of course.  

 

Don’t worry about who’s writing this.  Let’s be honest: If you knew who was on our Committee (there's a few of us), you would incessantly whine to them about why you or your QB should be ranked higher every week.  Anonymity is key for journalism THIS important.  

 

And that's how the Power Rankings work.  We expect it's going to be an incredible season, with fifty-ish teams battling for TSL supremacy.  Our official predictions for this year (with the benefit of one week already being in the books, of course): 

 

• PowerPuff Girls take the #1 seed in the D5 regular season... but they don't win the D5 Championship game
• Bullet Club and Toppers All-Stars & Todd repeat this session as needing play-in games to make the D3 playoffs (and this time, Topper doesn't forfeit!)
• Joey Batts wins exactly one championship this Fall session
• The Malones play in, but lose, the D2 Championship game
• Day by Day will win the D6 Championship this Fall.  You heard it here first.
• Cobblestone will forfeit at least one OTHER game this season (besides the one they forfeited on Saturday)

 

• Wanderers win their first ever TSL championship, and we'll even guess the score is 30 something to 30 something in the D3 Finals [They didn't make it past the first round...  Playoff B saw to that.]
• Whoever wins D2 will buck the trend and actually jump to D1 in the Fall... stranger things have happened! [God bless America and God bless the fearless Freeballers! We got this one right]
• At least one brand new team will make it to their division's Finals game [Does Stir the Sauce count as a "brand new team"?  Probably not, they have a very Woodpeckerish feel to them.  No new teams made the finals last session]
• GUCCI finally shake off their underperforming in the playoffs and take home the D5 championship [Wrong again, as they were eliminated in controversial fashion in the semi-finals last Spring]
• The Rose Garden WILL begin construction before the end of the Spring session! [They put the stakes in the ground, right?  Alright, that's not enough to count]
• No D6 team will finish with more than 6 wins in the regular season [D6 was an excellent division last Spring, and we got this right.  Pit Harade finished with six wins, no one else had more than five]

 

So there you go.  Let's get to the first QB Power Rankings of the Fall 2024 Season.  

 

As always, we do NOT overreact to one week's worth of games in our first Power Rankings of the season.  Bobby McConnell lost on Saturday - you think he's going to fall very far in the Rankings?  Not a chance.  You also might not see many new people yet because we need a larger sample size to see how some of these changes play out.  Sorry if you don't like it, but if people are good enough, their stock will rise quickly and we'll get them Ranked over the next few weeks.  

 

Here are your Top Ten starting QBs in the TSL: