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- Written by Jeff Krol
- Category: TSL QB Power Rankings
- Published: 12 October 2023
- Created: 12 October 2023
- Hits: 827
Welcome back to the FINAL TSL Quarterback Power Rankings of the season!
Yes, unlike our way more productive colleagues the Godfather and the Sentinel, we don't write articles during the playoffs. We like to sit back and just watch the show, the fireworks, the bloodbath, whatever you want to call it, without having to analyze anything. So with this being our last article of the year, we've saved a lot for you. We have our final Top 25 Quarterbacks of the year and then our usual playoff division analysis where we look at each playoff race in detail to pick out any trends in the data we can find. Plus some other stuff.
This will be our longest article of the year with lots of time-consuming charts and graphs so we skipped the individual QB write-ups this week and just included the Power Rankings themselves. You don't need us to tell you how good or bad your team's QB is at this point, your record speaks for itself!
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Division by Division Review of the TSL
For our final analysis of the season, we're going to show you the following:
- The breakdown of best offenses, defenses and net point differentials per division. As always, stats below have removed forfeit games from the math, so what you see on the charts may not match the website (intentionally). There was only one forfeit this year (shame on you, Rick Reccio) so not as many adjustments as usual for that. Then we tried to color each team's data by their official jersey colors, but half this league apparently uses the same colors so it's not perfect (sorry Cunning Stunts for your sexist pink coloring!)
- A graph of average point differentials per game for each division with a similar "Favorites, Contenders, Pretenders" logic we've used in previous seasons (if you're winning games by an average of 6+ PPG, you're a Favorite in green; if you're losing by an average of 6+ PPG, you're a Pretender in red; all other teams are yellow in the middle; these are not OUR judgments on who falls into each category, it's strictly based on the math of your team's point differentials). For what it's worth, in the last five seasons that we've been showing these graphs, we've had 21 eventual division champions classified as "Favorites", 15 as "Contenders", and exactly zero as "Pretenders".
- A quick twitter sized (or "X sized") recap of the division heading into playoffs, and then identifying which teams are "overrated" and "underrated" in each group. Note that these last two categories are based purely on what we see in the scores and stats, NOT our own personal feelings of players on each team (we might personally think Travis Henry's Kids are overrated, but if the underlying numbers say their team is underrated, that's where we'll include them below) so TRY not to be offended thinking the "website is being mean". We're just reading numbers off a website, man. Relax.
And away we go!
Division 1
The Headline: Two massive juggernauts on a collision course for the Finals... and three other teams hoping to spoil the party.
Underrated: They finished second in the D1 standings, but Eyes Downtown are first in offense, first in defense, and first in points per game this season. It's tough to wrap our heads around this team being considered "underrated" with all the talent they have, but if we have to single out a team in D1 for this category, it's Eyes Downtown.
Overrated: The Sticky Bandits path to the championship would involve beating Frodo Swaggins (against whom they went 1-2 this season), then Legends (0-2), then PROBABLY Eyes Downtown (also 0-2). The only team they had success against this Fall was Losing Streak, and they can't possibly face Losing Streak until the Finals. That's a lot to ask of a team, to reverse their fortunes against three teams in a row that each beat them multiple times throughout the season.
Division 2
The Headline: Untouchaballs, Freeballers and Can't Touch This lead the pack, with Mavericks, Cle-Avengers Assemble and THREAD good enough to make a run. Scared Hitless and Practice Squad also play in this division.
Underrated: Are Untouchaballs still undefeated when their whole team is there? They had that week where they lost two games by the same high score, and then their other loss may have been without Burr? It's tough to get all our facts straight on 45 teams, but we're PRETTY sure this team is damn near unstoppable when everyone is there. We're assuming they'll show up for playoffs of course (doesn't everyone?) and if they do, they're better than that 6-3 record shows.
Overrated: Can't Touch This somehow finished as nearly the top seed in their division, despite having just the fourth best point differential. They also haven't won a game in almost a month, which makes us wonder if they're really in the top tier of this division, or just a middle of the pack team that got off to a strong start.
Division 3
The Headline: The TSL's wildest division lives up to the billing, with one favorite (The Family) and several legitimate contenders.
Underrated: Let's Get Reccked are 2-7, but they're losing by an average of less than 2 points per game. That is NOT the point differential of a 2-7 team. Like many teams in the TSL they've suffered from attendance issues, and there are no guarantees that their stars show up for playoffs either... But if they do, Let's Get Reccked might just be the best 7th seed we've ever seen.
Overrated: Vaspian was 4-1 before losing their last four games... and the final two of those were massacres. Their defense is ranked sixth in their division at 34.4 PPG allowed, which isn't actually that far off from the best teams (Bullet Club leads D3 with 30.4 PPG allowed)... but their offense is WAY off from the top teams. Vaspian are averaging 21.0 PPG, which is less than half of the top teams in this division. It's hard to imagine them keeping up with a team like The Family in a shoot-out.
Division 4
The Headline: The Cunning Stunts are destroying everyone, while a handful of other good teams hope for an upset. TMA will not win.
Underrated: Tiebreakers aside, each team's record in D4 is exactly in the order that one would expect based on their point differentials. No one is statistically overrated OR underrated here, because they all pretty much finished in the order they should. But since we have to pick one... we'll take Interdimensional Lightning Falcons. They were the closest team to beating Cunning Stunts in the regular season, losing by a point on the last play, and they've finished the season on a four game winning streak. If anyone can upset Joey and the Stunts machine, it's these guys.
Overrated: Same commentary as above, it's a stretch to pick an "overrated" team in a division where everyone finished in the order their point differentials would suggest, blah blah blah. We'll take Father Baker though. They've won two games this session: one was against TMA, who apparently Topper with his disintegrating arm could probably beat this season, and the other was by just a few points over Buffalo Vice. They're not likely to see either of those opponents in the playoffs (a win against ILF would almost certainly put them against the Stunts in the Semifinals) and they've used so many Bobby/Kyle guest appearances at QB this session that we don't even remember if Father Baker himself has even won a game yet?
Division 5
The Headline: If you finished in the top half of this division, you've got a decent chance of winning the D5 Championship. If you didn't, we wouldn't bet a dollar on your chances.
Underrated: In our D3 review we said "Let's Get Reccked are 2-7, but they're losing by an average of less than 2 points per game. That is NOT the point differential of a 2-7 team". You can swap out "Let's Get Reccked" for "Cobblestone" here and the point would still hold up. If there's a formula for a playoff upset, it's a) have the best athletes on your team, and b) hope they all show up on the same day. Not much Darryl can do about the second point there, but his athletes are good enough to stack up against anyone. If there's an underdog with a fighting chance, wouldn't it be this team?
Overrated: BAADies finished with a .500 record (4-4-1)... and the second worst point differential in their division. Gender teams are tricky to predict sometimes in the playoffs, because their girls usually have conflicts with their other teams throughout the season, and then suddenly everyone's available for playoffs when divisions are scheduled at different teams. So it's possible that Garrett gets his full team together and surprises some people. But so far NO team since we've been writing this article has ever won a championship from the dreaded "pretender" status on our graph (reminder: a red bar on the graph above shows that they're averaging losses by more than one score per game) so if BAADies want to win a championship this season, they're really going to have to buck history.
Division 6
The Headline: With respect to D3, THIS is the TSL's most wide open division. Seven teams have a chance to win here... and Back That Pass Up has a chance to get some drinks at the bar after their first round loss.
Underrated: Just Get Open is our third 2-7 team we've looked at across these divisions that we think has an actual chance to win some playoff games. Their point differentials aren't quite as good as Cobblestone or Let's Get Reccked, but at -4 PPG they aren't exactly dead in the water either. They play Blitzkrieg in the first round, a team they lost to by a single score in the regular season. Yes, Blitzkrieg will be the favorite in the first round, and yes, they deserve to be, but don't count JGO out yet.
Overrated: We'll take the other team in that matchup we just described as the (slightly) most overrated team in D6 for playoffs. Blitzkrieg earned the #2 seed... but we're not sure they felt like the #2 team in this division. Just look at the graph above: Pit Harade, Balls Deep and Sausage McMuffins were all stronger statistically, and Blitzkrieg would have actually finished with a NEGATIVE point differential if not for a season ending 37-0 win against a shorthanded Back That Pass Up squad. They'll have a real shot to win the division for sure, but not as strong a chance as one would expect from a #2 seeded team.
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Top Ten Best and Worst Lists for the 2023 Spring Season
The division analysis above is the real meat and potatoes of this article, but in case you're curious how you stack up against teams in OTHER divisions, here are the top ten (and bottom ten) teams in the entire TSL for offensive points per game, defensive points per game, and average point differential per game. As always, forfeit games are excluded:
What did we learn from this?? The magic numbers for us are always 20 and 40. Nearly every team in this League averages between 20-40 PPG both offensively and defensively. If you're higher than 40 offensively or lower than 20 defensively, you're doing an amazing job. If you're lower than 20 offensively or higher than 40 defensively... you're probably not winning too many games. This season we had 8 teams crack the 40 point mark, and one (unsurprising) team crack the 50 point mark. Congrats to Cunning Stunts, our Fall 2023 scoring champs. This is their third scoring title in the past four seasons. Here is how they compare with ALL scoring champions since we started tracking this:
So if Cunning Stunts were the BEST offense, who were the worst? This season we had two teams fail to make it to 20 PPG on offense (Practice Squad & Back That Pass Up). Those teams, unsurprisingly, went a combined 3-15 this season.
Then on the other side of the ball, there was not a single defense that held opponents to under 20 PPG this session! Last session we had four, so it's a little surprising that not one team cracked the 20 point mark defensively. It might have something to do with the great weather we mostly enjoyed, which tends to favor offense. That would explain why we had five teams this session (BAADies, Father Baker, 716, TMA and Frodo Swaggins) that allowed 40+ points per game, up from just one team last session. Those five teams went a combined 10-35-1 this season allowing so many points, and in fact 6 of those 10 wins (and a tie) come from Garrett Beesing QBed teams! The rest of the pack went 4-23 without Garrett's offense to save them.
Worth noting, when we wrote this same part of this article in Spring session, we said the following about Creekers: "It feels like we beat up on the Creekers a lot here, but that's just because we enjoy pointing out statistical anomalies. So here's a pro-Creekers stat for their team: guys, you are nowhere NEAR as bad as the Replacements were last year! The Fall 2022 season's punching bag team was 0-9, averaged only 10.8 PPG on offense (barely HALF of what Creekers are scoring) and allowed 48.0 PPG on defense. Where the Creekers were outscored by 21.7 PPG, the Replacements were outscored by 37.3 PPG. So you see, it could have been a lot worse!" The Creekers responded this session by going 6-3 and nearly winning the top seed in their division. The lesson there: don't give up, kids!
Besides the "40/20 Clubs", what else do we see from the best and worst units in the League? Freeballers finished as the only team to make the Top Ten Best lists in every category, while four teams (716, TMA, Not So Sticky and Back That Pass Up) all made the Top Ten Worst lists in every category. Apparently it's easier to be horrible than it is to be great!
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All-Time Championship Statistics
A few sessions ago we compiled a list of every TSL champion in League history and devised a ranking system to see who the "best teams of all time" were. This was exhausting to research and put together, but it's now very simple to update once a session, so that's what we've done here. The timing feels right to update you all on this now JUST before playoffs so we can remind you what you're chasing here... co-ed football immortality. Here are the current immortals:
THAT part is objective - the champs are the champs, and we'd like to think history will remember their achievements for 1,000 years to come (history classes will likely debate what exactly the "Tommy Hughes Experience" was). This next part though is subjective: we then attempted to compare the relative strength of each division's championships to come up with a ranking system (a D2 title is harder to win than a D4 title) and this is what we landed on:
- A D1 championship is our baseline since it's the best a team can do. Let's make that worth 100 points.
- A D2 title is worth, at BEST, 49% of that, since two D2 titles don't quite equal a D1 title (you can argue it should be LESS than 49%, but we've made the choice to weight lower divisions as heavily as reasonably possible here). 49 points for a D2 title.
- A D3 title should be worth 49% of THAT, so about 24 points for each D3 championship.
- Every subsequent division is worth 49% of the previous one, so D4 is worth 11 points, D5 is worth 5 points, and D6 is worth 2 points.
- Indoor championships aren't currently worth a point (though we may revised this in the future). With apologies to DILFS, Jelly Beans and Sticky Bandits, Winter sessions are often used to make new teams and play with new people. No team should be penalized in the rankings for doing that instead of entering their usual squad.
It's an arbitrary system of course, but it's the one we chose. So here is the updated list of your "greatest champions of all time" going into the Fall 2023 playoffs (active teams are highlighted below):
We always debate making a change to the math above so that subsequent championships in the same division would be worth less the second time around. After all, is it fair that Puckett keeps improving their standings by winning D4 over and over? Shouldn't they move up at some point? But for now we decided to leave it as is.
So where does that leave us today? Legends has tied Green & Associates by winning their third D1 championship, and two more would tie Public Enemy as the greatest team in TSL history. Eyes Downtown could jump from 9th to 5th with a win, and Sticky Bandits from 13th to 8th.
Puckett All-Stars is tied with Public Enemy for the most TSL Championships of all-time with five. If they win again this season, they'll be the most decorated champions in TSL history. You can decide yourself if that deserves an asterisk for never moving up to win D3!
Sticky Bandits and Practice Squad both have the opportunity to become the first team in TSL history to win a championship in four different divisions.
Bottom line, people remember champions, not the teams who come in second place, so immortality can only be found by winning it all. Good luck!
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That's it for the TSL Power Rankings this season! We can't possibly make any other charts for you at this point (this was exhausting) and we doubt anyone has read this start-to-finish anyway.
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