FADUCO Week 6 Power Rankings
Before I proceed to this week’s power rankings, I want to
rant and rave about something that was in the news today. If you want to skip the rant, just scroll
to the sixth paragraph. There was a survey of the top 23 most developed countries’ adult literacy and math skills. Like most of these studies that
measure a country’s level of brains, the US supposedly scored in the “Dumb” to “Dumber”
range. The usual high achievers like Japan and the Scandinavian countries were on the top list of nations in the survey.
But what is really dumb is how this survey was sampled. You can download the methodology description here. Basically, the US was handicapped in
its performance by a variety of factors. First, it was only among 3 of the 23 that had a response rate of over 70%. Americans tend to be more optimistic in
nature so of course you have some yokel agreeing to take the survey. Meanwhile,
in Japan and Finland, only 50% took the survey. So about 20% knew they would
score poorly or were too drunk to bother taking it. Then, the survey still counted
the 4% of responders in the US who did not quite understand English. No other
nation came close. As a nation with a substantial population of 1st
generation immigrants, of course this hurts your test performance if the only
language in the survey for Americans is standard English, not Spanish, not
Ebonics, and not Twitterese.
One more handicap for the US: I looked at some of the sample
questions. One of them was about reading a thermometer and calculating the
change in temperature. In Celsius."WTF is Celsius?” would be your normal reply
expected from an American. Or, in another question, it was about some energy power
generated by wind power. “WTF is a wind power station? We use oil and gas here
in America. We’re going to be the #1 oil and gas producer in the world this year. USA! USA!”.
So, in summary, I think this survey was bullshit. Of course
you'd have a bigger gap between smart people and functionally illiterate morons
in a big and varied nation. Of course the USA is going to score low. To put it
in fantasy terms: If your total team average was lower, but you have a few
fantasy studs and a few bench duds (the good ol’ US), you are going to be
thought of as a poor performer if you measure your team by average score from all
performers. However, having a team with a higher average but all the same
medium performers (Socialist Europe) is actually worse for fantasy, as it’s
harder to identify the starters and bench, and you’ll never have the high
ceiling you can with the former situation.
Short version of my rant: The OECD survey sucks
OK, on to this week’s power rankings:
1. Victor
Undisputed #1 with Mr. Papa Johns, but vulnerabilities now cropping up:
Julio Jones out for year, Peyton will be benched after only 3 TDs since that is
beyond Jacksonville’s ability to score, and tough 2-game stretch against Bill
and Andrew coming up.
2. Bill
Three straight wins, Ray Rice now
getting carries, and Gronkowski coming back from injury. If only he didn’t have
to play Victor this week. No real questions on roster to worry otherwise.
3. Andrew
Pretty bad RBs, but as Kevin showed
last year, you can win with one mediocre feature back if your QB gets going.
Also Seahawks at home vs. Ryan Fitzpatrick? That’s fantasy gold.
4. Donny
Only lost last week because he was
one minute late in subbing Megatron for TY Hilton. Has great depth at DST after
trade with Victor. If Cam Newton doesn’t implode for a 2nd
week, Donny’s has a favorable schedule for
his next 4 games, all against teams in the bottom half of scoring.
5. Kevin
I was considering giving Kevin one
bonus placement in the rankings due to renaming his team the Honey Badgers and
choosing a badass icon. But he narrowly just beat Hai in a tiebreak and is
lower than Donny in both scoring and breakdown. Plus, I think Kevin would
rather be the underdog vs. the top 4 teams.
6. Katy
Uncharacteristic inefficient year
for Katy. Benching Romo 2 weeks in a row would do that for you. Fortunately,
Vick is out so her choices for QB are now Romo and Romo. Doug Martin also will
get a lot of carries to eat up the clock vs. the Eagles.
7. Tuna
Julio Jones’ injury may actually
hurt Tuna more than Victor. His QBs are meh. However, Tuna has the 2nd
best pair of RBs in total scoring after Victor. Also, it’s the Broncos Defense’s
turn to violate the Jags this week.
8. PJ
Classic Jekyll and Hyde team. Either scores 90+ points or flames out under
55. Looks like another bad week with Dolphins on bye and PJ’s starters facing
tough matchups. May be opening the trading bazaar for closing-out sale business
soon.
9. Hai
I hope Hai is enjoying China this
week. If you haven’t yet checked it out yet, I highly recommend his travel blog.
Great photos. It gives something to distract him from the despair and trauma of
that game vs. the Broncos.
10. Lily
Yay, Lily finally gets the W. However, that was more
a lucky match-up than actually scoring points. Will RG3 return to last year’s
version? Will the Cowboys D recover from last week’s debacle? Too many
questions on this team for now.
Comments