What a Super Bowl. It looked like we might have a bit of a yawner one play into the second half, but then the lights went out for a while which apparently dimmed the Baltimore Ravens’ focus while sharpening the San Francisco 49ers’ resolve. The 49ers stormed back to really make a game of it. They never took the lead, but they sure came close while the Ravens hung on for dear life.

I question why the 49ers didn’t have Colin Kaepernick run at least once inside the 10 against some slow looking defenders. Hindsight is great though. Eventually something would have worked, but they just ran out of chances. The 49ers definitely look like a team to be reckoned with in the immediate future.

The Ravens, not so much on the bright future, but they had enough for this game and got their ring. That is all that matters now. Congrats to them and the city of Baltimore. Nice to see guys like Matt Birk, Anquan Boldin, Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata and Michael Oher, amongst others, be crowned Super Bowl champs.

Now, on to the big Fantasy Throwdown news at hand – to announce the winner of our NFL Playoffs Tournament! You think the Super Bowl was close? It was a battle royale in Group A for the championship in our tourney. And the winner is . . . CP78, a.k.a. Colin Pratt or @DSEmpire_Colin on Twitter.

He didn’t win the last group, but he finished 2nd, giving him a 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd place result through the four rounds of the tournament. That was enough to stay ahead of j0eo1s, who went 4-0 in Group A this round, and CP78 just edged out Scott Kuff, who finished third in Group A and was our #1 overall ranked player going into this round. Note, CP78 was #1 after the Wild-Card and Divisional Playoffs rounds. Great consistency and top results. Congrats Colin!

Some other notables in our overall rankings, Peppy_Pants, who only started playing Throwdown at the start of the playoffs and was referred by Fantasytaz, jumped to fourth overall after winning Group B and just edged out Taz, who won Group C and finished fifth overall.

Airbus79 won Group D with a 4-0 record and jumped into the top 10, finishing ninth overall. Fantasy Acumen rebounded nicely from a rough opening two rounds, finishing 5th twice, to win his group each of the last two rounds. WHUDEY went 4-0 in his group and it came down his match against DLFootball to decide it.

Here are the final overall standings, followed by the group results for the Super Bowl round of the tourney.

NFL Playoffs Tournament Overall Standings
Final Results

 
Super Bowl Round Group Results

j0eo1s wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. Scott Kuff finishes third using the points differential tie-breaker over Wilforkisland and rich1978. Wilforkisland finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over rich1978.

Peppy_Pants wins the group using the points differential tie-breaker over robshell and patwat. robshell finishes second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over patwat.

Fantasytaz wins the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over djreese5. Mike finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Terminalkennedy.

Airbus79 wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. unstable finishes second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over FBGWILL. cwill0303 finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Grindstone.

Fantasy Acumen wins the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over robmcangus. Jessect6 finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over laoch.

WHUDEY wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. TheKommish finishes third using the points differential tie-breaker over atcdav and Losperros. atcdav finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Losperros.

 
Thanks again to every who played in our tournament, and thanks to everyone who played Fantasy Throwdown this season. We really appreciate the continued support, and we hope to be back bigger and better for the 2013 NFL season. Enjoy the off-season.

It is finally upon us, Super Bowl Week! The lead up to the biggest game of the year. It took 256 regular season games plus 10 playoff games over 21 weeks to get here since opening kickoff back in September to showcase the Baltimore Ravens versus the San Francisco 49ers for Super Bowl XLVII (a.k.a. 47) and the Lombardi Trophy (a.k.a. all the marbles).

Of course I’m biased, but this is a great time to play Fantasy Throwdown, and to introduce people to Fantasy Throwdown, or in a broader sense, fantasy football. Okay, sure, the player pool is much smaller than a normal Throwdown match of three NFL games, and with the Block it is possible for someone to take a goose egg at kicker, defense, or ~ gasp ~ even quarterback if they aren’t careful (and if their opponent is cut throat).

On the plus side, this is a biggest game of the year, so even your buddies who aren’t hardcore football fans like you or I, they will be watching the Super Bowl and they can get a taste of what this fantasy football thing is you keep yammering on about. That is… if they have some specific players to root for.

Not to mention everything else about Fantasy Throwdown works great to get newcomers invested in our hobby. The format is simple – two players, head to head. The time commitment is minimal – draft in as little as a few minutes. It is completely free, as you know. It makes for a great little challenge mixing skill and luck to see who can come out on top picking the best performing players on the biggest football stage.

Super Bowl Party Idea

For my Super Bowl party I’m going to set up two laptops, each logged into Throwdown with two new accounts. Then as people start arriving before the game, I’ll pair them up to face off against each other for a Throwdown match. The pair of combatants has their own Throwdown to see who wins, and also by using just the two accounts they’ll form two groups, with a cumulative score to see which side wins.

Yes, we’ll still have a squares board and my annual Super Bowl Quiz, but this should add a fun fantasy football twist to the event. Feel free to use this idea for your get togethers on Sunday! Hmm… maybe I’ll cover my keyboard with plastic wrap, to protect from spills.

If you want to show your friends what to expect from a Throwdown draft, here is one I drafted last week against the current number one ranked player from our NFL Playoffs Tourney, Scott Kuff:

Mike vs. Scott Kuff, Super Bowl Throwdown

NFL Playoffs Tournament

Speaking of our NFL Playoffs Tourney, I know most of us took things slow last week with our final round Super Bowl matches, but now… its… Super Bowl Week! Get in there and get your matches done. It is very unlikely any new injury info is going to come our way between now and Sunday, so don’t wait to the last minute or your opponent may not be available to finish. Make your pick(s) if you’re up, and use the pre-draft feature.

Have a great week! Thanks as always for supporting Fantasy Throwdown, and enjoy the big game!

The number one guy on our Leaderboard, patwat, said to me last night at our soccer game, “Mike, you should add the Pro Bowl into Throwdown.” Well… I don’t know… would it give some reason to watch the Pro Bowl? Or even if not watch it, half check the scores and stats later?

We don’t really seem to know what to do with ourselves with this extra week off before the Super Bowl, and for the sake of an hour or so of my time getting it set up, I figured, okay, what the heck. The rosters are in and I added it to the schedule in the database. You can now play Fantasy Throwdown for the Pro Bowl.

It works just like the Super Bowl matches. There is only one game on the schedule, so after a challenge is accepted you skip right to the draft. Since it is possible to draft and block both kickers or both defenses, a third “nil points” kicker and defense is included that must be picked to avoid the draft getting stuck if those positions get blocked against you.

I only put in the offensive skill players, leaving out the individual defensive players. From what I’ve seen, no one tackles anyway, right? Do not create an IDP Pro Bowl challenge, or you will get stuck.

To play Throwdown for the Pro Bowl, issue a challenge like you always would, but in the NFL Week drop down, change “Super Bowl” to “Pro Bowl”. Challenges will appear as week 25 in your Game Manager (Super Bowl is week 24). The game is on Sunday at 7:00pm Eastern, so challenges can be completed right up until that time.

Play Fantasy Throwdown for the Pro Bowl. At least for this year. The NFL could very well scrap this thing as soon as next year. For now, it is here, so why not add some fantasy fun to it? Fantasy football doesn’t get much more lottery ticket-esque than this.

Final round of our NFL Playoffs Tournament! And unfortunately – but obviously – final chance to play Fantasy Throwdown before we close the books on the 2012-2013 season. Thanks again for another great year. We’ve got a good thing going here, and we’ll continue to work to improve the website and the game for 2013.

If you are reading this and confused about the tournament (i.e. you aren’t in the tourney), not to worry. You can still play Fantasy Throwdown this week and next for the Super Bowl. Just register or login, and then issue a challenge to a friend and get started.

It is a very shallow player pool to draft from this week with only two teams to choose players from, and not exceptionally deep teams either in terms of offensive skill positions. Watch out for that block at QB if you pass on the position with the 1.01 pick! Note that because of the potential for your opponent to draft and then block the only two kickers or team defenses available, then you must pick the zero points / stand-in kicker of defense to fill your roster and complete the draft.

Okay, the tourney overall standings through three rounds are in. Scott Kuff took over the #1 overall spot just edging out CP78, who held the #1 spot through rounds 1 and 2. They’ll get to duke it out again this round in Group A. Here are the rest of the standings and group assignments:

NFL Playoffs Tournament Overall Standings,
Post-Conference Championships

Tournament games are already in your Game Manager, so check them out and get your drafts done before the Big Game. Good luck!

Sorry, I’ve been a bit lax getting the results up from the Conference Championship Round of our NFL Playoffs Tourney, but with two weeks until the Super Bowl, I thought I’d try to s-t-r-e-t-c-h things out a little bit.

Pretty good games last weekend. Oh, Atlanta. Can’t hold a lead. It is difficult to identify exactly who to blame for their collapse against the 49ers. The defense was porous, although they did force a turnover on the goal line. The offense stopped scoring, and the Matt Ryan fumble was a killer. This one defined “team loss”.

Tony Gonzalez said no one should pity him for not making it to the big game. Okay, I won’t, but out of all four teams, all the players and the coaches who were still playing last week, he was the guy I clearly wanted to see play another week on the biggest football stage. A class act, superstar player, and it just amazes me how good he was this season. Hard to believe he could hang them up, and it sure sounds like he will. If he does, it was still a heck of a swan song.

Now for some commentary on the Baltimore Ravens dismantling of the New England Patriots. I did not see that coming, at least by such a lopsided score. Regardless of the Ravens not being at all intimidated by the Patriots aura, the Pats did not play like they normally do. I even continued to expect a comeback pretty late in the ball game, to at least make a game of it, but the hit on Steven Ridley was a tide turner. The high deflection and interception didn’t help either.

Bernard Pollard. Crazy how much impact one defensive player – and not a household name by any stretch – can have on a franchise over the course of many seasons. Bill Belichick has to be seriously sitting thinking, how can I sign this guy? Even if he could get him and just sit him on the bench that would be a plus move for the Pats.

Okay, on the group results from Round 3 of our tourney. It was fun sitting in the top group while it lasted, but I had a dismal week. Thanks for nothing, Colin Kaepernick. Yeah, yeah, I’ll still draft you again for next week…

Scott Kuff wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. CP78 finishes second using the points differential tie-breaker over Wilforkisland and patwat. Wilforkisland finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over patwat.

j0eo1s wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. Peppy_Pants finishes second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Bill_Riccette. Fantasytaz finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over cwill0303.

rich1978 wins the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over stauqmuk. Terminalkennedy finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over FBGWILL.

TheApemanCometh wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

djreese5 wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

Fantasy Acumen wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

Remember we are playing the final round for the Super Bowl. Our next post will show the final group assignments and we’ll get the games set up in your Game Manager. In the meantime, you can play Fantasy Throwdown for the Super Bowl outside the tournament. Cheers.

This morning we posted results from the Divisional Playoffs Round of our NFL Playoffs Tournament. Now we are ready for the big games before the Big Game, the Conference Championships!

Sunday January 20

Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots, 6:30 pm

They don’t leave much time in between should that first game go to overtime, do they? As we witnessed last week when the Ravens-Broncos overlapped the Packers-49ers.

Okay, the results from our Wild-Card and Divisional Rounds were combined using a highly complex methodology to create our new overall rankings through the two rounds, which also forms our new groups for this round. The overall rankings and group assignments are shown below.

Nice job CP78 as the only player to keep a clean sheet through two rounds at 8-0 in the W-L column! Three players, Scott Kuff, patwat and Wilforkisland, finished first one round and second the other round, for the next highest ranked players in our tournament. Complex formula? Yeah, we just added the rankings together.

As you know, there are only two games on the NFL schedule, so there are no game selections to form the player pool this week (or our last week for the Super Bowl). The draft starts as soon as the opponent in each challenge selects if they want the first pick in the draft, or the second/third pick. We each have to deal with a smaller player pool. Other than that, all the rules are the same. The matches are set, so check your Game Manager for them, and good luck!

NFL Playoffs Tournament Overall Standings,
Post-Divisional Playoffs

Many people claimed this past weekend was going to be the best weekend of football all year, and the way the games turned out, their claim could very well be on the money. We started Saturday with a double overtime thriller in which I sure expected the Denver Broncos defense to play much better, and perhaps Baltimore Ravens QB Joe Flacco to play a little worse, than each did. Of course for fantasy the Denver D/ST was a great pick, thanks to former Houston Texan Trindon Holliday. Anyone watching last night’s game with a rumbling Danieal Manning think how a swifter Holliday would have made a difference in that game? Or another former Texan, Jacoby Jones for that matter.

On to the Saturday night game, Green Bay Packers at San Francisco 49ers. Colin Kaepernick, your dynasty league fantasy stock just went through the roof. The Packers had no answer for Kaepernick short of that early interception returned for a touchdown. At the end of this one we had back-to-back scoring fests and were possibly setting Fantasy Throwdown records for weekly high score. That is, if anyone picked the likes of Kaepernick, Michael Crabtree and Torrey Smith for their teams.

On Sunday the first half was all Atlanta Falcons, but for us diehards whose eyes didn’t flip away in the second half, we got to witness Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson just tear up the Falcons defense while the Falcons offense did little to compensate. So it was all Seahawks except for a short trip down memory lane courtesy of Michael Turner, and the ‘Hawks took the lead finally with :31 on the clock. Only to blow it. Two pass plays and two field goal attempts later, the second of which counted, the Falcons advance. I feel bad for Wilson, but very good for Tony Gonzalez. Well earned and a long time coming, best TE of all time.

Finally for the match expected to be the most lopsided, the Texans hung around with the New England Patriots for a while, but it became apparent the teams are playing on different levels right now. Even with some key injuries to Rob Gronkowski (costing many a Throwdown win this week, I’m sure) and Danny Woodhead, the Pats depth easily picked up the slack. I’m not saying this would have made the difference last night, but the Texans losing MLB Brian Cushing midseason was significant.

As for our NFL Playoffs Tournament, Round 2 results are in with the group standings shown below. Nice job everyone getting all of the drafts done last week, and congrats to our group winners! We will shake up the groups again for Round 3, the Conference Championships. The new group assignments will be in the next Site News post, but in the meantime if you want to get started drafting with the smaller player pool (just two games on the NFL schedule), go ahead and start issuing some challenges. Good luck!

CP78 wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

patwat wins the group with a 3-1 record. Wilforkisland finishes second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Peppy_Pants and rich1978. Peppy_Pants finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over rich1978.

Mike wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

j0eo1s wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. Harwood finishes second using the points differential tie-breaker over Airbus79 and Grindstone. Airbus79 finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Grindstone.

Terminalkennedy wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. unstable finishes second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Losperros. Jessect6 finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over DLFootball.

FBGWILL wins the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over WHUDEY. atcdav finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Fantasy Acumen.

Wild-Card Weekend results are in, now it is time for the Divisional Round! As I’m sure all of you know, the NFL games on the schedule are:

Saturday January 12

• Baltimore Ravens at Denver Broncos, 4:30 Eastern
• Green Bay Packers at San Francisco 49ers, 8:00

Sunday January 13

• Seattle Seahawks at Atlanta Falcons, 1:00
• Houston Texans at New England Patriots, 4:30

With four games on the schedule, we still have the “pick three NFL games” rule in place with a normal size player pool for all of our Fantasy Throwdown matches. Starting the following week, for the Conference Finals, the player pool gets smaller with only two games on the schedule.

The results for all of our groups from the Wild-Card Round were mixed up to form our current NFL Playoffs Tournament overall standings, which also forms the groups for this round. Players ranked overall 1 through 5 are Group A for the Divisional Round, players ranked 6 through 10 are Group B, 11 through 15 are Group C, and so on and so forth.

As mentioned in our last post with the Wild-Card results, even if you aren’t high on the overall rankings right now, does not mean you can’t fight your way back to the top. Here are the overall standings after Round 1 and group assignments for Round 2:

NFL Playoffs Tourney Overall Standings,
Wild-Card Round

The Throwdown matches are set for this round. Check your Game Manager, and good luck!

Wild-Card Weekend is in the books and Round 1 of our NFL Playoffs Tournament is also finished, so it time to post the results of our six, five-player groups so we can take the next step towards the Divisional Playoff round.

Each group played a round robin of four games, and if you went all-in on certain players this past weekend it either helped immensely (Arian Foster, Marshawn Lynch) or hurt considerably (RG3, Andre Johnson) your chances to win your matches. I was high on Aaron Rodgers to duplicate at home what he did the prior week against the Vikings in Minnesota. Unfortunately his 274-1 line was a far cry from 365-4. I think I was lucky to finish middle of the road at 2-2.

Remember, no matter how you finished in your group, everyone plays on in this tournament all the way through the Super Bowl. All of the groups will be mixed up, so if you are at the lower end of the standings at this point, you just need to fight back next round and climb the ladder towards the top groups. Of course the guys already at or near the top will be doing their darnedest to stay where they are or move up themselves. This post is for the Wild-Card group standings. The next post will include the new group assignments.

Surprise, surprise, (sarcasm), Wilforkisland won the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over TheApemanCometh. djreese5 finished third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Grindstone.

robshell won the group using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Peppy_Pants. Still, nice job rookie! unstable finished fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over Terminalkennedy.

Huge battle royale in this one. Scott Kuff won the group with a perfect 4-0 record. Fantasytaz finished second using the head-to-head tie-breaker over TheKommish. That game was decided by 0.15 points! Losperros finished fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over laoch.

Nice and orderly, this is the only group that didn’t need any tie-breakers to decide the standings. CP78 wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record.

Bill_Riccette wins the group. Not much separated two, three and four, but stauqmuk finished second as his two wins came against Mike and j0eo1s. Mike finishes third using the head-to-head tie-breaker over j0eo1s.

Late start for this group but a lot of Throwdown experience under their collective belts. cwill0303 wins the group with a perfect 4-0 record. Airbus79 finishes third using the points differential tie-breaker over FBGWILL and DLFootball. FBGWILL finishes fourth using the head-to-head tie-breaker over DLFootball.

You can play fantasy football every week of the NFL playoffs, including the Super Bowl, at Fantasy Throwdown.

NFL Playoffs are here! The Washington Redskins finished off the Dallas Cowboys last night to lock up the division and finalize the seeds for the playoffs. Now there are just twelve teams competing for the Lombardi Trophy awarded to the winner of Super Bowl XLVII (a.k.a. Super Bowl 47).

The start of the NFL Playoffs doesn’t mean fantasy football season is over for those of us addicted to predicting player performance and converting real world stats to pretend points, all for the sake of bragging rights over our equally addicted brethren. Consider this a second season from the grind of regular season fantasy football, and Fantasy Throwdown is the place to play NFL Playoff fantasy football.

We play from Wild-Card Weekend right through to the Super Bowl. You still pick three of the four available games for your challenge this week and next, the Divisional Playoffs. For the final two playoff rounds, the Conference Finals and Super Bowl, the player pool is fixed, but obviously just a little smaller.

The schedule is in for Wild-Card Weekend, so go ahead and get some challenges going right now if you like.

 
Tournament Sign Up

In addition to Throwdown games against opponents of your choosing, make sure to sign up for our last special event of this NFL season, our NFL Playoffs Competition.

Last year we had 30 players split into groups of 5 for the opening round, Wild-Card Weekend, playing a round robin against their group. The following week, players are shuffled into new groups with the top ranked finishers from the opening round facing each other, next best against next best, and so on and so forth.

Everyone plays every week of the playoffs, all the way to the Super Bowl! Tournament games will be scheduled and specially marked in your Game Manager. All games use the Team Defense lineup and PPR scoring options.

At this point, we just need players to sign up for the tourney! Register an account if you haven’t already, or login and sign up in our Site News or Forum. Once we have 15 or 20 willing participants, we will start forming groups and scheduling the opening round matches.

The earlier in the week we get started the better. The first playoff game kicks off Saturday January 5th at 4:30pm Eastern.

Get in the tourney! Tell your friends about NFL Playoff fantasy football at Fantasy Throwdown! Have a Happy New Year!