The league is being pulled like taffy.

Standings: Week 6, after game 5 (May 3, 2024)

Team	Wins	Losses	WPct	GB
Canberra Kangaroos	22.83	12.17	.652	0.0
D.C. Balk	19.92	15.08	.569	2.9
Flint Hill Tornadoes	18.87	16.13	.539	4.0
Cascadia Glaciers	18.25	16.75	.521	4.6
Peshastin Pears	17.81	17.19	.509	5.0
Salem Seraphim	16.80	18.20	.480	6.0
Haviland Dragons	16.06	18.94	.459	6.8
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	15.82	19.18	.452	7.0
Portland Rosebuds	15.05	19.95	.430	7.8
Kaline Drive	13.19	21.81	.377	9.6
Old Detroit Wolverines	9.16	25.84	.262	13.7

You might see the taffy-pullness of our standings better this way:

Note the little numbers I’ve inserted above and below the pretty parts. The 101.9 at the top left, and the 44.4 at the bottom left are projected wins over the entire season for the first place and last place teams in the league, after game 1 of week 6. As you scan to the right you can see how these numbers have changed over the week.

The Kangaroos’ projected final record has improved from 101.9 – 60.2 to 105.6 – 56.54 — almost an increase of 4 wins!

Meanwhile the Wolverines’ projected wins have tumbled from 44.4 to 42.4 — a decline of 2 wins.

All of this in LESS than a week. If we project these trends over the remaining 21 weeks of the season, we can expect the Wolverines to end with 0 wins, and the Kangaroos to amass an incredible 189 wins! And here “incredible” is a huge understatement, which “incredible” hardly ever gets to be.

This is silly taffy. It’s impossible. The W’s came into the week with 8 wins that can never be taken — or given — away. The Kangaroos brought 11 losses with them which are equally inalienable. And there are reasons no team has ever won 189 games in a 162-game regular season. Trust me on this.

But here’s something even more flabbergasting: the kooky results for the K’s and the W’s are not the wackiest extrapolations we could make. Because if you look in the middle parts of the standings, you will see something even more goofy and astonishing.

If every EFL team could continue the trend it has established so far in week 6, here is what our standings would like at season’s end:

Yes, there are strange and impossible things here. But they aren’t all equally impossible. Here is one way to order the impossibility of these season standings:

1. Most improbable: no one will win or lose a negative number of games over a season. You can bet the house on this one, even in the EFL.
2. No one will win, or lose, fewer games than they had won, or lost, as of the end of week 5.
3. No one will win 306, 235, 225, and 179 games, in that order of improbability. It is theoretically possible to win more than 162 games in the regular if two teams never face each other in the regular season, and both have unbeaten seasons, and have a playoff to break the tie. So if someone insists on a best-of-287 tie-breaker playoff, a team could in theory win 306 in the regular season. Improbable? Yes!! Oh Yes Yes, Yes!!! But not impossible.
4. through, I dunno, 50? 150? 1550?: Other things I haven’t thought of.

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1551. The Wolverines will finish first. (Remember, we’re making a list of the most improbable results)

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1600. The world will end.

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1700. The EFL will disband.

….

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2200. The Alleghenys will finish first.

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2300. The Pears will finish first.

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2400. The Dragons will finish first.

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2500. The Seraphim will finish first.

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2600. The Rosebuds will finish first.

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2700. The Balk will finish first.

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2800. The Tornados will finish first.

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2900. The Drive will finish first.

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3000. The Glaciers will finish first, despite the atrocious breach of protocol for an expansion team. Hordes of people will riot and demand the end of the world to ensue, but will be disappointed. Probably.

3000. (Tie) The Kangaroos will finish first. Order will be preserved, and quiet satisfaction will descend upon the Earth.

Be encouraged: these outcomes are listed in the order of Least Probability, given current Week 6 trends,

Odds will change if trends change. And trends are likely to change. The taffy can only stretch so far.