TSL Quarterback Power Rankings – Week 1

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Category: TSL QB Power Rankings

Created: Tuesday, 27 August 2019 12:40

Published: Tuesday, 27 August 2019 12:40

Written by Patrick McGovern

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TSL Quarterback Power Rankings – Week 1

A disclaimer before we get started:  This is NOT a ranking of just “who played the best in Week One”.  If that were the case, Topper would be #1 in the Power Rankings (which can’t be possibly be right) and Joey Batts would be lucky to crack the Top 40.  Week One performance absolutely matters, but we’re not going to pretend like history DOESN’T.  Matty Ice didn’t play a game this week, and Bobby McConnell is 0-1, but would a TSL QB Power Rankings mean ANYTHING if it didn’t rank the both of them near the top?  In other words, try to think of it this way – your QB Power Rankings should tell you which Quarterbacks your team would be most afraid to go up against NEXT week.  Yes, Bobby is 0-1, but that doesn’t suddenly make him an easy matchup on the schedule next week.

Got it?  Cool.  Let’s get to the rankings:

Is it a surprise that Chris Cole (#1) is still at the top?  Is it fair?  We’re not really sure.  You could argue that Mark Dalfonso (#2) just beat Cole head-to-head in last season’s championship game (ending a pretty epic win streak in the process) and has started this season 2-0 while averaging 40.5 ppg.  Public Enemy meanwhile is 1-0 this season with 33 ppg, and they’re no longer the reigning, defending, undisputed champs of the TSL Universe.  What more does Dalfonso have to do to claim the top spot???  Ultimately we decided that, streak aside, Chris Cole is 21-1 in his last 22 games, and if we didn’t rank him #1 it would be solely based on one loss.  And that doesn’t seem fair either.  So it’s Cole #1, Dalfonso #2, at least for the time being.  The two will go head-to-head again on September 14^th, which should give us a more satisfying answer.  Until then, you’re free to second guess this decision.

As stated earlier, Matty Ice (#3) didn’t play this week, but he keeps a pretty good ranking regardless.  And Bobby McConnell (#4) got wrecked by Marketing Mayors this week, but we know what he’s capable of, so we won’t punish him too much for that yet.  A loss to Bullet Club and/or Tight Ends in Motion next week could send him spiraling though…

Two seasons ago, Peachy Platoon was what, D5?  Then last session they made the leap to D3 and didn’t miss a beat.  This session they’ve been bumped up to D2 and STILL no signs of slowing down.  Dean Thompson (#5) beat a short-handed Bullet Club team 61-20 this week, as well as his former D3 rivals Slytherin That End Zone by a score of 43-30.  Didn’t the Platoon get DESTROYED by Slytherin last season 42-7 in the first game of the season?  Yeah, they’ve gotten a little better since then.  Peachy Platoon is our highest scoring team in the League after one week with 104 points. 

Matt Newman (#7) of SITE had the aforementioned loss to Peachy Platoon but also beat Bullet Club this week by a score of 32-26.   1-1 on his first day in D2 is pretty good… just not as good as Dean and Peachy, who had the exact same schedule (and better results).

All he’s done is Qwonn, and for that Vince Taverna (#6) gets his highest ever spot in the TSL QB Power Rankings.  Quinn has been a really good team for the last few sessions, and we suspect they’re not getting the credit they deserve.  We’re not sure what division they WANTED to play in, but it must have stung a little bit to see Slytherin and Peachy promoted to D2 while they got left behind, right?  These guys know they can run with anybody.  Oh, and AWDIQ is the only other team besides Peachy Platoon to have 100 points scored after Week One.

Joseph Battaglia (#8) – you’re a great quarterback, one of the best in this League.  But you did NOT have a great day.  Our two time Spring 2019 champ walked into Week One with the longest active winning streak in the League (7 games with Gryffindor dating back to last season)… and walked out with a two game losing streak, including bad losses to Public Enemy (33-13) and Tight Ends in Motion (35-0, with the game called early).  6.5 points per game is second worst in the League after one week (TMA had only 6) which is probably not the D1 debut that Joey had in mind.  Also, that weird “Ranking” glitch on the website this week (not to be confused with the QB Power Rankings) shows Gryffindor as the 47^th ranked team in the league out of 47 teams.  Pretty miserable start, but… doesn’t this all sound kind of familiar?  Week 3 of last season, the TSL QB Power Rankings noted that Gryffindor had “the single lowest points per game of ANY team in ANY division right now.  By a LOT.  [Seriously – 9.5 ppg, a full 7 points behind the SECOND WORST team in the League.  Ouch]”.  Gryffindor then turned that slow start into a D2 championship season.  These guys have been here before, and they’re (probably) not panicking yet. 

Enough about that loser Joey Batts.  Let’s talk about that WINNER, Patrick McGovern (#9).  Ah, this is one of those sports stories that just warms your heart.  Senior citizen QB, way past his athletic prime, makes an incredible Fall 2019 debut and beats We Back by a score of 58-8, with zero interceptions thrown.  Topper is currently the highest scoring QB in the League on a per game basis.  Sigh.  One more time: TOPPER is currently the highest scoring QB in the League on a per game basis.  How long can this possibly last?  Let’s not dwell on how quickly he’ll collapse (he started last session 1-0 also, and that didn’t end well), let’s just enjoy our geriatric Rudy story while we have it.  Good for him.  Good for him.

The top nine seemed pretty obvious to the Power Rankings committee this week, but it was a difficult decision for the tenth spot. What about Mike Mckenrick, making his D1 debut for TEIM and beating Gryffindor 35-0?  What about Samantha Lattuca and Scott Pinto combining for 49 points for Ultimate Warriors?  What about Johnny Dio getting the D2 win for Dilf’s?  All great choices, but we’re a sucker for a good story, and we were MOST impressed with Joe Miano (#10) making the leap from D6 to D3 and scoring 49 points in his debut, including ten on the final drive to tie the game.  Nothing intimidates this guy.  With an improved cast around him, Joe is going to make some noise in D3 this season.

***

Unfortunately it’s too early in the season to put together any of those charts about team offenses and defenses that we love so much, but here are a few quick hits on your TSL team leaders after one week (some of which is repeated from above):

• Best Offensive Team (total points) – Peachy Platoon, 104
• Best Offensive Team (points per game) – Hofbrauhaus Buffalo, 58
• Worst Offensive Team (total points) – TMA, 6
• Worst Offensive Team (points per game) – TMA, 6
• Best Defensive Team (total points against) – Tight Ends in Motion, 0
• Best Defensive Team (points against per game) – Tight Ends in Motion, 0
• Worst Defensive Team (total points against) – 3^rd & Schlong, 98
• Worst Defensive Team (points against per game) – Hope N Ruin, 59
• Best Point Differential (total points) – Peachy Platoon, +54
• Best Point Differential (points per game) – Hofbrauhaus Buffalo, +50
• Worst Point Differential (total points) – Gryffindor, -55
• Worst Point Differential (points per game) – We Back, -50
• Longest Current Win Streak – Marketing Mayors, 6
• Longest Current Losing Streak – 3^rd & Schlong, 4

***

If you have any thoughts on why we suck at ranking QBs (and of course how you’d do it better), please send emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

What’s YOUR ranking?

Final QB Rankings and More

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Category: TSL QB Power Rankings

Created: Wednesday, 19 June 2019 18:42

Published: Wednesday, 19 June 2019 18:42

Written by Patrick McGovern

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TSL Quarterback Rankings – Spring 2019, Final Standings

The FINAL TSL Quarterback Power Rankings of the Spring 2019 Season are here.

Okay, we weren’t bold enough to show our FULL Power Rankings for every starting QB because we don’t want to hurt feelings (and we don’t want Topper and Rameer flooded with hate mail) but a Top Twenty is still pretty good!

A few observations before we move on to even MORE obnoxious charts:

After one full season of Power Rankings, we have never had anyone in the highest spot other than Chris Cole (#1) who swept the season from start to finish.  The Streak is at 19 games and counting, and we’re two playoff games away from Public Enemy matching the New England Patriots’ NFL record 21 game winning streak.  Congrats on your success this season… but no one’s going to care how many games you won if Bobby McConnell (#3) goes home with the trophy at the end of the day.

Final Matty Stats for the season: 19-4 record as a starter, 864 points scored.  We would love to think he averaged 8.64 points per scoring drive to finish with 100 TD’s (you can’t prove he didn’t).  No, he couldn’t beat Chris Cole in the end, but Matty (#2) had a great season and is a credible threat to win THREE championships in the coming weeks.  A&A will be the toughest we imagine, the way Joey Batts (#4) is playing lately.

We were going to point out that Frodo Swaggins had the most points scored of any Non-Gender team this season, but the Sentinel smartly beat us to it.  Scott Drosendahl (#11) is a real candidate for Rookie of the Year (that’s still a banquet award, right?), and with Garrett Beesing (#24) as his backup, these guys put up some serious points this year.

We still love Dean Thompson (#9) but, uh, is that running play Peachy Platoon busts out every game even remotely legal?  Refs are going to be watching more closely in the playoffs I’m sure – good thing Dean can win with his arm too.

Hey Joe Miano (#18) – you’re the real deal, and so are the rest of Jabronies.  Win or lose come playoffs, can we count on you to move up a division or two and see what you can do?  No one else can beat Public Enemy… why not Joe Miano?

Blase Laduca (#16), your analysis was adorable.  Ugandan Warriors were awesome this season!  Sixth in the League for points scored, third in your division.  Don’t think we didn’t notice you – you’re a great QB, and next season you’ve got a real shot at the Top Ten.  But hey, maybe leave the charts to the pros?  The column widths, the spelling errors, the #VALUE error messages.  Ugh.  TSL is the BIG LEAGUES kid, we’ve got this.  (We’re totally kidding, and love that you cared enough to do your own self-serving analysis… that was awesome.)

And now, here are the end of season stats to recognize the best teams in the League.  Like our QB Power Rankings, we’ll give you Top Twenty lists this week to go out with a bang – let’s start with our best and worst of the season on Offense:

Footnote to all of these charts: the official League standings show Energy Buff and Money Ball as playing only 8 games because they weren’t able to schedule their last game of the season against each other.  For the sake of not skewing our stats, we’re treating that game as a 21-21 tie.

Out of 46 teams in the League (Breakfast Club, as always, is not included in these charts), 22 scored more than 30 points per game on average.  The only team to score more than 40 ppg ALSO scored more than 50 ppg – Matty’s Angels just DESTROYED the field this year offensively, with 463 total points.  Impressive, Matty!  44 out of 46 teams averaged between 20-40 points per game.  Matty’s Angels of course was the only team above that range, but TSL also had one below, and it’s another gender team – the Bipolar Express, with 19.67 ppg.  Less impressive, Gordon!  

Also worth noting, of the ten best offenses in the League (really eleven, with a tie at tenth place), only seven had Quarterbacks in our final Power Rankings Top Ten.  Did we sell Drosendahl, Miano, Clark and Laduca short this year?  Maybe.  Strangely, if we look at the ten WORST offenses in the League this year, we also had three of THOSE teams’ Quarterbacks in our Power Rankings Top Ten at one point throughout the year (though none lasted to our final rankings).  So if you want to debate how terrible we are at ranking League Quarterbacks, hey, we don’t blame you.

On to defenses:

Unsurprisingly, team defensive averages are much like team offensive averages, and most teams fall between that 20-40 ppg range with points allowed.  Only End Game and GLBS averaged less than 20 points per game allowed, and only Five Star Generals averaged more than 40 points per game allowed.  Our top two defenses this year actually played other in Week 1, with End Game beating GLBS 20-13 in a predictably low scoring game. 

Poor 3^rd & Schlong – they jumped from 14^th worst defense in the league to 5^th worst with one bad game against Frodo Swaggins in the last week of the season.

Does defense even matter?  Let’s ask our gender teams.  Matty’s Angels is third worst in the League, and still undefeated.  The Bipolar Express is third best in the League, and finished in last place.  What?

Now on to Point Differentials – who had the best and worst +/- in the League this season?

End Game shouldn’t surprise you – they were best in the League on defense and 7^th best on offense.  Matty’s Angels is just fascinating… how do you finish with the third worst defense in the League, and end up second in point differential?  (Answer: truly insane offensive numbers.)

We all love Cobblestone, so NO ONE is going to point out that they had the worst point differential, second worst defense, and third worst offense in the League.  NO ONE POINT THAT OUT PLEASE.

We had wondered earlier how Jabronies would fair against Public Enemy.  In all likelihood they’d get beat by a hundred points, BUT the comparison between these teams is interesting – Public Enemy outscored opponents 321-230, and Jabronies outscored opponents 319-230.  Maybe three years from now we’ll be talking about Jabronies record setting 25 game winning streak.

And here is the division by division comparison, where we’ve included intra-division offensive rank, defensive rank, +/- rank, and each team’s actual rank in the standings (you know, the only ranking that matters):

The number one offense is in first place in four divisions.  The number one defense is in first place in three divisions.  End Game is the only team in both categories, as the only team with a clean sweep of #1 in every category in their division.  Cobblestone is dead last in offense, defense, and plus/minus… but not in the standings, and never in our hearts.

That’s it for the Spring 2019 TSL QB Power Rankings!  Good luck in the playoffs, and we hope you enjoyed reading about how bad your Quarterback was this year!

TSL Quarterback Rankings – Pre-Season Review

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Category: TSL QB Power Rankings

Created: Thursday, 22 August 2019 18:45

Published: Thursday, 22 August 2019 18:45

Written by Patrick McGovern

Hits: 11659

TSL Quarterback Rankings – Pre-Season Review

“And, with that, the Race for Social Co-Ed Football Immortality has ended” – The Godfather, July 5^th 2019

Last season’s race is indeed over, and 40 of our 46 teams went home losers, crushed and dejected.  But that’s the beauty of sports – there’s always next season.  And on August 24^th, NEXT season becomes THIS season, and hope springs eternal.  We’re all undefeated again, with dreams of glory and championships.  We’ve added Guy X and Girl Y to our rosters, and this time we really ARE invincible, and we might even go undefeated! 

We’re lying to ourselves of course – this season our slightly larger league will actually have 41 teams go home without winning the big one.  But it feels good to believe in ourselves right now, doesn’t it?  Maybe this really is our year…

***

Welcome back to the TSL Quarterback Power Rankings.  If you read the article last year (and there must have been at least five or six of you) then you’re familiar with the concept – every week we share our rankings for the Top Ten QBs in the League, and discuss who’s trending up (how long before Dean Thompson is #1 in the League?  2022?) and who’s trending down (you’re not getting any younger Topper).  And because we’re overly enamored with charts and stats, we also like to bombard you with those from time to time.  Here’s a recap of how this works, copied and pasted almost verbatim from last year’s pre-season review:

“Are you going to show rankings for all 47 starting QB’s every week?”

No, just the Top Ten will be shown EVERY week, but the write-up will have commentary on other rising and falling QBs throughout the League as well.  We may expand to a Top 15 or Top 20 as the season goes on if we’re feeling ambitious.  Stay tuned.

“Is this going to be heavily biased towards the higher divisions?”

The top ten probably will be, sure.  The purpose of a Power Ranking is to highlight the best in the League, and for the most part the best are competing AGAINST the best.  But we will absolutely be acknowledging the performance (good and bad) of Quarterbacks in the lower divisions as well.  We doubt a pure D5 quarterback will ever crack the Top Ten (they didn’t last season), but we will try our best to cover all divisions in the write-up, every week.

“So you’re only ranking QB’s… what about the rest of us?”

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 at bar …  ranking anything is always fun.  Unless we rank you last, of course.

“You keep saying ‘we’.  Who is writing this?  Who determines these rankings?”

Don’t worry about who’s writing this.  Let’s be honest: If you knew, you would incessantly whine to that person or persons about why you or your QB should be ranked higher every week.  Anonymity is key for journalism THIS important.

So there you go.  We don’t have any new “pre-season rankings” for you, because there are too many new teams and new faces to predict right now.  But here are the final “Top 20” rankings from the end of Spring 2019’s regular season (which might have looked different if we had re-ranked them after playoffs…): 

Expect many of those names in the Top Ten again this season.

If you have any constructive feedback that could improve our rankings (let me guess – your team’s QB should be ranked higher) or analytics you’d like to see (who’s the longest winning streak in the League right now after the fall of Public Enemy? Gryffindor at 7 games, believe it or not, and they play Public Enemy in Week 1!), please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   

We don’t have a cool sign-off phrase like “I’ll be watching…” (dear Sentinel author: please write one for us) so we’ll just close by saying good luck to everyone with this season’s race for Social Co-Ed Football Immortality!

TSL Quarterback Rankings – Week 7

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Category: TSL QB Power Rankings

Created: Monday, 10 June 2019 18:28

Published: Monday, 10 June 2019 18:28

Written by Patrick McGovern

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TSL Quarterback Rankings – Week 7

Chris Cole (#1) survives a scare by Bullet Club and Travis (#6) this week to bring The Streak (capital letters are a must at this point) to 18 games.  Since we established this to be a League record last week (at least, we proposed it was, and no one has any way of disputing it) we need to start looking for comparisons elsewhere to put this in perspective.  The longest streak in NFL history is 21 games (some team in New England), which Public Enemy can match by winning their last game of the regular season this week, then winning the playoffs.  Their 21^st win would be their second consecutive League championship.  Wouldn’t that be obnoxious??  We’re all rooting against this, right?  Some hero needs to emerge to finally beat these guys…

… and who better than Matty F’n Ice???  Matty (#2) has been stuck one spot below Cole in the TSL QB Power Rankings since Week 3 of this season, and we’ve lamented the fact that he has no real path to taking over that #1 spot despite his ridiculous resume to date (which, to recap, is now at 18-3 on the season for three teams, and 797 points scored).  And now, FINALLY, it’s happening: the cross-divisional matchup between the #1 and #2 Ranked QB’s in the final week of the regular season.  You could NOT have written a better script than this.  Last week we wondered what might have happened if Bobby had beaten Public Enemy – would he have automatically flipped to #1, or would Cole stay on top of the Power Rankings regardless of the one loss?  There’s no need to debate it this time, because we’ll just tell you – if Matty Ice can end The Streak and beat Public Enemy, he will finish the regular season #1 in our TSL QB Power Rankings.  Is this fair to Cole?  Maybe not, but all he has to do to run the table and keep the #1 Ranking every week for the entire Spring 2019 season… is win one more game.

He may not be able to take the #1 spot in the Power Rankings, but a Cole win (which comes with a Matty loss) next week would put Bobby McConnell (#3) in position to potentially jump Matty and finish the season in second.  Bobby took a forfeit win over Title Shot this week, then won a close one over Mark Dalfonso (#5) and Marketing Mayors 33-32.  Eyes Downtown is undefeated this season… except for the two games they’ve played against Public Enemy.  Public Enemy and Eyes Downtown are both already locked into first round byes for the top division playoffs.  Will Cole continue destroying everyone in his path this season?  Or will Bobby play with a little extra fire in the playoffs, PERHAPS motivated by the fact that his name hasn’t been seen at the top of the Power Rankings (which once looked destined to belong to him)?

Taking advantage of Mark’s loss to Eyes Downtown, Joey Batts (#4) jumps up a spot in the Power Rankings this week.  Joey guided Gryffindor past #XTC@AngryBuffalo 30-28 in the cross divisional game, which BY THE WAY the Godfather predicted would happen (“C2 teams will win at LEAST two of the games”, which was ALSO correct… even in Des Moines, they can see what a strong division C2 has become this session).  Cunning Stunts also beat Pink Pteratacos 34-26, and lost to Matty’s Angels 61-42.  Yeah, we hate to move someone up in the Rankings after a loss, but these are Quarterback rankings, and Joey still led that offense to 42 points.

Vince Taverna (#7) is back in our Top Ten this week.  He was punished for losing a game last week, but AWDIQ is STILL 14-1-1 in their last 16 games, and although Vince hasn’t started at QB in all of those, it’s pretty impressive considering how competitive Rec 1 has been this season.  AWDIQ is right near the top of the division in points scored, and they had a convincing win over Ultimate Warriors this week (45-22).  Sam Lattuca (#31) made her debut as starting QB for the Warriors this week, and although drawing the #1 seed in the ladder match is not the ideal way to start one’s QB career, we expect she’ll do much better next week against the #7 seed.

Rec 1 QB’s Newman (#8) and Dean Thompson (#9) are lucky to keep their spots in the Top Ten this week, as Newman tied Morning Wood 36-36 and Dean actually lost to Frodo Swaggins 18-14.  Fortunately for both, the other Quarterbacks just outside the Top Ten had rough weeks as well, so no one was able to jump past them in our Power Rankings yet.

We had mentioned in this article last week that End Game wasn’t getting enough respect, based on their huge point differential (now up to +112, far and away the best in Rec 2), strong offense (only four points behind Uncle Rico’s Time Travelers for best in their division) and most importantly their winning ways (five in a row, best record in their division).  David Eickhoff, it’s time we gave you some respect.  Welcome to the Top Ten.  Are you going to get bumped next week if Dubey (#14), Tommy Scrivani (#13) or Nick Sooch (#11) have a big game?  It’s possible.  All you can do is keep putting up points and keep winning, and the Power Rankings won’t be able to ignore you.

Speaking of winning – every week we talk about that Public Enemy Streak, but we don’t really talk about other teams’ winning streaks.  And that’s because other teams, for the most part, don’t HAVE winning streaks.  It’s really hard to win consistently in this League!  The way you hear teams talking about themselves, you would think they never lose, but everyone does, and pretty frequently.  By our count, there are only six teams in the League right now with winning streaks longer than two games.  SIX!  Here’s the complete list:

And even Slytherin comes with an asterisk, as they tied Morning Wood this week (they’re 3-0-1 in their last four games; we’re pretending that tie didn’t happen for the sake of argument).  Gryffindor, with a modest three game winning streak, can reasonably make the argument that they’re one of the hottest teams in the League right now heading into the playoffs.  We typically don’t include breakfast club teams in these charts, but in case you’re wondering, no breakfast club team has a three game winning streak either.

Wins and losses are obvious, but let’s look again at point differential (+/-) to see which other teams have momentum heading into the playoffs.  Yes, last week we looked at charts showing each team’s +/- on the season, but this week we’d like to look at only the last three weeks to see which teams are the hottest going into the final week of regular season.  Doesn’t really matter what you did in Week One (*cough* TITLE SHOT) if you aren’t winning when it counts the most.

End Game and Ugandan Warriors are way ahead of the pack the past few weeks, with only two teams from the Competitive divisions (Marketing Mayors and Eyes Downtown) cracking the top ten.  These teams are either getting hot at just the right time, or they had an easy second half to their Spring schedules.  Gryffindor and their three game winning streak didn’t make this chart because we’re overly fond of Top Tens, but in case you’re wondering, they came in at 11^th (+9.0 ppg over the past three weeks).

And now, you guessed it, the worst:

Given how cold Title Shot has been lately, we’re actually surprised they’re not at the bottom, but that “honor” belongs to Five Star Generals.  All of these teams are struggling down the stretch, and we wouldn’t bet on any of them to pull off a miracle in the playoffs.

Here’s your division by division point differential from the last three weeks:

And that’s it for this week.  Next week will be the Final QB Power Rankings of the Spring 2019 Season.  Do we dare unveil our full Top 50 Rankings to the world next week?  Or will Topper, fearful of all the hate mail he’d get from the lowest ranked QBs, bury that article before it can ever see the light of day?  Tune in next week to find out!