Michigan takes some PTO, Washington v. Oregon 3, and some other stuff

by Alana Klein

What to watch for this week:

• Michigan becomes the last team to (finally!) get its first bye week.
• Minnesota’s home opener was spoiled by Nashville last weekend. Can they avoid a hiccup this week or will the Barrels keep rolling? (No pun intended. No … seriously. This isn’t one of those situations where you very intentionally make a pun just so that you can say “No pun intended”. Now … where was I?)
• Oceanside and Albany play for the first and only time this season. This is a tough test for Oceanside. Albany is undefeated and in first for a reason, but they have twice thus far overlooked opponents in the lower half of the standings.
• Washington and Oregon play for the third time (out of four!) this season. They’ve split the first two. Despite losing 2 of the last 4, the Wolfpack are trending in the right direction. Can Oregon get their season back on track and exact some revenge from the last time these 2 met in a lopsided affair?

Controversial hot take of the week

• If Albany beats Oceanside and Oregon beats Washington, Albany clinches a playoff spot. I don’t care what your calculator says and I don’t care if the league office recognizes it. They do. Hear me out.

If Albany wins, they will have at worst a winning percentage of .583 while Washington, Oregon, and Michigan will have at best the same winning percentage. Basically, this means that all 4 teams could hypothetically finish 7-5. In order for this to happen, Albany would have to lose every remaining game whilst at the same time Washington, Oregon, and Michigan would have to each win all of their remaining games.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume Michigan wins the first tiebreaker round & moves into the #5 spot. What that leaves is Albany v. Oregon v. Washington for the last playoff spot. Albany holds the head-to-head over both Oregon & Washington, so they would take the last playoff spot. This doesn’t even get into the fact that it is statistically impossible for Washington, Oregon, and Michigan to all finish 7-5 because they still have games remaining against each other. And as if that wasn’t enough, Albany is the league’s #2 scoring offense (averaging over 50 points per game) — which is another tiebreaker in the standings.

Again, there is no mathematical way to prove this without resorting to hypotheticals, certain as they may be. But that’s just how things are when you play The Numbers Game.