NLTP NewsRoom Hub - DOW vs. GES (A)

Do the Wire is coming off a surprising week where they got swept on A by LST, which dropped them down the community power rankings significantly, a good seven spots all the way down to 12th. You can maybe say that they weren't prepared, but not a lot of people thought they'd struggle as much as they did.

For GEH, they split LBT with a zero cap differential, which raised their stock in the community, going from the #12 spot to the #10 spot. It was a solid split against a tough team, so I was pretty intrigued about how they'd play against the other Centra team.

Who takes the points in this matchup?

A very strong first half for DOW set the stage for them to take G1 quite easily, but G2 was very fun to watch, as we had lagouts, hot subs, last-minute saves, and game-winning caps all in a span of 10 minutes in G2H2. SmallyBigs made an appearance in G2H2 and performed admirably and gave DOW the sweep with the last-second cap save and then the game-winning cap right after that.

GEH's offense struggled a lot, so after G1 Ephew put noice in for breezy and the difference seemed to be night and day here. noice got the 100 ONISH, seven caps, and 186 in 20 minutes, while Ephew and breezy combined for just one cap, which is wild. For DOW, SmallyBigs got a 98 ONISH for his two caps and 70 hold in seven minutes, while OD GOD actually got the 96 ONISH with 10 caps and 500 hold. Neither of those numbers led the week, but he still got the 10 OGASP. Carp had the 88 ONISH with six caps and 324 hold of his own, so yeah the DOW offense definitely had more success here.

The DOW defense combined for 1842 prevent and 74 returns, while averaging a 89 DNISH, with Porps and El Sacko coming 1st and 2nd in prevent this week too. . The GEH defense combined for 1011 prevent and 87 returns, while averaging a 64 DNISH. I think that really encapsulates the difference in both defense's performances. To be fair, Trit and Bacon did get more returns than the DOW defense, but DOW also had 900 more prevent than GEH, so I don't really think that the returns really matter.

The offensive output for GEH was quite poor this week, as you can see by all of the red in the offensive categories. They are dead last in hold, H/G, F/G, GHO, and Chain%, which just really show how far they dropped off from last week. Of course, after noice joined the numbers were marginally better, but man this is still bad. That F/G ratio is the highest one so far this season at 0.3971, which means that for every 10 grabs GEH flaccids four times. Despite these stats, they still had a fighting chance in G2, so make of that what you will. Meanwhile DOW led the week in prevent, HA, caps, P/R, Chain%, P/HA, RIB%, and QR%, while also coming second in Score%, NDP, F/G. A very solid week for the DOW offense and defense. For GEH, they also struggled when it came to RIB% and QR%, as well as P/HA. It just seems like every part of GEH struggled this week.

It does seem weird that this DOW team struggled so much against the LST squad though, considering I don't really think bbb/drewfa are that much better than Ephew/noice. The biggest difference I saw from last week's DOW to this week's DOW was their Score%, going from 3.75% in Week 1 to 14.80% in Week 2. That 11% increase was the biggest difference, as well as the 17% increase in RIB% and QR%. For a midseason segment, I might just compare all of the team's weekly stats against each other and see any trends.

It was a tough choice between Porps, OD GOD, and even noice for this award. I really wanted to pick noice, because he basically kept GEH in G2 with seven out of their nine caps, but they got swept, so I had to take him out of the running. I ended up picking Porps because he led the week in prevent with a whopping 948 seconds, and really stymied the GEH offense that seemed to be doing just fine against LBT last week.

CONCLUSION

DOW seemed to dominate on both sides of the field, while GEH couldn't really get anything going in G1, but then had a sort of renaissance with noice in G2. G2 could've probably gone to GEH if not for SmallyBigs, and if that would've happened then I would've given POTM to noice, but oh well. For GEH, I think they have a solid O partnership now in Ephew and noice, but the defense seemed pretty leaky as well against DOW's offense. That's something I'm going to look at for the upcoming weeks. Good job on DOW for sweeping this week after getting swept last week. That means that both teams that got swept in Week 1 came back with sweeps in Week 2. That's nice.