I’ll be doing an update after each week of play for both WED and SUN. I’ll keep the explanations shorter than I would for pre-season rankings (hence why I’ve dropped the “Team Reviews” bit from the title for the updates), so whereas the preseason rankings are more about analyzing the teams and players, these will be more about the rankings themselves. The methodology here will be pretty simple — I have some rudimentary numbers on how certain results affect a drop or rise in rank, and I’ll pair that with some subjective thoughts on the teams as well. The number of teams per tier will stay the same, for the sake of simplicity & consistency. The first number in brackets indicates a team’s preseason ranking, whereas the second indicates the change from the previous ranking update.
Tier 5
16. Rinku (16, +0)
I predict this team will stay in this spot for a decent while, and nothing about getting 2–0'd by another tier 5 team suggests otherwise.
15. Cardinalstar (9, -6)
In all honesty, this might be too harsh a drop for Cardinal’s crew, but getting 2–0'd — even if it was to a team that was pretty close in the initial rankings — was kind of disappointing. Admittedly, they did play with a standin, but I had my doubts about this team even pre-season since it was loaded with unknowns. Add to that the fact that captains voted this as the worst team and they suffer a drop from just outside playoff contention to bottom 3 for now.
14. Grimmjow (10, -4)
While a 2–0 loss to a team ranked only two spots below generally wouldn’t garner a 4 rank drop, a pretty stompy defeat and the subsequent (public) internal issues don’t instill much faith.
Tier 4
13. Harbinger (14, +1)
I think there’s a good chance this team climbs even further up the rankings in the following weeks, but beating Rinku’s team doesn’t get you more than one rank.
12. Ovidiu (15, +3)
A draw against the 4th ranked team gives Ovi’s gang of ragtag supports a boost out of tier 5 and into 12th.
11. Neox (8, -3)
Although their loss was to a higher ranked team, Neox’s team doesn’t seem very impressive, especially considering the death count on their cores.
Tier 3
10. T-Reds (13, +3)
Mikel’s core game might not be as rusty as one could’ve predicted, and as such T-Reds swooped in to grab a 2–0 against Cardinal. I’m slightly hesitant to give them such a big bump up, considering I probably overrated Cardinalstar’s team initially, but with a lot of unexpected week 1 results, they squeeze into tier 3.
9. Kevin Richardson (6, -3)
I was unimpressed by this team’s week 1 performance, given that I thought it looked pretty decent on paper. I haven’t completely given up on them, but they see a big drop here because of the following teams’ results.
8. Play (12, +4)
The biggest bump up of the update, I’m taking a chance on Play to keep popping off week in, week out. While sweeping a team only two spots ahead shouldn’t really give you a 4 rank upgrade, the fashion in which they executed that sweep gives me reason to sit them right outside of tier 2.
7. Neon (11, +4)
This team pulled out the most massive upset of the week, 2–0'ing the first ranked team, but I’d personally need to see more from them to give them a higher rank. If they can display that kind of consistency, though, they could prove that an initial bottom 5 rank was way too low.
Tier 2
6. Sakoh (4, -2)
Dropping a game to a bottom 2 team is not ideal. Nonetheless, I think they could’ve won that game, and I still value Szajtek a tiny bit too much to dismiss this team too much.
5. RampagingBench (1, -4)
I’m not even gonna comment on this one. 10 rank gap. If they keep playing like that, they won’t even be tier 2 for long.
4. hi5 (3, -1)
If the rest of the week 1 results weren’t as weird and didn’t make it as hard to rank the rest of these teams, hi5’s squad would probably be a fair bit lower — I was not convinced by this team. The roster is still okay on paper, but they’ll need to change up a lot of things to bounce back, else they’ll keep dropping.
Tier 1
3. Syrphx (7, +4)
A pretty damn convincing 2–0 against a higher ranked team — paired with other tier 1 teams underperfoming massively — means Syrphx and co. get into tier 1. How long will they stay here? TBD.
2. Maus (5, +3)
A nice little sweep against a top 8 team showed me that the doubts I had about this team might be unfounded and that I was wrong to rate them as low as I initially had.
1. Madsen (2, +1)
A clean 2–0 against the third-ranked team who we shared the distinction of being captain-voted favorites with — while the previous first-place team suffered a 2–0 loss against a bottom-half team — means my team claims the throne ahead of week 2.
A Look Into The Groups
To figure out which of the two Sunday groups is superior, I’ll be ranking the teams within the context of their groups as well, tallying their total ranks to see which is the stronger of the two. The number in brackets indicates a team’s overall ranking in the current division rankings update.
Group A
8. Cardinalstar (15)
7. T-Reds (10)
6. Kevin Richardson (9)
5. Neon (7)
4. RampagingBench (5)
3. hi5 (4)
2. Syrphx (3)
1. Madsen (1)
Group Total: 54
Group B
8. Rinku (16)
7. Grimmjow (14)
6. Harbinger (13)
5. Ovidiu (12)
4. Neox (11)
3. Play (8)
2. Sakoh (6)
1. Maus (2)
Group Total: 82
Hosting 5 of the top 8 teams in the rankings, Group A seems to currently be the significantly stronger of the two.
Will this mean some better teams miss out on the playoffs? Will Group B change the status quo? Will this pretty overt attempt at forcing the creation of a rivalry storyline between the two groups hold up?
We shall see in due time.
My writing routine, more often than not, is to take a walk and grab a coffee somewhere. If you want to support my content, you can buy me a coffee, but I’ll keep writing as long as there’s stuff to write about, no matter what.
Thanks for reading!
