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- Written by Jeff Krol
- Category: TSL QB Power Rankings
- Published: 12 June 2024
- Created: 12 June 2024
- Hits: 735
Welcome back to the TSL Quarterback Power Rankings!
Last week D1 teams went 2-2 against D2 teams, and outscored them by a total of 115-105. Maybe the gap between divisions isn't as big as we thought, and we should be ranking D2 Quarterbacks more highly in our article! That said, let's get to it:
#1 Joey Batts - Eyes Uptown / Cunning Stunts
Last Week: Beat Mavericks 40-24 (Eyes Uptown), beat Creekers 51-15 (Cunning Stunts)
The Stunts have already locked up the #1 seed with two games to go, and Eyes Uptown can do the same with a win this week or a Sticky Bandits loss. Also: should Joey Batts be playing defense full-time for Eyes Uptown??
#2 Mike Thomas - Sticky Bandits
Last Week: Beat Freeballers 33-8
The other QBs in D1 were either beaten or seriously tested last weekend in their D2 crossover games. The Sticky Bandits destroyed a short handed Freeballers team. Did we learn anything new about Mike as a QB? Not really. A Bandits win and an Eyes Uptown loss this week would give Sticky Nation the #1 seed in the D1 playoffs.
#3 Bobby McConnell - Eyes Downtown
Last Week: Lost to The Untouchaballs 30-26
Eyes Downtown have faced four opponents this season, and they have losses to all four of them. Strange to say about the defending D1 champs, right? Maybe it's tough to take the regular season seriously (especially in a crossover game) when you're only measuring success by championships at this point.
#4 Jeremy Burr - The Untouchaballs
Last Week: Beat Eyes Downtown 30-26
They woke up the beast! Burr led Untouchaballs to an improbable win against the reigning D1 champs in the biggest (regular season) game of his career. Was that enough to jump Bobby in the Power Rankings? Not quite... Untouchaballs should have jumped to D1 if Burr wanted to be at the top of these rankings... but he definitely showed he belongs in the conversation of best QBs in this League.
#5 Jordan Lawson - Mavericks
Last Week: Lost to Eyes Uptown 40-24
Mavericks played Eyes Uptown as competitively as possible for most of their game on Saturday, until a couple of late picks doomed them. They can clearly hang with any D1 team at this point though, which gives more credence to "we should combine D1 and D2" chatter around the League.
#6 Garrett Beesing - Frodo Swaggins
Last Week: Lost to Scared Hitless 43-16
Frodo was painfully short handed last week against Scared Hitless, so we hesitate to even view their loss to Scared Hitless as an "upset" (if anything it means Scared Hitless could be playing D1 teams!). Garrett drops in the Power Rankings not because he lost, but because Burr won.
#7 Andy Strug - The Malones
Last Week: Beat Jabronies 50-44, beat Toppers All-Stars & Todd 38-29
Stop the presses: The Malones scored only 38 points in a game! They won (of course) and they scored 50 right before that, so the wheels haven't exactly fallen off this offense yet. What a consistently excellent team. Andy does an incredible job throwing against some very good defenders.
#8 Dylan Day - Scared Hitless
Last Week: Did Not Play
Travis "the TSL's greatest backup QB" Cleavenger threw for Scared Hitless this week in their win over Frodo.
#9 Ryan Dougherty - Can't Touch This
Last Week: Did Not Play
No game for the Pillsbury Dough-boy this week (not a great nickname for someone who's obviously not fat... we'll come up with something better).
#10 David Eickhoff - Freeballers
Last Week: Lost to Sticky Bandits 33-8
Missing half your roster is never good. Missing half your roster against a team from a higher division in a crossover game is a recipe for disaster. We aren't judging Eickhoff too harshly for this one -- it would have been a different game with a few other guys there.
#11 Frank Laudico - Wanderers
Last Week: Did Not Play
No games for Wanderers last week. They still have a chance at the #1 seed in D3 if they can top the Malones this week (which no one else has this season).
#12 Theo Russell - Puckett All-Stars
Last Week: Did Not Play
No game for Puckett, they'll play a double on June 15th to make it up.
#13 Joe Miano - Jabronies
Last Week: Lost to The Malones 50-44
We've got to blame the defense for this one. If you score 44 points in this League, you're expected to win the game. Joe did a great job against a great team, but Jabronies will have to find a little something extra if they're going to win a playoff rematch against the Malones.
#14 Alex Buchlis - Let's Get Reccked
Last Week: Beat Buffalo Vice 36-28
Let's Get Reccked have never finished with a winning record in their team's history, and they won't this season either. But after beating Buffalo Vice last weekend, they can at least finish .500 if they get one more win against Toppers All Stars & Todd. With a full strength Garrett back at receiver for playoffs, this is a team that could upset anyone in D3.
#15 Damien Keller - Keller Whales
Last Week: Tied Bullet Club 30-30
Ties are boring. Ties suck. What if we had some kind of in-game tiebreaker that wasn't overtime (which puts the fields behind schedule), like "most gender TDs" or "most successful two point conversions" etc? Keller Whales are 3-3-1 heading into the last game of the season. Will they go into the playoffs as winners or losers? Or will they tie again???
#16 Andy Clark - Buffalo Vice
Last Week: Beat Practice Squad 44-41, lost to Let's Get Reccked 36-28
Buffalo Vice's regular season is over with a 3-5 record. You know what? That's not too bad for a first season after jumping up from years in D4. Three more points in Week One against the Wanderers, and they could have been at .500 already. These guys will be alright as long as Andy's arm doesn't fall off.
#17 Buddy Lee - Passing While Intoxicated, Back That Pass Up
Last Week: Beat Vaspian 49-16 (PWI), beat Just Joshing 52-34 (BTPU)
Buddy is 7-1 in the last month, with his only loss coming against Pit Harade a few weeks ago (we're assuming he QBed that, we don't actually remember). PWI is one of a few real contenders in D4 as they have the rare ability to keep up with the Stunts for gender TDs; plus BTPU has gone from "can't win a game" to "feels like they can't lose".
#18 Brandon "B" Ford - Practice Squad / Tater Tots
Last Week: Lost to Buffalo Vice 44-41 (Practice Squad)
B's teams are a combined 7-7 coming into the last week of the season. Nothing wrong with that, it means they're right in the mix for each division. Tots probably have the better chance of taking home a championship in our opinion, but we're not counting out Practice Squad either.
#19 Dylan Jaloza - Bullet Club
Last Week: Tied Keller Whales 30-30
Is it true that Bullet Club was ahead before Dylan had to leave for New York, and then they settled for a tie? For all the adversity Bullet Club has endured this session, this is a team that still believes in themselves and believes in their QB. If you're looking for an #8 seed to bet on for playoffs, this is the one.
#20 Brandt Dubey - Toppers All-Stars & Todd
Last Week: Lost to The Malones 38-29
We weren't sure who to rank for a while between Topper and Dubey, so we didn't rank either. Looks like it's Dubey at this point, which means Topper's arm has officially run out of juice (R.I.P.). Dubey is playing well considering he was a late add and he'd never played with many of these people before. Can TAS&T win a playoff game? If they do, they'll likely get a rematch against Malones in the next round.
#21 Ethan Herbold - Interdimensional Lightning Falcons
Last Week: Beat Cobblestone 42-1
42-0 would have looked SO much better. Way to throw a pick-one, Ethan! We're not sure how many people Cobblestone had on Saturday (they average about 5 players per week) so this could either be an impressive win against great athletes, or a beat-down against short handed opponents. Tough to rank that.
#22 Kyle Conniff - PowerPuff Girls
Last Week: Beat TMA 53-0
53-0 is pretty impressive any way you cut it. Of course, PowerPuff Girls scored 44 points with their backup QB an hour later, so maybe it's just the girls who deserve the credit? Kyle wouldn't argue with that we're sure, but either way, this should be a tough out for any team in the D5 playoffs.
#23 Mitchell Bennett - Creekers
Last Week: Lost to Cunning Stunts 51-15
The Stunts are just killing everyone, and it's crazy to see how hard it has been for teams to score against defenses with five girls. We'd knock Mitch down more for this loss, but should we really hold it against him if NO one can beat this team?
#24 Kelly Kane - GUCCI
Last Week: Beat Travis Henry's Kids 42-8
We thought GUCCI vs THK would be the game of the year in D5 with two heavyweights slugging it out. We were wrong. GUCCI murdered the Kids, and finished their regular season undefeated (with one tie). Of course they've had great regular seasons before and still lost early in the playoffs. Does Kelly and team have a plan to make sure they last longer this time?
#25 Paul LoVullo - Come From Behind
Last Week: Did Not Play
We're PRETTY sure it wasn't Paul throwing for CFB this week.
#26 John Langley - Travis Henry's Kids
Last Week: Lost to Not So Sticky 38-16, lost to GUCCI 42-8
Is this what John Langley looks like without Pete Walbrandt to bail him out? Yikes. Buy him dinner, buy him flowers, hang on to him however you can John. Life without him is not pretty. GUCCI we get... but Not So Sticky??
#27 Derek Pew - Vaspian
Last Week: Lost to PWI 49-16
Vaspian's two wins are against last place teams that are currently a combined 2-12. Their two opponents on Saturday are a combined 11-2. We don't bet on sports... but if we did, we PROBABLY wouldn't bet our houses on a Vaspian win this week. Maybe Derek and company will prove us wrong.
#28 Raghavan Nagarajan - Not So Sticky
Last Week: Beat Travis Henry's Kids 38-16
"Not So Sticky just destroyed Travis Henry's Kids" was not a sentence we ever planned to type, but Rags has been the difference maker this year as Not So Sticky no longer looks like the punching bag it has in the past. Last regular season NSS lost all nine games. This regular season NSS lost only two.
#29 Carson Wright - Roaring 20's
Last Week: Lost to Reset Warriors 38-26
The Roaring 20s could be one of the best teams in the League in a couple years. They're young and wildly athletic. But a huge part of this League is learning what works and what doesn't, and all the best teams have what the '20s don't: experience. Keep an eye on Carson!
#30 Darryl Carr - Cobblestone
Last Week: Lost to ILF 42-1
Cobblestone has been plagued by poor attendance all season. Can you imagine how good these guys could be if Darryl convinced Garrett to come back and play for them? It's brutal watching five-on-six or four-on-six football so often. Cobblestone scored one point on Saturday... and it didn't come from Darryl.
Fancy Statistics Section
"That team is too good for their division".
"They don't belong in D3, that's definitely a D2 team"
Hang out at the bar long enough and listen to people talk about their games, and you're bound to hear someone complaining that a team shouldn't be in their division because they're "too good".
But what does that even mean?
There's always one team in first place, so there's nothing wrong with having a better record than your opponents. It only becomes a "problem" if teams feel like they don't have a chance at a championship because that one team is truly unbeatable. So we thought it would be interesting to look at which teams stand out (for better OR for worse) in their divisions, and see which teams really ARE "too good" (or "too bad") for their divisions.
Let's start with the obvious: wins and losses. There are three unbeaten teams in the League between The Malones (D3), Cunning Stunts (D4) and GUCCI (D5), although GUCCI does have a tie on their record. Then there is, surprisingly, only ONE team in the League with a single loss, and that is the Wanderers (D3). Every other team has at LEAST two losses*, and if you've lost two games in your division, you're clearly not "too good" to play in it.
*Mavericks' second loss was against a D1 team, but they have a loss and a tie within their own division too, so we think that logic holds up here too.
So that leaves Malones, Stunts and GUCCI as teams that can make a case for being "too good" for their division. But are they really crushing everybody, or just the recipients of a few lucky bounces? As always, we turned to math for an answer.
Below is a graph of each division's League leader in point differential per game (margin of victory) minus the NEXT best team in their division's point differential per game. In other words, how much bigger is their margin of victory than the next best teams? Here's what we found:
The Malones and Cunning Stunts, it turns out, probably ARE too good for their divisions. Both teams are undefeated, and both teams are winning games by 12+ points per game more than the second best team in their division. It feels like they could both be playing a division up, without any issue. GUCCI is, of course, better than the rest of their division, but not by more than D2 Mavericks, or much more than D1 Eyes Uptown. They probably belong in D5 (for now).
So if the Malones and Cunning Stunts are the two teams that we can say are "too good" for their divisions, are there any teams on the other end of the spectrum that should move down?
Every team in the TSL has at least one win except for Two Tuddies, but even the Tuddies have a tie... against a team that ALSO tied GUCCI (seems impossible for one team to tie an unbeaten and a winless team, but it happened). And then there are seven teams in the TSL with exactly one loss. Let's run the same type of graph for margin of defeat for the worst team in each division, vs the second worst:
Maybe you're not a "graph person" so we'll explain to you why this one is actually super interesting!
Four of the six divisions (D2, D3, D4, D6) have almost NO difference between the worst team and the second worst, which means every team in those divisions should at least have SOME competitive games in the division they're assigned.
D5 has a slightly bigger gap between "worst team" TMA and "second worst team" Two Tuddies... but TMA actually BEAT the Tuddies, so clearly you can't say TMA "isn't good enough" to be in the same division as Tuddies.
The only division that really stands out is D1 with Frodo Swaggins. Frodo is losing by an average of 13.9 points per game, which is 15.7 points worse than the next worst team in their division (Eyes Downtown, who are actually WINNING by 1.9 points per game). Frodo Swaggins is a VERY good team... but they play in a division with only three other VERY good teams. If you want to look at records and point differentials to see if any teams should move DOWN a division, the answer is Frodo Swaggins... and yet, they beat the reigning D1 champions this season. So why wouldn't they want to play the best teams, if they've shown they're capable of beating them?
TL;DR: Most teams are in the right division, and even those who probably should move up or down a division can still win or lose on any given Saturday.
**
That's it for the TSL Power Rankings this week! As we said above, we don't currently have our own email address anymore, so if you have any thoughts about QB rankings, or you want to make sure we know who's throwing for your team, please feel free to contact our good friend This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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