This team cooks the Backyard series — its own boards, records and Team of the Year are here. Still inside their first twelve months: see what a first season usually looks like.
Each card leads with the number that made it a story — read straight out of their results, no editorialising.
The ratings favoured the top seed the other 83 times in 100
Their Grand Championship at O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 2 (2026-05-02) came as the ratings underdog — roughly a 17-in-100 shot against the field's top-rated team, Rollin Smoke BBQ.
98.1% of a perfect 360
Their best day on record: 353.1200 at O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 2 — 98.1% of a perfect 360.
Ahead in 100% of their meetings
They've finished ahead of Batons & Bones in 3 of their 3 shared contests.
Finished 3 of 36 at their very first tracked contest, Smoke on the Falls (2026-04-03).
The nearest teams in the power rankings, with a different reason on each card — six teams on one rating are rarely on it for the same reason. Rating decides who makes the list; where teams tie on it, the ones this team has actually cooked against come first, then teams at a similar point in their own career. KCBS doesn’t publish where a team is from, so nothing here is inferred from geography.
Baptized by Smoke has 3 rated contests — short of the five it takes to earn a power ranking — so this rating has barely moved off the 1500 every team starts on and 87 rated teams sit within a point of it. Read the list as the nearest company at a number nobody here has moved far from, not as a verdict on who this team belongs with.
A longer road to the same neighbourhood — 5 contests to 3.
⚔ Head-to-headThey were already cooking in 2013, 13 years before Baptized by Smoke's first contest.
⚔ Head-to-headTheir last contest in the data was back in 2023, 3 years before Baptized by Smoke's most recent — their rating stopped moving when they stopped cooking.
⚔ Head-to-head4 straight overall top-10s says this rating is a moving target.
⚔ Head-to-headTheir rating is built on 1 Grand Championship in 6 contests, alongside a 33% overall top-10 rate.
⚔ Head-to-headLevel with Baptized by Smoke on power rating, which is the whole reason they're on the list.
⚔ Head-to-head| Category | Entries | Calls | Wins | Podiums | Best | Worst | Average | Avg finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 178.8572 | 167.3828 | 175.03 | top 23% |
| Pork Ribs | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 174.2628 | 168.5372 | 171.97 | top 41% |
| Pork | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
| Brisket | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
“Calls” = top-10 category finishes (getting called to the stage). Scores here are the final weighted totals KCBS publishes; per-criterion appearance/taste/tenderness marks aren’t in the public results feed.
| Field | Contests | GCs | Avg finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small (<20 teams) | 2 | 1 | top 42% |
| Medium (20–39) | 1 | 0 | top 8% |
| Swing | Contest | Date |
|---|---|---|
| +20.6 | O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 2 | 2026-05-02 |
| +16.5 | Smoke on the Falls | 2026-04-03 |
| Swing | Contest | Date |
|---|---|---|
| -4.4 | O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 1 | 2026-05-01 |
| Season | Contests | GCs | Top-10s | Category wins | Walk rate | Avg finish | Best overall (% of perfect) | Avg overall (% of perfect) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 100% | top 30% | 98.1% | 96.4% |
| Date | Event | Overall | Chicken | Ribs | Pork | Brisket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-02 | O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 2 Cleveland, AL | 1 / 15 (353.1200) | 2 (178.8572) | 3 (174.2628) | — | — |
| 2026-05-01 | O'So Good BBQ Festival (BACKYARD ONLY) Day 1 Cleveland, AL | 13 / 17 (335.9200) | 9 (167.3828) | 14 (168.5372) | — | — |
| 2026-04-03 | Smoke on the Falls 🏅 Gadsden, AL | 3 / 36 (351.9772) | 1 (178.8572) | 7 (173.1200) | — | — |
| Year | Series | Overall | Chicken | Ribs | Pork | Brisket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 ↗ | Backyard | #78 (598 pts) | #72 (648 pts) | #108 (473 pts) | — | — |