Fantasy Football Wrapped

The regular season has come and gone. Lets shake it up a bit this week and look at how we got here for our playoff teams and almosts.

To start, lets talk about how we have 5 teams from one division in the playoffs, all five of which would have received a first round bye if in the bad division. This reiterates my point last week about it being a good thing to be placed in the good division where your playoff chances are 80%.

  1. Mr. Big Chest. It all started right before the season when Dave who drafted Cooper Kupp early in the second. Kupp suffered a “setback” in his hamstring injury on August 31st and was subsequently traded for Keenan Allen (WR3 on the year). He also traded Justin Jefferson for Tyreek Hill before the season and for Amon-Ra St. Brown in October. This team has scored <100 only a single time and less than 114 only twice. Dave’s been piecing together RBs, ultimately landing CMC near the deadline. Dave’s team now holds the WR1,3,8, RB1, and QB6 but now all that matters is week 16 and 17.

  2. Zach White Commanders. The Commanders have been playing second fiddle to MBC for most of the season. After a 3-2 start, the Commanders ripped off 5 straight, averaging 154 points during those 5 weeks. The Commanders’ studs are their RBs with in my opinion 3 top 10 PPR RBs in Kamara (RB5 despite the 3 game suspension), Kyren Williams (RB11 despite missing 4 games to injury), and Rachaad White (RB4, at least double digits every week since week 6). Josh Allen at QB never hurts also (QB1). This team has dropped >145 points 8 of 14 weeks. With Dave taking the L this week, a win would have handed them a bye, but ZWC also had a down week and ended up missing the bye by about 25 points. At opposite sides of the bracket it seems ZWC and MBC are on a collision course for Week 17.

  3. Michael Ohers Conservators. Its been an up and down year, drafting WR heavy and scrapping together any Joe Shmo at RB. It works a hell of a lot better when you have 3 top 10 WRs (*cough* MBC). Spending $81 FAAB on Puka Nacua sparked a 4-0 start. After 4th round pick Anthony Richardson went down for the year though, I had to ship Nacua for some QB stability in Purdy who is on a bit of heater. The Conservators had a 1-4 stretch around October but are on a 5 game win streak (including the 1v1 in week 14) thanks to superior fantasy defense as 121.1 is the highest opposing score during that stretch. The Conservators have gone all in on the Stafford-Kupp stack for Week 15 against the Commanders. Hopefully the Commanders are somewhat competent and this isn’t one of those 200 rushing yard, 3 rushing TD games for Kyren…

  4. Good on Paper. This team had an abysmal start to the year trading for Cooper Kupp who sat out the first four games of the season, starting 1-3. The early stack of Ja’Marr Chase and Joe Burrow was also rough as the Bengals offense had a slow start to the season also. That combo and the rest of the team heated up in the mid portion of the season though and fought to 4-3. They stacked 3 different offenses: Bengals, Rams, & Chiefs who accounted for 7 of their 9 starters at one point. That boom or bust strategy landed them at 5-6 with 3 weeks left in the good division. Fortunately, they finished 3-0 and head into the playoffs against The Conservators. Someone’s win streak is going to end.

  5. Fields of Dreams. What. A. Year. This team started 0-4, and things were looking dismal. In week 5, FoD finally dropped 177.12 thanks to DJ Moore’s magical 49 point night against the Commanders in a Thursday night game. Their opponent that same Sunday however had Ja’Marr Chase against the Cardinals who put up 52 points of their own and beat FoD 178.16-177.12 (close 2nd place for game of the year, see Token Female’s writeup). At 0-5 after that heartbreaker you’d have to consider this just aint your year. The team hung around and hit 7 losses in week 10 after another <1 point loss to PP Hurts. They had to run the table and they did, beating each member of the bad division after PP Hurts and finishing with a 4 game win streak and sneaking in thanks to sitting 3rd in points for.

  6. Los Gatos Kitties. The Kitties are next here because they’ve had a similar year to FoD. They started the year 2-6 thanks to two tight losses against Good on Paper (130.96-130.06) and RIP Kirko Chainz (104.28-102.56). Accruing the 7th loss in Week 11, they had to run the table, putting up 156 points in week 12 and 163 in week 13. The team fell apart in week 14 though with injuries to Stroud and Jacobs plus down games from Love and LaPorta left the Kitties as the only good division team out of the playoffs despite sitting 4th in points for. Its all about who you play.

  7. Token Female. A first round bye at 7-7. Starting the season 5-0 during the division round robin, they proceeded to win just once from October 9th - December 4th in cross-division play. Heading into week 14 they needed to win and have IPB lose to nab the bye thanks to a steady stream of points sitting 6th in total points for. Token Female walked into the playoffs, beating LaPorta’s Pussies for the second time which was their 2nd win against good division teams. 0-7 against any other team, but just has to go 1-1 at worst to find the podium. As IPB also finished 7-7, the entire bad division’s season came down to week 4 IPB. For your reading pleasure here is the recap from that week:

“A battle of the unbeatens leads the matchups this week. Token Female and I Pickens Boogies were back and forth all Sunday. For Token Female, Stefon Diggs showed what a superstar he is, as the stubborn Miami DC refused to let Xavien Howard travel with Diggs. On only 7 targets, Diggs racked up 120 yards and 3 TDs. Meanwhile for I Pickens Boogies, AJ Brown also demonstrated their superstardom against a rookie Emmanuel Forbes Jr. Brown on nearly twice the targets of diggs went 9 for 175 and 2 including a 28 yard go-ahead TD with 1:43 left in the game. I Pickens Boogies was disappointed with their Steelers Pickett (4.46) to Pickens (5.5) stack as Pickett injured his knee and left the game early. Token Female experienced injury woes of their own as Deebo (0.6) was active despite surely not being healthy and only receiving 3 carries with 0 targets. Heading into Monday night, I Pickens Boogies was down ~5.2 points with Darren Waller left. It was a struggle all night for the Giants offense as the O-line looked worse than the Steelers’ (that’s sayin something). This can lead to more targets for short routes like TEs usually run, but Jones looked Waller’s way only once before the last 5 minutes of the game. The Giants were driving down big and were actually moving the ball when targetting Waller. After a pair of catches, Daniel Jones fumbled on 4th & 5 effectively ending anymore chances for Waller. The final score: Token Female 123.6, I Pickens Boogies 123.56; a single passing yard difference.”

  1. I Pickens Boogies. Much of IPB’s story was wrapped in Token Females’. This squad however managed 3 straight victories to start interdivision play at sat 7-1 in week 8. Since week 8, IPB’s highest team total was 102 points, mostly due to shaky QB play, the fantasy cliff of Austin Ekeler, and Justin Jeffersons’ hamstring injury. The squad lost 6 straight to end the year, and their season, losing the 1st round bye they had held weeks 6-14.

The last 4 had a rough go this season. Here are some of their highlights:

Hamas Rockets - Week 8 - 2nd highest score of the week with 159.26 thanks to Bryce Young’s 2nd best game as a pro (14.5). Shoutout the Rockets for believing in Young, starting him every week of the year as Bryce sits QB25 on the season with 10.7 PPG.

RIP Kirko Chainz - Week 4 - Nearly doubling Team Jeff 150 - 88, though the season highlight was probably getting to draft CMC at 9 overall and getting Purdy in the 9th.

Team Jeff - Week 2 - 171.64 points even with Breece Hall scoring 0.9 points thanks to Danny Dimes 31.74 and Steelers DST 27. Though they followed up this performance with 5 straight losses. Turns out the CeeDee Pollard stack did not work enough this year (took wayyy too long to get hot).

PP Hurts - Week 13 - Clinching the pancake challenge. Shoutout Max for owning it, not sure 100% of the league would have accepted the punishment so I’m glad it was you. I think they had a half decent draft but rotten injury luck.

glhf everyone

Picks

I finished the regular season 3-3 for 52-32. Just keep pickin the good division. ESPN projections also went 3-3 for 50-34. Shoutout Cody for the 1v1 though I think I still would have won 157-152. I only have to pick 5 more games… Michael Ohers Conservators and ZWC this week.

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