Bill's All-Time Head-to-Head...

As we are inching closer to the draft, I've been thinking about recent fantasy football history. Each of the last three seasons I've been dealt a season-crushing loss by none other than our favorite full-Asian, NooShoo Gao. 2014 was a loss in the semi-finals, 2013 was a loss in the last week of the regular season with a playoff birth going to the victor, and 2012 was a loss in the first round of the playoffs. It made me think how the vision we have of our opponents can feel skewed in certain ways. Is there something to this notion that some of us have "kryptonite" when it comes to a particular opponent, or is it just based on being dealt a devastating loss at a few key moments in time that shapes our perception for years to come? Consider who you feel like has got your number when it comes to season-crushing losses.

So I decided to look at my all-time head-to-head matchups to see if there is anything to this. In reality, these stats mean absolutely nothing, but it was still fun to look at and make some statistically-irrelevant inferences.

Side note: This also required me to look at season-ending team names, which was the best part of this exercise in futility. I wish there was a way to look at the full history of team names. Sure, we've gotten less original and less funny over time (we probably peaked with "Wallet Guy"), but that's expected with age, having kids, etc. Here is a word cloud of our team names in the shape of 'merica, which proves we are pretty awesome. Wooglin is slightly less popular than Browntown/Brown and Lo, but more popular than Kao and Jabs. Seriously, take a few minutes to look at the entire word cloud since there are some hidden gems in there.




Back to the topic at hand. Here is my regular season breakdown of head-to-head matchups since 2005.







Turns out, Juan didn't notch a victory against me until the 2010 season. Ouch. The NooShoo-as-kryptonite theory doesn't hold up much on the surface. I've got a slight edge on the regular season over NooShoo here, and there have been some very close wins on both sides over the years. So let's take a closer look at what's going on when everything is on the line.




I guess I've never faced Rod or Dallus in the playoffs. Who knew? Anyway, you can see here that I'm 0-4 all-time in the playoffs against NooShoo. Also, if you look at a few of the seasons where I was within one win of making the playoffs, NooShoo was a factor. In 2008, I finished seventh, one win from the playoffs. But in week 8, there is a one point loss (99 - 100) against NooShoo. You may recall in 2013, all four teams who missed the playoffs finished at 5-8 with several matchups in the last week of the season to determine the last few playoff spots. I just happened to be playing against NooShoo in that last week, which of course ended with a 103.32 - 105.10 loss. F.

So in ten years of documented league history, NooShoo has ended my season four times in the playoffs, once in the last week of the season and certainly had a big effect with the one point mid-season loss in 2008. Conclusion: NooShoo is my kryptonite. I am the Wild to his Blackhawks. The Twins to his Yankees. The Timberwolves to his...NBA?

Coincidentally, I did not face NooShoo in the playoffs when I won it all in 2007. As Ned remembers all to well, that is the year of the Worst Moment in Fantasy Football History. Which brings up the question, with a 3-0 playoff record against him, am I Ned's kryptonite?

I've got time and a spreadsheet, so let me know if you want me to run some of these meaningless stats on your team, and I'll put another post together.