You knew this was coming. I know that you knew. The way you study all of my posts with such interest and enthusiasm, how could you not know? C'mon, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Did you really think I could keep this up forever and not reach this point?
Whether you want to admit it or not, you've always known this day was going to come. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that some of you have been eagerly wishing for it to come. So much so, that you probably had this date circled on your calendars.
Looking back, I'm not sure what's more impressive: the fact that I somehow managed to stick with it for this long, or that you numskulls provided enough fodder for me to write about through the years. I'm certain those of a weaker constitution would have turned in their pens long before now.
Nevertheless, here we are: blog post #100! Can you believe we've reached this milestone? Wow, 100 Commish's posts in the history books!
Wait, what? What did you think I was talking about? Do you seriously think I'd give up the endless and cheap entertainment your weekly follies provide? Really?!
Being that this is such a significant post, I thought I'd change up the model a little. We'll spend a quick minute summing up last week, like we always do, before we examine the current playoff picture. And, once we've finished covering all of the requisite material, we'll get into the good stuff...the crux of this post.
If you'll recall from my Commish's Picks post last week, there were three games that seemed decided before they even began: Chief Sticky Ball at Do Not Panic, Los Perros Locos at NH Bounty Hunters, and Badazz Bri at Golden Tate Warriors.
As was expected, the Balls won handily, scoring 152 points to defeat Do Not Panic by 60. With a starting lineup full of talent and 79 points from their bench this week, it's a wonder how they'll decide who starts and who sits when they reach the playoffs. With so much fantasy goodness available to them, there are bound to be some tough choices.
The other two contests, well...they didn't go quite as we expected.
First, the Perros actually showed up this week. After failing to score more than 100 points in any of their last five games, the Perros put up over 130 points and ended any chance of a postseason appearance for the Bounty Hunters.
There was a moment, however brief, in their matchup where it looked as though Badazz Bri could pull off the unthinkable: defeat the league-leading Golden Tate Warriors.
After the Sunday morning games were complete, the Badazz Bri's defense looked to be doing their part and had managed to hold the Warriors to just 24 points. Leading by 20 points entering into the afternoon matchups, Bri would tack on another 11 points to preserve a 55-51 lead over the Warriors heading into the Sunday night game.
But throughout the Sunday and Monday night games, the Golden Tate Warriors did what good teams do and they found a way to put points on the board while their defense held Bri's three remaining players to just two points. In the end, the Warriors would go on to win 84-57, but it sure felt like a closer game than the final score indicated.
If you were looking for a team to make a statement this week, look no further than Jergoff Passout. In a must-win situation, Passout scored over 170 points against Christian McMingle and made it crystal-clear that they plan to attend the big dance.
In a pivotal matchup with significant playoff implications for more than just the two teams involved, Baby Got Dak's defense once again managed to shut down their opponent, putting them in good position to head to the postseason. Who Is You became the 5th team in the past six weeks to fall short of 100 points against Dak and, with that loss, they're finding that their playoff prospects are rapidly fading.
In the Matchup of the Week, the Thundabuddies derailed the Pork Chop Express, 122-92, to claim the #1 playoff seed in the Cactus division. Something tells me there's a very good chance these two teams will meet up again in a few weeks with much more on the line - like a trip to the Championship game.
Before we get down to the brass tacks of what teams will need to do to make the playoffs, I'd like to take a moment to thank the following for joining us this season: Do Not Panic, Badazz Bri, Christian McMingle, Los Perros Locos, and NH Bounty Hunters. Good luck in the Consolation bracket!
Here are the playoff scenarios for everyone else:
Golden Tate Warriors: The Warriors are in, but they still need to lock down that #1 seed if they want a 1st round bye. A win this week would guarantee that. But a loss would mean they'll need Chief Sticky Balls to lose and they'll need to outscore the Balls by 60 points.
Chief Sticky Balls: Defeating Badazz Bri this week could offer more than just the right to trash-talk. If the Balls can beat Bri, and the Warriors lose to Jergoff Passout, they can lay claim to the #1 playoff seed in the Sagebrush division.
Jergoff Passout: Their big win last week guaranteed them an invite to the postseason. With no opportunity at a #1 seed, they'll begin getting ready to head to either the Warriors or the Balls. With a matchup against Golden Tate Warriors on the slate for the final week, they'll get a little taste of what the playoff competition will be like.
Thundabuddies: For all intents and purposes, last week's win over Pork Chop Express guarantees the Thundabuddies will be the #1 seed in the Cactus division. It would require something of a Festivus miracle for them to not receive the 1st round bye.
Pork Chop Express: Unless the Chops can figure out a way to outscore the Thundabuddies by 151 points this week, they'll have to settle for the #2 seed. But, something tells me they're not complaining at all about a secured postseason reservation.
Baby Got Dak: Dak's win over You last week put them in a good position to make a postseason appearance. There are two paths they can take to punch their ticket: if they defeat Los Perros Locos this week, or if You loses. The easier option is to win this week, but if they fall, they'll be hoping and praying that Who Is You loses as well, else...
Who Is You: The only option left for Who Is You to make it to the playoffs is simple, but not good. First, they need to upset a very talented Thundabuddies team. Secondly, they'll need the Perros to help them out and pull off a spoiler against Baby Got Dak.
Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, I thought it might be fun to take a look back on the season for this 100th post. With just one week remaining in the regular season, it's a good time to reflect and compare the preseason Draft Report Card for the league against the actual results. Were the grades accurate or not, and to what degree? Did your team perform as expected?
Chances are, your answer to that last question is probably closely related to your current standing in the league and whether or not you're heading to the postseason. Analogous to all of those "innocent" people sitting in prison, every single one of you had a playoff team in week 1, right?
Without further delay, here's the original Draft Report Card from the beginning of the season - for those of you didn't print it out - along with some brief notes and observations from yours truly.
The only team that received an "A" for their draft was Chief Sticky Balls. And considering their success throughout the season and their current standing as a playoff team, I'd say those projections were fairly accurate.
The same can be said among the four teams that scored a grade of "B" on the Draft Report Card. Most of them have done well enough to earn themselves a spot in the postseason. If anything, you could make the argument that a few of them (e.g. Golden Tate Warriors) have performed even better than expected, based upon their playoff seeding, and may be worthy of moving up to the "A" group. Conversely, you could also make the argument that Who Is You really belongs down in the "C" group. They started the season like a "B+", but they're finishing the season like a "D-".
We begin to see some discrepancies when digging into the group of teams that received a "C" for their draft. Two teams in particular, Los Perros Locos and Badazz Bri, clearly did not earn their grade. The other two, NH Bounty Hunters and Christian McMingle, did exactly what you'd expect a "C" team to do: finish around the middle of the pack and just miss the playoffs.
When it comes to Pork Chop Express, the only team to score a "D", the projections were undoubtedly wrong. Like Will Hunting, I expected one thing at first but was pleasantly surprised to learn there was much more underneath that I was missing. Hats off to the Chops for proving the critics wrong this season.
You really can't disagree with the "F" that Do Not Panic received for their draft. Of all of the teams in the league, they may have had one of the most challenging seasons, to put it nicely.
However, you can't dispute the fact that Baby Got Dak did not belong in that category. They started the season with a 4-game winning streak and, although the wheels looked like they were starting to come off the bus near the end, they've remained in the playoff conversation for the entire season with an opportunity to make it happen this week. They should have been in the "C+" category, at the very least, and possibly even in the "B" category.
At this point in the post, I can tell that you're not really impressed yet. Oh sure, looking back over the Draft Report Card is cute and fun, but you're sitting there asking: "What about individual players? My team might not be that great, but didn't anyone notice that I snagged Justin Tucker for only $5?!"
Trust me, we all saw you pay $5 or $4 for a kicker who averages 2.8 pts/gm more than the 30th ranked kicker in the league - and, I didn't make that up, it's true.
But, I digress.
You wanna see some analysis of individuals who were drafted? You wanna see where some of the bargains and busts were from this season's draft? You got it!
To keep things relatively simple, I collected some data for the current league-leaders at each of the skilled positions - no D/ST and, especially, no K - and I prepared some tables so you can see who drafted them, for how much, as well as their scoring data.
Additionally, to help put their scoring in context, the last column I included in the tables indicates how well the player has performed against the average weekly score for the top 50 players at that position.
For example, you'll see that Tom Brady's Better/Worse Versus Positional Average is 77.6%. That means that he scores, on average, 77.6% more fantasy points per week than the average QB ranked in the top 50. Conversely, you'll see Kendrick Bourne with a -20.4% in that column, meaning that he scores, on average, 20.4% less per week than the average WR ranked in the top 50.
I chose to add in this metric because it removes the scoring discrepancies caused by injuries and bye weeks. It's a measurement of how good they are against the average player at their position when they're on the field.
One more thing: if you see a (K) next to a player's name, it means they were selected as a keeper in the draft. With a few rare exceptions, I generally stayed away from pointing out whether these players were a "bargain" or a "bust" because, in most cases, their keeper prices skew any kind of genuine analysis. Even if they didn't perform to expectations, they were generally cheap enough to not qualify them as a complete "bust".
Got it? Good! Here we go...
QUARTERBACK
Outside of the QBs that were kept this season, there were a few other bargains that stood out to me. At only $10, Tom Brady is the most obvious name on the list that. But, I'd also propose that at $1 and $2, respectively, Jalen Hurts and Kirk Cousins were wise picks. Just look at some of the more expensive names that they've outperformed this season.
That begs the difficult question: knowing what you do now, would you choose to save approximately $20 and take Cousins instead of Lamar Jackson or Aaron Rodgers? Would you take Hurts instead of Dak Prescott or Kyler Murray and use the savings to beef up other roster positions? Statistically speaking, they've played better, but my guess is "no" to both.
Two picks that didn't quite pan out as expected were Russell Wilson (PCE, $15) and Trevor Lawrence (CM, $8). The injury to Wilson is a large part of that, but he still only managed 12 points over two games after returning. And, if you subtract the first two weeks of the season, he's only averaged about 13.4 pts/gm. To put that into context, that is less than 3 pts/gm more than Zach Wilson (10.6 pts/gm).
Trevor Lawrence was a gamble from the start and, after scoring 27 points in his debut, he looked like me might provide a nice payout. But, when you consider the fact that he followed that up with only one game over 20 points through the next 12 weeks, it becomes clear that he wasn't the lottery ticket some thought he might be.
RUNNING BACK
When you take into account the high prices that RBs typically fetch in the draft, you'd be able to make a good case that Jonathan Taylor, Joe Mixon, and Austin Ekeler all provided great ROI. Here's a thought that you will obsess over until the next draft: assuming you paid $1 more to win each bid, you could've taken all three in the draft and still had $84 left to fill out your roster. We all know you're not getting them for those prices next season, but surely there will be others.
In hindsight, James Conner at $5, Leonard Fournette at $12, and Darrell Henderson at $8 are three backs that appear to have worked out well. Conner and Fournette are both in the top 10 among all RBs, and Henderson is within the top 20 despite missing a pair of games this season.
But, the most obvious player that stands out on this list is Cordarelle Patterson. It's clear that no one saw that coming - he wasn't even drafted. And, similarly, don't you wish you could go back and draft Elijah Mitchell for $1?
I wouldn't be one to call Derrick Henry a bust, but spending $81 and losing him after eight weeks certainly stings. Had he not been injured, it's possible - maybe even likely - that he would be the top-ranked RB at this point.
And the same could be argued for several other RBs. Who can really say that Christian McCaffrey (CM, $65), Saquon Barkley (JP, $61), Clyde Edwards-Helaire (GTW, $40), and Chris Carson (CSB, $35) would've been busts had they not been injured for most, if not all, of the season?
If you were pressed to name the biggest "bust" among the RB crowd on this list, Josh Jacobs (DNP, $42) would probably be a reasonable choice. Granted, he had to deal with some injuries early in the year, but in the ten weeks that he did suit up, he didn't score more than 18 points despite a TD in more weeks than not. Besides, at his price tag, you could've had Taylor, Mixon, or Ekeler instead.
WIDE RECEIVER
Does anyone want to contest the fact that Cooper Kupp, Deebo Samuel, and Ja'Marr Chase were some of the biggest WR bargains from this year's draft? Anyone? Bueller?
With a combined price tag of $39 for all three, would you have still selected Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, or Mike Evans instead? Would you have kept Diggs? I think not. Oh, what could've been.
At $2 each, Mike Williams and Marquise Brown certainly looked like two of the best WR bargains through the early part of the season. Although they have slowed their pace a bit through the back half of the season, I know there are more of you in this league that would like to have them than not.
Not shown on this list, but quickly climbing, is Tee Higgins (CSB, $6). As of this writing, he's sitting at PRK 26, but if you look at his output over the past two weeks, it wouldn't surprise me to find him on here next week...not that I will be doing these lists again next week. I'm just sayin' he'd be on here if I did.
When you consider the average price of a WR on this list is $21, receivers like DK Metcalf, Terry McLaurin and Tyler Lockett don't appear to have lived up to their hype. All three are performing ever-so slightly better than the average top 50 WR. Maybe you consider them to be in the "bust" category, maybe you don't, but you can't deny there are several players on this list that you'd rather have at the same price or lower.
If you want to see a clear-cut group of wide receivers I'd consider to be "busts" this season, you'll need to look beyond this list. I'm positive the owners of A.J. Brown (WIY, $46), Chase Claypool (CSB, $23), Calvin Ridley (TB, $23), Allen Robinson II (WIY, $23), Robert Woods (BGD, $22), Brandon Aiyuk (NHBH, $18), Odell Beckham Jr (PCE, $17), Michael Thomas (CM, $16), and Jarvis Landry (DNP, $14) would all like to speak with the manager about a refund.
TIGHT END
Other than a select few on this list, the TE position is one of the most difficult to predict. It's a volatile position where one or two big games can skew the data far more than other positions. Hence, we see tremendous disparity between the "bargains" and the "busts".
With a scoring output very near that of the gold-standard, Travis Kelce, and at a discounted price of 60% off, it's not a stretch to suggest Mark Andrews was probably the best bargain among this group.
Now that he's been back on the field for a few straight weeks, it's looking more and more likely that Gronkowski can be considered a "bargain". At only $3, does he really have much more to do than just stay on the field? Averaging 11.9 pts/gm in the six weeks he has played, he would most certainly be one of the highest ranked TEs had injuries not kept him on the sidelines for much of the season.
Knowing what we do now, it's intriguing to guess what Dawson Knox, Dallas Goedert, and Dalton Schultz will fetch in next season's draft. Might they go for double-digits, albeit low, or will we see the entire category make a correction and drive TE prices down?
If it's a "bust" you're looking for on this list, you'd have to consider Kyle Pitts and, possibly, Darren Waller.
Waller started the season off on the right foot, with 21 points in the first week. Since then, he's only had one other week with a touchdown catch and an average weekly score of 7.1 pts/gm. At a premium price of $41, I think it's safe to say the expectations where higher than what has been delivered.
And, Pitts? Well, Pitts was supposed to be the next Kelce. With Calvin Ridley gone, there's no one else to throw the ball to in Atlanta. Other than the two weeks surrounding his week 6 bye, Pitts hasn't scored more than 8 points in a single week. If you discount those two 20-point weeks, you're left with a 4.1 pts/gm average and a price tag that clearly wasn't worth it. Sure, there have been spurts of excellence, but he's a more consistent under-performer.
Since his career took off, Kittle has consistently been ranked up there with Kelce in almost any preseason rankings list you can find. And although Kittle exploded this past week for 36 points, he was averaging only 7.8 pts/gm before that. Remember what I said about one good game skewing the data?
But, a single good game isn't the reason you drafted him. If he continues to play like he did last week, then he'll easily be worth his price tag. But if he reverts back to his early season form, well...
There's another "bust" you don't see on this list: Robert Tonyan (CSB, $15). Before Tonyan ended up on IR after week 8, he was only averaging 3.5 pts/gm with a PRK of 33. Including the four games with zero points, he tallied one point, or less, in 63% of the games he suited up for. He was a "bust" before he was injured.
So, there you have it folks: Commish's Blog post #100. Read it, print it out, and put it up on the fridge for the whole family to see. After all, how many other leagues can say that their Commish has written even one blog article about them?
Someday, maybe this will be a paying gig. Meh, onward to #200!
PIGSKIN PICK'EM
Other than a few teams inching a little closer to the leader, Christian McMingle, there wasn't much activity in the Pigskin Pick'Em standings this week. A pair of teams sitting at 10 games out moved to within a single-digit of McMingle, but it's still a long, uphill climb if they're going to catch up.
COMMISH'S PICKS
It only took 13 weeks, but I think I finally hit my stride. Finishing with my best week yet, 5-1, I'm only a few correct picks away from getting back to .500 for the season. Hang on, folks...we're turning this ship around.
Good luck in the final week!
-- Commish
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