We are headed to the ship!
Pinstripe Bowl was born as Dawn of the Patriots in 2004. It was an epic first season as Tom Brady, Ron Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, and Stephan Gostkowski led the upstart Patriots to the fantasy championship game in their first season on NFL.com. Although we would lose to a team named Jetbombs on Monday Night Football, we are more than thrilled to make it to the Championship in just our second season in Ladies and Edelman.
This season’s path to glory went straight through last season’s champions, Lamar the Merrier! It was the third matchup of the season, with the semi-finals serving as a tie-breaker in the season series. This week’s game was a battle between the second and third place teams that met in week 13.
The Bowl avenged their previous defeat with a 42.84 point victory 164.20 – 121.36 to advance to the finals.
As the scoring chart will show, Pinstripe Bowl jumped out to 37.90 point lead after Thursday night football, thanks in part to Josh Jacobs (Las Vegas) and Hunter Henry (Los Angeles), duking it out to a 30-27 LA win in Las Vegas. Jacobs had 20.40 points, and Henry scored a season-high 17.50 points. Those two single-handly launched us on the path to victory, and we never looked back.
On Saturday, the Buffalo Bills travelled to Denver, where quarterback and wide receiver tandem Josh Allen (Lamar) and Stefon Diggs (Pinstripe) scored a boatload of points padding the Bowl’s lead even more. Allen had 39.66, and Diggs had 25.70, making our matchup 63.60 to 39.66 after two days of action.
The matchup progressed into Sunday, where Lamar made a comeback off their 81.70 points, but Pinstripe wasn’t quite done with 80.70 of their own. The matchup was all but over at that point, with the Bowl up 145.30 – 121.36. There was the only player left to play in the matchup, and that was Diontae Johnson (Pittsburgh) for the Bowl. He compiled 19.90 points, which served as an exclamation point, thus guaranteeing a new champion.
Pinstripe Bowl saved their best performances for when it mattered the most. In a winner or go home contest, the Bowl managed to score their second-highest weekly total of the season, exceeding their projections by 30.28 points. This week also marked the best spread against their projections, with only one out of the ten starters failing to reach their potential. The Bowl missed out on a perfect week by just 1.78 points.
We decided to stick with Tom Brady (Tampa Bay) franchise icon because he played the Atlanta Falcons, who have given up the most points to the quarterback position. That move almost backfired on us since Brady only scored 25.40 points, while our backup Kyler Murray (Arizona) scored his third-highest total of the season (37.14) in a shootout against Philadelphia.
Both of our running backs, Jacobs and Derrick Henry (Tennessee), scored over 20 points while Diggs led all players with 25.70 points. Only TY Hilton (Indianapolis), Johnson, and Henry managed to score less than 20 points.
Our special teams’ players, Matt Gay (Los Angeles) and the Seattle defence piled up 19 points to help the offensive guys win.
For the third time this season, Pinstripe Bowl scored more than 160 points, and in all three of those weeks, the Bowl was the highest-scoring team of the week.
The semi-finals featured both winners punching their ticket to the championship with convincing wins as KerryMy Johnson routed Nukl Busters 160.82-80.62, securing the third-largest blowout of the season.
Last year’s defending champions Lamar the Merrier! will now take on the Busters while Pinstripe Bowl will look to improve to 2-0 against the top team in the league, KerryMy Johnson.
In the consolation bracket, both winners Cleveland Steamerz and EarlThomas’Brother, scored over 140 points to move on to the fifth and sixth place game next week.
As we have mentioned in previous sections, our best players put up some of their best numbers of the season. Diggs was our best starter, and Murray, no stranger to being our best starter, was our best bench player with a team-high 37.14 points.
It was tough to pick a worse starter since all of them put up respectable numbers; however, the Seattle defence was the only starter that didn’t reach double digits.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Jaylen Hurts has come out of nowhere to take the Eagles’ reigns. He secured the top honour with his 40.82 points.
The Pinstripe Bowl management team spent many hours pondering their first playoff matchup in years and a possible shot at the championship the preceding week.
We didn’t need three quarterbacks on the roster but did need a kicker after Ryan Succop (Tampa Bay) was put on the COVID list. Kirk Cousins (Minnesota) was sent back to the waiver wire while Matt Gay (Los Angeles) joined the team.
DJ Clark Jr (Jacksonville) had failed to live up to expectations for the majority of the season. Hence, we cut him in favour of the Arizona defence with a juicy matchup against San Francisco in week 16.
After shuffling a few players around, we had two roster spots open, so we grabbed Nelson Agholor (Las Vegas) as a backup option in the wide receiver department.
When we were done setting up the team for the matchup, we decided that Trey Burton’s (Indianapolis) services were no longer needed and the same with Kenny Galloway (Detroit). Galloway was one of our early draft selections, but an injury has kept him out of the lineup for six weeks, and he’s been all shut down for the rest of the season. We thank him for his contributions, but we may need his spot when it matters the most.
Weekly Move Total: 3/4
Season Move Total: 24/50
Stay tuned for next’s week recap of Pinstripe Bowl’s 2020 Fantasy Football season.
Keeping the Stats 