Round 2- Playoffs.
Another week, another victim.
Another week, another win.
One more win, and I finally get that illusive fantasy football championship. Though I probably shouldn’t have made it to the championship. I definitely didn’t play this past week perfectly, nor did I have a great season. I finished with the third best record, and despite my two big misplays this past weekend, I got lucky and squeaked out a win. I had a 91 point weekend, but it should have been more like 120. My bench played significantly better than my starters at certain positions. If it weren’t for having two of the best players in fantasy football, I would have been in big trouble. Let’s take a look at how my matchup went.
Cloud 9 (Me, #2 Seed) #3 Seed
QB: Derek Carr- 10 pts QB: Tom Brady- 7 pts
RB: Ezekiel Elliot- 23 pts RB: Lamar Miller- 14 pts
RB: LeSean McCoy- 28 pts RB: LeGarrette Blount- 9 pts
WR: Randall Cobb- 0 pts WR: Odell Beckham Jr.- 12 pts
WR: Sammy Watkins- 1 pt WR: Marvin Jones- 4 pts
TE: Ladarius Green- 7 pts TE: Zach Ertz- 8 pts
FLX: Carlos Hyde- 5 pts FLX: T.Y. Hilton- 4 pts
D/ST: Buffalo- 10 pts D/ST: Detroit- 3 pts
K: Stephen Hauschka- 7 pts K: Matt Prater- 7 pts
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91 pts 68 pts
Bench Bench
Jarvis Landry- 16 pts Denver D/ST- 3 pts
Golden Tate- 12 pts Andrew Luck- 18 pts
Michael Crabtree- 12 pts Gary Barnidge- 3 pts
Dak Prescott- 19 pts Bilal Powell- 15 pts
Minnesota D/ST- (-4 pts) Willie Snead- 7 pts
Eric Ebron- 3 pts Theo Riddick- 0 pts
Alfred Morris- 0 pts Ray Rice- 0 pts
I would like to point out that I managed to score 91 points with a combined 1 point from my two wide receivers, and only a 10 point outing from Derek Carr. The crazier thing is how well my bench players did. Crabtree had been underperforming as of late, but went off for 12 points. All of my benched wide receivers, had top 10 performances. In fact Landry finished as the 4th highest scoring wide receiver of the week. Even Dak Prescott fought through the pressure that was building, and had a great week. If you didn’t know, there were rumors surrounding benching Prescott in favor of Tony Romo. If I would have played an optimized lineup I would have scored 134 points. That would have been a dominating performance. But despite my numerous misplays I pulled off the victory.
10, 14, 17- These were Tom Brady’s worst fantasy weeks this season before this past weekend where he managed to only score 7 fantasy points… My opponent just had underperformances across the board and had no one step up to the plate at all. It was truly unfortunate for my opponent, but it made this week pretty laid back for me.
Now let’s check out the other semifinal match this week.
#1 Seed #4 Seed
QB: Jameis Winston- 9pts QB: Matt Ryan- 19 pts
RB: Devonta Freeman- 30 pts RB: Doug Martin- 4 pts
RB: Thomas Rawls- 3 pts RB: Latavius Murray- 7 pts
WR: Larry Fitzgerald- 3 pts WR: Demaryius Thomas- 9 pts
WR: Mike Evans- 5 pts WR: Kelvin Benjamin- 2 pts
TE: Jordan Reed- 0 pts TE: Jimmy Graham- 3 pts
FLX: Jonathon Stewart- 13 pts FLX: Taylor Gabriel- 12 pts
D/ST: Miami- 21 pts D/ST: Seattle- 11 pts
K: Chandler Catanzaro- 4 pts K: Dan Bailey- 13 pts
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88 pts 80 pts
After seeing this, I have a lot of hope going into the Super Bowl. The number 1 seed looks beatable if it weren’t a lucky 21 points from the Miami defense, he wouldn’t have even made it into the Super Bowl. That being said, there is little chance of Freeman going off for 30 points. The main difference here between his team and my team is that my players who went off for big points, were supposed to go off for big points, they are amazing players with amazing matchups, Freeman has been wildly inconsistent, and is not a good fantasy player in my opinion. I hate big or bust players. Oh and he had 5 players score 5 or fewer points, it’s hard to win consistently when that happens.
The losing team didn’t have a lot going for them. After losing Melvin Gordon and Julio Jones to injury things weren’t looking the best but still came in striking distance of the number one seed in this matchup. Fueled by strong running back play all year, the team was let down when it needed it the most. Murray and Martin should both score 8-12 points most weeks and weren’t able to pull it off. Also, former fantasy superstar Kelvin Benjamin was only able to scrape together 2 points in a rare Carolina win. I didn’t watch the game but I would assume former Panther’s cornerback and arguably the best cornerback in the league, Josh Norman, covered Benjamin all night. In a valiant effort, the 4th seed was able to keep the matchup exciting. There was nothing really telling about the bench for either team, so we won’t cover that for this matchup.
With the super bowl next week, come back and see if I was able to pull off my first fantasy football championship!