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- Written by Jeff Krol
- Category: TSL QB Power Rankings
- Published: 19 June 2024
- Created: 19 June 2024
- Hits: 774
Welcome back to the FINAL TSL Quarterback Power Rankings of the season!
Yes, unlike our way more productive colleagues, the Godfather and (maybe?) 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 30 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. For the first time ever, we had zero forfeits this season to adjust for, so a nice, clean data set. Then we tried to color each team's data by their official jersey colors, but half of 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 six seasons that we've been showing these graphs, we've had 24 eventual division champions classified as "Favorites", 18 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 Scared Hitless 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: TSL's smallest division battles it out with one favorite, a couple real contenders, and also Frodo Swaggins are here.
Underrated: Eyes Downtown are tied with Sticky Bandits for the second best point differential in D1, and they actually would have won a head-to-head tiebreaker this season based on point differentials in their two games (which they split). If not for a slip up vs Frodo earlier this season, they would have gone into the playoffs as the #2 seed. Plus how much playoff pressure can there really be for a team that has won the last two TSL championships (including Winter)? It may not quite be accurate to call them "underrated" (does anything think they don't have a decent chance to win again?) but they may be the MOST underrated team in a division where teams generally finished in the order they should have.
Overrated: Frodo Swaggins played two close games against the Sticky Bandits, and actually BEAT Eyes Downtown earlier this season. Unfortunately, they'll play neither of those teams on Saturday. Against Eyes Uptown, they were outscored 75-23 in a pair of losses this season. Frodo also used the sublist more than any other team in D1 this season, which they won't be able to do for the playoffs, so this will be a huge hill to climb for Garrett and team to steal two games against the best in the League.
Division 2
The Headline: The Mavericks are the clear leader of the pack, but this is a division full of teams capable of pulling off playoff upsets.
Underrated: It has to be Can't Touch This, right? CTT were an afterthought in this division when they started out 0-3. Since then they are 4-0-1, and although they're fourth in the standings, they actually have the second best point differential in D2. They are also the only D2 team that can say that they've beaten the Mavericks this session. If you're looking to bet on a champion that isn't the top seeded team in their division, this might be the one.
Overrated: The Untouchaballs almost took the #2 seed and a first round bye for the playoffs... but they still have a negative point differential on the season, which is odd for a team that many consider one of the favorites to win the whole thing. They were crushed by the Mavericks in their first game of the season by a score of 62-30, and there are two ways to look at that game: 1) an outlier that would make the Untouchaballs season stats look all the more impressive if we threw it out; or 2) a sign that they don't match up well against the Mavericks (whom they tied a week later... but still couldn't beat). We're not sure which way to view it. Either way, teams that gave up more points than they scored throughout the season rarely win championships, so we'll take Untouchaballs as the most "overrated" team in D2.
Division 3
The Headline: The Malones vs everyone else.
Underrated: The Jabronies were a .500 team but they sport the second best point differential in their division. So we WANT to pick them as the most Underrated team... but we still feel like it's the Malones. Teams just don't normally win games by more than 20+ PPG. The Malones are lapping the field, and clearly should be playing in a higher division. Just look at the graph above... one of those bars stands out the most, and we're not talking about Practice Squad...
Overrated: The Wanderers are 6-2 and the second best team in the division both in the standings and (probably) conventional wisdom. They're a GREAT team. But they just lost by 30 to the Malones, and their point differential on the year is +0.88 points per game. That's a number we'd usually see from a .500 team, not D3's last hope of toppling the Malones. Can it be done? Sure. This is football, Wanderers only need to be the better team for 50 minutes. But the numbers suggest it will be a huge uphill battle for the #2 seed (let alone the other 7 teams in this division!)
Division 4
The Headline: The Cunning Stunts are destroying everyone, while a handful of other good teams hope for an upset. It won't be Vaspian, Cobblestone or the Roaring 20's.
Underrated: Can we even suggest that Cobblestone are underrated because "what would happen if all of their players showed up on a given week?" Nahhh... it doesn't work that way. If they were going to show up by now, they would have, so we're going to say they ARE who they ARE. The TRULY most underrated team in this division then has to be Passing While Intoxicated, who are averaging a +9.5 PPG margin of victory. Every single team (above D6) that is averaging +9.5 PPG is in first place in their division, except for PWI, who are somehow THIRD. This is a very good team, and more importantly in a division with the Stunts, it's one that knows how to score gender TDs.
Overrated: The Tater Tots are in fourth place out of nine teams, and they have a 4-4 record. That's not bad. The problem is, three of their four wins came against the worst three teams in the division (Cobblestone, Roaring 20s, Vaspian) and their only "quality" win this season was way back in Week 1 against a Creekers team which has since gotten better. They've also lost their last two games by 18 and 24 points, so momentum's not exactly on their side either. Could they win their first round game against Creekers? Absolutely. But their numbers against better teams make us think they won't have much of a shot in the big games.
Division 5
The Headline: Four teams could win this, a fifth could make it very interesting, and the other three don't have a chance.
Underrated: Did you know before looking at the graph above that the second best team in the division on point differential was PowerPuff Girls? We didn't either. We're tempted to pick them as the most underrated team in the division simply because their whole "record isn't as good as their point differential suggests it should be" thing is RIGHT up our alley... but we still think the answer is Travis Henry's Kids. Look, we get the skepticism. This team was exposed a bit in the past two weeks of doubleheaders, as they were outscored 83-140 in a 1-3 stretch without Pete Walbrandt. But that's the thing... it was without Pete. Their record WITH Pete (who we assume is available for playoffs) was 4-0 while outscoring opponents by a combined score of 165-86. Has a team ever been so reliant on one superstar? Judge them all you want for that, but if you think you saw the "real" THK the last couple of weeks without him, then you are SEVERELY underrating this team.
Overrated: Stir the Sauce have some great athletes on their team, with both speed and size. They were one win away from .500, and they finished with a positive point differential. They're a solid team! But raise your hand if you think TMA or Two Tuddies are going to win D5 in a couple weeks. No one? Okay... did you know that all three of STS's wins were against those two teams this season, and by kind of a LOT? Take away their games against two teams that no one expects to win the championship, and what's their record? 0-5, and outscored by a combined 139-206 (or losing by an average of 13.4 PPG). If you think they're in the middle of the pack because they're a 3-5 team and +12 on the season, well, that's true in a sense. But the "pack" they want to be in the middle of is the pack of contenders, and they're not quite there yet.
Division 6
The Headline: TSL's "wild west" where anything can happen.
Underrated: Sausage McMuffins are fifth in their division yet they have the best point differential of any D6 team at +11.1 PPG. Here is the full list of teams in the League with +11 or more points per game: the Malones (1st place), Cunning Stunts (1st place), GUCCI (1st place), Eyes Uptown (1st place), Sausage McMuffins (FIFTH PLACE). This is a potential #1 seed masquerading as a #5 seed. One of the most underrated teams not just in their division, but all of the TSL!
Overrated: This was another easy choice: no disrespect to our friends on Balls Deep, but how do you lock up the #2 seed in your nine team division with a negative point differential?? Sausage McMuffins have 96 more "net points" on the season than Balls Deep, and are somehow three spots BELOW them in the standings! There's something to be said for winning close games against good teams for tiebreakers, and Balls Deep started the season with wins against Back That Pass Up, Blitzkrieg and Pit Harade, which gave them incredible tie-breaking leverage. But we said for Untouchaballs above and we'll say it again: teams that gave up more points than they scored throughout the season rarely win championships.
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Top Ten Best and Worst Lists for the 2024 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:
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 two teams crack the 40 point mark, and one of those also cracked the 50 point mark. Congrats to the Malones, our Spring 2024 scoring champs. In fact, we've been tracking scoring champions since the beginning of our article (Fall 2019) and the Malones have the highest scoring offense in recent history: The Stunts were the only other team to crack 40+ PPG, and if not for the Malones, they would have had their fourth scoring title in the last five seasons!
So if The Malones were the BEST offense, who were the worst? This season we had six teams fail to make it to 20 PPG on offense. Those teams (Dogg Pound, TMA, Cobblestone, Frodo Swaggins, Sticky Laces and Two Tuddies) unsurprisingly went a combined 6-41 this season.
Then if we look at defenses, there were two teams (GUCCI and Pit Harade) that held opponents to under 20 PPG this session. Last session we had none, but that's likely attributable at least in part to the weather, as we had beautiful Saturdays last Fall and some rough/rainy Saturdays this Spring That would ALSO explain why we had no teams this session that allowed 40+ points per game defensively, when we had five such teams last season.
Besides the "40/20 Clubs", what else do we see from the best and worst units in the League? Eyes Uptown and Sausage McMuffins were the only two teams in the League to make all three "Ten Best" lists for offense, defense and point differentials. There were five teams to make all three "Ten Worst" lists, including The Roaring 20s (new team, they get a pass), Vaspian (completely rebuilt team, they get a pass), Two Tuddies (moved up a division, they get a pass), Cobblestone (never had enough players; Darryl needs to recruit better) and TMA. Didn't TMA used to be awesome???
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All-Time Championship Statistics
A couple years 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 revise this in the future). With apologies to DILFS, Jelly Beans, Sticky Bandits, Eyes Downtown and Friendship Club, 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 Spring 2024 playoffs (active teams are highlighted below; split into two segments side-by-side to make font size more easily readable):
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, was it fair that Puckett kept improving their standings by winning D4 over and over? Shouldn't they have moved up before this session? But for now we decided to leave it as is.
So where does that leave us today? Eyes Uptown (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 5th to 2nd with another win, and Sticky Bandits from 13th to 9th.
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.
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.
We don't currently have our own email address anymore, so if you have any thoughts on any of the above, please feel free to contact our good friend This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
What's YOUR ranking?
