• Print
• Email

Welcome back to the final TSL Quarterback Power Rankings of the season! 

Yes, unlike our way more productive colleague the Godfather, we don't write articles during the playoffs.  Although we did produce a lot more content than the Sentinel this year, so we’ll pat ourselves on the back for that…

For 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 (spoiler: not a lot of movement this week, as VERY few teams beat someone seeded higher than themselves on Saturday) 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!

***

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.  We backed forfeits out of all of our numbers below (in case you’re wondering why the totals don’t match what you see in the Standings for some of these teams) and then we tried to color each team's data by their official jersey colors.  Of course 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 7+ PPG, you're a Favorite in green; if you're losing by an average of 7+ 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 eight seasons that we've been showing these graphs, we've had 31 eventual division champions classified as "Favorites", 23 as "Contenders", and exactly zero as "Pretenders".  Favorites won 5 divisions last Spring, compared to only one contender. 
• 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 Balls Deep 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:  Legends STILL the heavy favorites, Eyes Downtown have a real chance, everyone else are underdogs.

Underrated:  Here are the point differentials of every “second worst team” in their divisions: Jabronies -11.4 PPG, 716 -11.6 PPG, Come From Behind -8.3 PPG, Stir the Sauce -15.4 PPG, Irish Giants -7.6… and What a Dump at -4.0.  We’re not saying this is a great team.  They’re fifth in D1 in wins/losses, fifth in point differential, fifth in offense, and fourth in defense, so they’re pretty much exactly where their stats say they should be.  But as a “second worst team in their division”, is the gap between them and the contenders REALLY that big?  Throw out their two losses against Legends (and their win against a D2 Crossover team) and EVERY game this season was within 10 points.  Is it really so hard to imagine a couple lucky breaks going their way in the playoffs?

Overrated:  Frodo Swaggins are the #3 seed in the Division, on the strength of having the third best offense… but their point differential says they should be fourth, their defense says they should be fifth, and they also had the good fortune of playing Freeballers twice this season to pad their record a bit.  Against the top two teams in the Division (both of whom they’ll likely to have to beat on June 28^th to win a championship) they were outscored 89-24 in the regular season.  We’re not saying this isn’t a great team (you can’t finish in third place in D1 and NOT be a great team) but we are saying the gap between #2 and #3 is pretty sizeable this season. 

Division 2

The Headline:  Are the Malones the only ones who can stop Can’t Touch This?

Underrated:  Oh, this is an easy one.  When we look at point differentials, what do most D2 teams have in common?  They all got to beat the shit out of Show Me Your TDs exactly once to massively pad their stats.  The only team that did NOT get a free blowout win?  The Jabronies, who finished the season at -80 on points.  If they beat the worst team in TSL history 80-0 (like everyone else) their point differential could have gone from -11.4 PPG to even!  Would that be enough to put them into the Can’t Touch This/Malones/Mavericks tier?  No, but it would put them higher than Scared Hitless (who they beat TWICE this season).

Overrated:  The Mavericks finished with a 5-3 record, good for second place in the division.  But look at the chart above and you’ll see that it’s Can’t Touch This and the Malones that are the top two teams in offense, defense, and total point differentials.  Mavericks finished third in each category, and their two games against Can’t Touch This were… not very inspiring (they were outscored 99-31).  If D2 is Can’t Touch This’s division to lose (and it is), then the Malones look like their biggest threat this season, not the Mavericks.  And unfortunately the Malones vs Mavericks is already a lock for the semifinals, so Mavericks can’t even hope for the Malones to do them a favor and knock out Can’t Touch This for them.

Division 3

The Headline:  One of the most even divisions in the TSL from top to bottom… except the Wanderers are a class above the rest.

Underrated:  In terms of actual odds of winning the championship, most of the early rounds don’t matter a whole lot - if the D3 championship is going to come down to Wanderers vs Everyone Else, then it begs the question of which team plays the best against the undefeated Wanderers?  Only two teams came within 8 points of the Wanderers all season: Becca Gets Reccked (who have seemingly had a different sub QB every week) and PWI.  Passing While Intoxicated has the third best record in the division but the second best point differential, and they fell to Wanderers 55-52 just a few weeks ago.  Okay, so they can’t play defense, but that offense is pretty damn good when it needs to be.  If you’re looking for a spoiler, it’s Buddy Lee and PWI.

Overrated:  Four teams in D3 finished with three wins this season, which at a glance would suggest that they’re all ABOUT equally good.  They’re not.  Bullet Club finished with a positive point differential.  Becca and Buffalo Vice both finished just under, at about -5 PPG.  The fourth three-win team was 716, who finished at -11.6 (WELL behind even two-win D-Generation X Y and Z) and with the worst defense in the entire TSL (outside of Cobblestone and Show Me Your TDs… but we’re not sure those really count).  The good news is that 716 did beat their play-in opponent DXYZ in the regular season, so maybe they can do it again.  But without the subs they’ve used so much this season (who won’t be available in playoffs) it’s hard to imagine them going much further than that.

Division 4

The Headline:  Three very good teams, three hopefuls, and Cobblestone.

Underrated:  There are three teams that stand out above the rest in D4 this season between ILF, Mike’s and Bird Watching in our Birkenstocks.  One of them we don’t necessarily believe in as much as the others (see “Overrated” below) but it DOES seem very likely than the winner of the division comes from this group.  So, who is the most underrated?  We’ll take ILF here.  They’ve lost one game all season by 2 points, wayyyy back on May 3^rd and since then they’ve crushed Bird Watching and barely beaten Mike’s Detailing.  A six-game winning streak including W’s against their two closest rivals?  We’re sold.

Overrated:  Usually, we like to pick teams whose point differentials look better than their record as our most Underrated team.  This time, we’re picking one as our most OVERRATED team.  How could we call Bird Watching in our Birkenstocks overrated, when they have the best offense, defense and special teams in their division?  Well, they were +151 on the season… but +122 of that comes in two landslide wins against short-handed Cobblestone.  Take away those games, and they’re just +29 on the season, and looking way more like a Puckett (capable and dangerous, but not dominant) than an Interdimensional Lightning Falcons.

Division 5

The Headline:  No one can beat the PowerPuff Girls… although Two Tuddies will try

Underrated:  We’ll cheat and give you two answers: Pit Harade is ONE of the most underrated teams in the division.  They have the 7^th best offense, 7^th best defense and 7^th best point differential (hey, we said they’re “underrated”, not “GREAT”)… but someone they had the 9^th best record in the division?  Sounds flukey to us.  Look, they’re not going to beat PowerPuff Girls right AFTER beating Stir the Sauce, that’s just too much to ask.  But they’re better than a last place finish makes them look.  And the other underrated team of course is PowerPuff Girls.  Yes, you already know they’re undefeated and you know that they’re good, but did you know they’ve won games by an average of +31.0 PPG?? That is, in a word, INSANE.  This is a team that is playing in the wrong division – we imagine they would be undefeated in D4 this season too.

Overrated:  Mo’ Chicken finished their first ever TSL season at 2-6 and in 7^th place out of 9, which is really pretty good for a brand-new team.  The only problem: they were actually dead last in offense… and defense… and point differential.  And we think their captain is hurt too.  A first-round playoff game against Two Tuddies (against whom they lost 53-8 earlier this season) is essentially unwinnable.  But hey, for a first year team, they’re going to get some good experience and hopefully come back stronger in the Fall.

Division 6

The Headline:  Balls Deep, TMA and Blue Ballers are the clear leaders... but upsets might be brewing

Underrated:  Intentional Clowning were a trendy preseason pick to win D6 this season, after Blitzkrieg and Sausage McMuffins moved up to D5.  Instead… they finished in dead last place.  But were they really THAT bad?  They had the fifth best offense in the division, the 7^th best point differential, and, sure, the worst defense.  But this doesn’t look like a “last place” team statistically.  We don’t think they’ll beat TMA on Saturday… but we wouldn’t be shocked if the game came down to the wire.

Overrated:  Irish Giants somehow went 4-4 this season, despite being 8^th in their division in total point differential and dead last in offense.  Seriously, how DOES a team win as many games as they lost with a point differential that was a fraction away from being the worst in their division?  We know, we know… wins and losses should matter way more than stats.  But for the Giants, their first round opponent is Raw Milkers, who beat them 46-8 in the regular season.  Not IMPOSSIBLE they can have a different outcome on Saturday (to their credit, Irish Giants finished the season very strong, going 3-1 including a win over otherwise undefeated TMA) but it would take a lot.

***

Top Ten Best and Worst Lists for the 2025 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 an incredible EIGHT teams crack the 40 point mark, up from just two in the Fall.  Congrats to PowerPuff Girls, our Spring 2025 scoring champs.

So if PowerPuff Girls were the BEST offense, who were the worst?  This season we had 10 teams (up from 6 in each of the last two seasons) fail to make it to 20 PPG on offense.  Those teams unsurprisingly went a combined 18-61 this season.  

Then if we look at defenses, there were four teams (PowerPuff Girls, Blitzkrieg, Balls Deep, Can’t Touch This) that held opponents to under 20 PPG this session.  There were three teams that allowed 40+ points per game (up from zero last session!) including 716, a Cobblestone team that never seemed to come together, and a legendary Show Me Your TDs squad who will go down in history for ALL the wrong reasons.

Show Me Your TDs finished the season with zero points scored, and 74.5 PPG scored AGAINST.  We hope that is a record that will never, ever be broken.

Besides the "40/20 Clubs", what else do we see from the best and worst units in the League?  PowerPuff Girls, Can’t Touch This, Legends, Bird Watching in our Birkenstocks and Interdimensional Lightning Falcons were the only five teams in the League to make all three "Ten Best" lists for offense, defense and point differentials.  There were three teams to make all three "Ten Worst" lists, including GirthQuakes, Cobblestone (who were second last in EVERY category) and Show Me Your TDs (who were… it goes without saying… the worst in EVERY category).

***

All-Time Championship Statistics

A few 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).  Look closely and you’ll see that there are exactly 100 past TSL champions as of right now!

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, Losing Streak 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.  We'll give them credit for "number of titles", which they've earned, but zero points awarded.  Indoor championships are abbreviated as "W:A" (Winter: A) and "W:B" on the chart below, to make it a little easier to read.

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 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?  Legends are one win away from tying Public Enemy as the greatest team in TSL history.  Eyes Downtown could jump from 5th to 3rd with another win, and Sticky Bandits from 9th to 4th.  Freeballers, though considered a long shot, could also jump in to the Top Ten all-time with a D1 championship this season.

The Sticky Bandits are tied with Public Enemy and Puckett All-Stars for the most total TSL Championships of all-time with five.  If they win again this season, they'll stand alone as the only six-time 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!

***

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..  You tell him, he'll tell us.  Good luck in the playoffs.

What's YOUR ranking?

• Prev
• Next