Hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend! The NFL Tournament of Champions is back in action, albeit a little later than I'd wanted after a busy weekend and chaos in the middle of the week.
I extended the days of Week 4 out to include Memorial Day as I think would have happened were this tournament being played in reality. The way the schedule aligns this week, five Dallas teams are hosting, so I'd have to spread it out anyway. And if this were in reality, even though it probably would have beaten the race, I wouldn't want to go up against the Indy 500.
Entering Week 4, a dozen undefeated teams still remain. At most we'll have four when everything is said and done given the nature of four groups playing a single round robin.
So how many will remain unbeaten after the dust clears this week? We're about to find out. Weather conditions from projected game times will be taken into account for these games. You can check out standings and scores from every week here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!
I've been wanting to write something about this for a while now, largely because the story keeps coming up. Then the furor dies down and I wasn't able to narrow down the stream of consciousness that this whole topic spurs. I think I've finally got enough coherent thoughts though that this time I'm good to go. I'd like to start by pointing out that what follows is purely my opinion. If you don't agree with it, fine. If you want to open up discussion about how you don't agree with me, again, fine. But I'm going to try to not engage in any personal attacks about this topic, because they don't help anything, and if you feel the need to engage in debate, I ask that you do the same.
I'm running a little bit behind again as we move into the third week of the 2018 NFL Tournament of Champions!
Of the 52 Super Bowl champions competing in this year's tournament, we still have 17 with unblemished records, although it's important to note that some of these teams have only played one game so far. With an odd number of teams in every group, we're getting four byes each week.
At the end of group play, the top six from each group will advance to elimination play. We're still a way's out from that yet, but these games are still just as important as the ones to come over the summer.
In an effort to make this as accurate as possible, I'm taking weather conditions from the host cities over the weekend and setting those for these games. Standings and round by round scores can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to Week 3!
I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day, and that any moms among the readership base had a great day with family spoiling you.
Meanwhile, the NFL Tournament of Champions rolled on over the weekend. We're in the midst of a 13 week regular season to narrow the field down and set up an all time clash to determine another Champion of Champions.
I think the way the byes got set up in Round 1, the final four from the 2014 Tournament of Champions all took the week off and thus begin their quests to get back this week. That means our defending champs in the 1999 St. Louis Rams take the field for the first time this week.
I put up a link last week to a Google sheet where I was trying to keep track of stats from all the games. It proved to be too much even with a gap between games, so I've cancelled that aspect of it. Simulating these games, however, is still a doable task, even though I'm running a little behind this week.
We're well into the month of May now, and with that, it is time to begin the NFL Tournament of Champions!
A week ago I set the stage, as we have four new teams that did not compete in the first iteration of this tournament. But the setup last time was just a straight bracket. I have to expand this out and give teams a little longer to really determine who is the best.
I'm keeping track of the tournament through a new website this year, since Challonge was able to parse out a single round robin with giving every team and equal number of home games. TournamentScheduler, which I've used in the past for the last couple of NBA Tournaments of Champions, as well as to help build out the order of series for the MLB Tournament of Champions last year, has trouble with single round robins; it keeps one team on the left side of the matchups every time, which makes home/road games a problem.
The round robin portion of the schedule requires playing 312 games, which I think is few enough that I will keep track of individual stats for the entire tournament. All told, this tournament will take 335 games to decide a Champion of Champions, which is far fewer compared to other tournaments, especially the ones that have had pool play. You can find those stats here (please note that there may be a delay between the posting of game results and the updating of stats).
Since the NFL is played outdoors in almost every situation, weather will be taken into account from yesterday. All simulations for this tournament are provided once again by WhatIfSports.com. Without further ado... let the Tournament of Champions begin!
In 2014, I ran my first NFL Tournament of Champions, but kept it down to a simple single-elimination tournament that ended up getting won by the 1999 St. Louis Rams. Now, they have an opportunity to defend their crown, and I'm making this system a little more complicated this time around.
With four new teams entered into the fray, this leaves us with 52 Super Bowl Champions, and while I could go back into the pre-Super Bowl era, I feel like given the results of most other Tournaments of Champions, more recent teams tend to end up winning things, 2017 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions shenanigans notwithstanding. Sorry, Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, and all other teams with a Legacy of Failure upon your franchises, you are unfortunately not invited to this dance.
Photo by David Welker (Getty Images)
But with 52 teams, I need a way to narrow this down while ensuring a large enough sample size. So I went through the results from 2014 Tournament of Champions, and tried to create four balanced groups for round robin play. Each contains a team that made it to at least the semifinals, a team that made the quarterfinals, two that made the round of 16, four that at least made the round of 32 (seven of whom were one-and-done based on first round byes, with all but one group having two of these teams), four teams that lost in that round of 48, and one of our four most recent Super Bowl champions. The groups are as follows:
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
1999 St. Louis Rams
1997 Denver Broncos
1979 Pittsburgh Steelers
1991 Washington Redskins
2013 Seattle Seahawks
1996 Green Bay Packers
1975 Pittsburgh Steelers
2004 New England Patriots
1969 Kansas City Chiefs
1971 Dallas Cowboys
1988 San Francisco 49ers
1989 San Francisco 49ers
2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
1992 Dallas Cowboys
1966 Green Bay Packers
1968 New York Jets
1984 San Francisco 49ers
2008 Pittsburgh Steelers
1985 Chicago Bears
1994 San Francisco 49ers
1972 Miami Dolphins
2009 New Orleans Saints
2010 Green Bay Packers
1973 Miami Dolphins
1995 Dallas Cowboys
1986 New York Giants
1976 Oakland Raiders
1998 Denver Broncos
1977 Dallas Cowboys
1993 Dallas Cowboys
2000 Baltimore Ravens
1978 Pittsburgh Steelers
1980 Oakland Raiders
2011 New York Giants
1982 Washington Redskins
1983 Los Angeles Raiders
2003 New England Patriots
2006 Indianapolis Colts
2012 Baltimore Ravens
1967 Green Bay Packers
1981 San Francisco 49ers
1970 Baltimore Colts
2007 New York Giants
2001 New England Patriots
1987 Washington Redskins
1974 Pittsburgh Steelers
1990 New York Giants
2005 Pittsburgh Steelers
2016 New England Patriots
2017 Philadelphia Eagles
2014 New England Patriots
2015 Denver Broncos
Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea (USA TODAY Sports)
So over the span of the next 13 weeks, these groups will play a single round robin. All teams will play a balanced six home games and six road games as randomly generated. The top six teams from each group will advance, with the top two from each group getting a first round bye. This will take us to a Labor Day title game just in time for the start of the 2018 NFL season.
You can view full standings, plus a schedule, here. I'm opting for a different site because the single round robin schedule got weird with my old website, and this one happened to include a second stage option in it, so I'm skipping out on my usual bracket site unless it does something screwy with the postseason portion. We'll see.
Will the 1999 Rams repeat as Champion of Champions? Or will one of our newcomers usurp the throne? Follow along this summer to find out!
The first one happened in Denver yesterday afternoon. There's been some craziness in the series between the host Rockies and the San Diego Padres. Padre outfield Manuel Margot is out after getting one in the ribs, and early in the game yesterday Trevor Story of the Rockies and Hunter Renfroe of the Padres were both hit, though I believe unintentionally.
And of course, because the neanderthals are still in charge, this happened when Nolan Arenado stepped to the plate in the third.
Not to be outdone, when the Yankees and Red Sox renewed their rivalry last night, tempers got so heated the benches cleared twice.
I kind of get the anger from the Red Sox' perspective. Going in with your spikes is dangerous, but other than using his spikes, the Yankees' Tyler Austin did nothing wrong: he slid directly into second base, albeit ending up past the bag (though by the rule, you only have to be able to remain on the bag after completing the slide and since the force was already completed, the fact that he was off isn't an issue). That's why I don't take issue with the benches clearing in the aftermath of that play.
Still image from Fox Sports
But in both of these games, we see the old school unwritten rules in full force. You hit one or more of our guys, we're hitting yours. You spike our second baseman, the runner who slid is getting thrown at his next time up. It's the way that baseball has been played for years so it's in no way a surprise.
But here's the rub. It's 2018, and we're still acting like thugs about things. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't defend your guys, because in team sports you have to know that your teammates have your back. But there has to be a better way than by assaulting an opponent with a deadly weapon. That's what this is. Don't give me the "he hit him in the back, or on the rear, it's okay," bullcrap. Fastball velocity is... fast, and that can do some serious damage. And if it happens to get away and you end up hitting a guy in the head? We're talking potential life or death territory here.
I love a good donnybrook as much as the next guy, but this crap that precipitates these scrums needs to stop. One of these days, a guy is going to get seriously hurt by an intentional beaning... or worse. There's no place for assault with a deadly weapon in the game anymore. We should be beyond it. The league needs to start stepping in, though like I said last year, I don't see Rob Manfred doing anything about it.
If it were me, it's getting to the point where I'd start getting draconian on incidents like this. I'm talking month-long suspensions for the assaulting pitcher and multigame suspensions for the manager to hammer the point home. Suspensions for the fights resulting from beanings can stay where they are now, but players need to find a better way to police themselves.
It's an extreme example, but one day, someone is going to get killed by one of these retaliatory beanballs. What happens then? I'd rather get this removed from the game before something like that happens.
