Week 12: Deserved clincher for Distillers

Distillers owner Dan Cassidy clinched a playoff berth while recovering at Silver Cross Hospital from a heart attack Nov. 17.

Cassidy's lineup carried over from Week 11, but it was enough to beat the LAX Planespotters in Week 12 for the Lewis Division-leading Distillers.

"I don't like losing, but I'm glad to give you this get well gift," Spotters owner D.J. Wanberg wrote to Cassidy.

Here's the Spotters vs. Distillers boxscore:

Spotters (21)
Rodgers GB 3
Coleman ATL 6
Yeldon JAX zero
Green CIN DNP
Davis TEN 6
Crosby GB 6

Distillers (43)
Brees NO 12
Mack IND 3
Carson SEA 6
Thomas NO zero
Thielen MIN 11
Myers NYJ 11

More Lewis Division: Second place Just a Fantasy could likely clinch a playoff berth in Week 13. Fantasy holds a three-game lead over the Eggers with three to play, but does not hold the head-to-head advantage. The Eggers beat Fantasy 60-50 in Week 11 to split the season series between the rivals.

All in the family: Papa Dick Quagliano can buy a round for son Anthony Quagliano someday. Anthony's Jays beat the Brawlers 46-43 in Week 12 to clinch a playoff berth for his own Jays and dad's Hurricane Quags. Anthony reports that the Brawlers nearly tied the match on Monday Night Football, but Brawlers WR D. Hopkins HOU was held to 74 yards receiving.

Quags avoided the tiebreaker with the Brawlers by already sweeping their head-to-head series.

Distillers owner back in charge

Stan Goff (left) and Dan Cassidy

Dah Commish paid a visit Friday to Distillers owner Dan Cassidy at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox.

Dan is now resting at Distillers HQ in Lockport after leaving the hospital Saturday. Serkus owner Stan Goff gave him a ride home and one of Dan's brothers will be spending time with him at his home.

Dan looked like he was in excellent health when I saw him and was thankful for the off duty Lockport police officer who performed CPR on him during his heart attack Nov. 17.

Dan said he hopes to avoid surgery and plans on being back in the owner's box, running the Distillers for Week 13.

It will be great to see Dan come back, even if the Distillers are having another great year this season.

Week 11: Serkus' 87 points

For the record, Distillers owner Dan Cassidy suffered his heart attack one day before his opponent, Serkus owner Stan Goff, scored 87 Finks points against the Distillers. Not afterward.

Cassidy was unconscious at the time, but Serkus' performance was likely a franchise record for Goff, who is the longest tenured Finks League owner besides Dah Commish.

No doubt, Goff competed against Cassidy with a heavy "heart." The two have known each other for decades since they both worked together during the Naperville Sun's glory days.

Eggers owner Mike Miazga wondered if Serkus' total was a record, but our Finks Record Book already has the listing for Hall of Famer Matt Simo's 90 Finks points with the Chicago Blitz in Week 11 of 1995, our second season. Dah Commish does not have week-to-week scores through all 25 seasons to compare where Goff's 87 points would rank. I used to keep week-to-week scores through the first 10 seasons of the league, but stopped keeping track shortly afterward. I kept those scores for a while, but never referred back to them and I decided to keep everything I needed on the Finks League website.

Serkus' 87 likely ranks among the second or third best scoring totals in Finks history. I can't recall too many other weeks in the 80s.

The 87 comes at an inopportune time when the opposing Distillers lacked their owner. It's also a rare highlight to a disappointing 2-8-1 season for the defending champions.

Here's the boxscore:

Distillers (54)
QB Brees NO  21
RB Mack IND 6
RB Carson SEA 6
WR Thomas NO 9
WR Thielen MIN zero
PK Butker KC 9

Serkus (87)
QB Goff LAR 27 (unrelated to Stan)
RB E. Elliott DAL 14
RB Barkley NYG 23
WR Diggs MIN 11
WR J. Jones ATL 11
PK J. Elliott PHI  1

Serkus needed at least one field goal from his former Lyons Township PK to at least tie Simo's record.

QB DUEL: Week 11 Co-players of the Week, Quags QB Mahomes KC and Goff, played against each other Monday night and scored a Finks-best 27 points each for the week. That has likely never happened before. The Rams won 54-51 in the highest scoring MNF game in history.

Mahomes had six TD passes for nearly 500 yards. Goff had a rushing TD and over 400 passing yards.

Wanberg: "I've added it up twice."

And it's still a tie, for Spotters owner D.J. Wanberg.

Wanberg picked up his second tie of the season with a 35-35 draw to the Eggers in Week 5. The Spotters (2-1-2) actually equaled his 2012 two-tie season with the Khans (6-7-2).

Wanberg could become the first Finks League owner to have three or more ties in a season with 10 weeks remaining. In Finks history, nine teams have tied twice in a season as the league enters its 25th year.

The headline is taken from a Wanberg email to the Eggers' Miazga, explaining that no matter how many times he works the number, it's still 35 for both teams.

The Eggers-Spotters tie featured some remarkable moments.

Of course, Wanberg could have avoided the tie if his PK Crosby GB made any of the four field goals that he missed in a heartbreaking Packers loss. Crosby finished with five Finks points.

QB Rodgers GB scored 19 Finks points to keep the Spotters in the game.

The Eggers, who are still looking for their first win, avoided another loss with a rare TD pass from WR Beckham Jr. NYG, who finished with 14 Finks points.

The Spotters' previous tie game came in Week 1, 36-36, against Serkus Act.

The last team to have two ties in a season was Traczek's Barrels (6-7-2 in 2014).

Week 3 roundup: Here come the byes

Week 4 begins the NFL bye season with CAR and WAS taking the weekend off. I dread byes in order to get more games in during the regular season.

The CAR and WAS absences hardly shake up the Finks League week. Likely missing from starting lineups will be Independents' RB McCaffrey CAR and Eggers' RB Peterson WAS.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda -- Damn it

How many times in the history of a fantasy football does an owner take themselves to the woodshed for their own kind of whooping?

In Week 1, Miaza's Eggers would have won if they used WR Hill KC as a starter, instead of leaving his 25 Finks points on the bench. Dah Commish's Independents would have been a winner with WR Stills MIA (17 points) as a starter. Sometimes fantasy can just be plain frustrating. A. Quags' Jays started eventual Player of the Week -- RB Kamara NO (25 points) -- but couldn't win.

After Week 1, both father and son Quaglianos are 0-1. Defending champion Goff's Serkus and Wanberg made his debut with the Spotters with a tie, something Finks League did not have all last season.

And so it goes...

Auction 2018 wrap up

And we're off...

The 25th season for the Finks League has begun with Sunday's annual auction. Each year, owners provide quite a diverse bid sheets. Some owners send long lists of penny players while other owners send in hardly any names at all.

As the commissioner since Day 1, I have never seen one kind of bid sheet that ends up helping crown a Finger Bowl champion. It's a long year ahead with plenty of free-agent pickups and perhaps a trade or two along the way.

Here's my recap of the auction, which was held in the basement bunker of my modest home in Darien. Good luck to you all.

You're the tops: These players owned the highest bids. QB Rodgers GB ($38.23 by the Spotters), outbidding one other owner with a $31 bid. RB Gurley LAR ($34.25 for the Jays). WR A. Brown PIT ($33.51 for Quags), beating bids of $31 and $27.33, and PK Zuerlein LAR ($5.04 for the Eggers).

Three of a kind: There were three blind draws conducted for marginal players. All three tie-breaking blind draws were for players with bids of 10 cents or less.

Kick me: Jays owner Anthony Quagliano placed only three bids for PKs at one penny each. Not surprisingly, he did not pick up a kicker in the auction.

Quags Report: Hurricanes boss Dick Quagliano did the math after his auction returns. Quags reports that $99.59 of his allotment went toward all of his players in the draft. In short, Quags got nearly player he wanted on his bid sheet. He bid on only 17 players and ended up with 11.

What's left? Using the rankings of CBS Sports fantasy football writer Jamey Eisenberg (Non-PPR), here are the top remaining players available via free-agent pickup after Week 1:

QB Wentz PHI (ranked No. 12), RB J. Williams GB (No. 21), WR Smith-Schuster PIT (No. 18) and PK McManus DEN (No. 14).