As you may know I play fantasy football every year. Even though this year I haven't been watching any games, I have been playing fantasy football. Usually my teams are mediocre to sad but this year was a totally different story.
This year I ended up winning the entire league. In the past our league has been dominated by two players (our league commissioners) but for the first time in the history of the league someone other than them won. Considering how seriously the members of the league take it, it's a fairly impressive accomplishment to win.
So how did I end up winning? Well for one thing, we have to point out how much dumb luck it takes to win. My team was very lucky this year. I did have a few injuries but none of them were in critical areas. For example I lost RB Chris Thompson and QB Josh McCown but I was able to easily fill in for both. Had it been someone like Larry Fitzgerald or Travis Kelce that got hurt I would have been in serious trouble. I know what it is like to have your team crippled by injuries and even saw it a couple of times this season as well. Not losing anyone critical is pretty much pure luck and not something you can really mitigate. Yes, you make back up plans but if you lose one of your talented players for good it's very hard to make it up.
I also was extremely lucky that our league uses a bye week system for the 1st round of the playoffs. To be fair I earned the 1st seed by having an 11-2 record, but my performance in the 1st round was horrible. My team only scored 94.2 points and would have been beaten by everyone else in the league that I could have gone up against. Everyone else in the playoff bracket could have beaten me that week! The fact that I had that goose egg during a week that it didn't matter at all saved my season. The players in my league are extremely good and it is very rare you aren't punished for that magnitude of a bad performance. It was largely due to losing Josh McCown but even still, I was extremely lucky to survive that week.
Still, I do deserve some credit for my teams success this year. I had a very good draft and I think my draft strategy was sound. This was the 1st year we have used the 2QB format and for the draft I didn't change my strategy that much. Others in the league reached for QB's while I waited until the middle of the draft to get mine. This allowed me to become ridiculously stacked at RB, snagging LeSean McCoy, Melvin Gordan and Mark Ingram in early rounds.
This strategy didn't hurt me much because I still ended up with Kirk Cousins as my starting QB. My other initial QB, Marcus Mariota was a bust but I was able to replace him on waivers with Josh McCown, who ended up being a sleeper breakout before he got hurt. I also managed to snag Travis Kelce who was a huge help, and Larry Fitzgerald who quietly had an amazing season.
I also had some lottery tickets payoff. Anyone who drafted him ended up reaping a windfall from Alvin Kamara. Unlike most people who drafted him he stayed on my bench for much of the year but he was a huge help during the playoffs. Chris Hogan and Chris Thompson would have been solid lottery tickets as well if they hadn't ended up hurt. Thompson especially helped me during the early weeks of the season.
I also made some great waiver pickups this year. Several of my best none-RB positions I managed to pick up on waivers this year. Josh McCown was probably the most obvious but when he went down I managed to replace him with another great QB in Nick Foles. Funny story with that, we have $1000 of fake money to pick players up off of waivers and in the end I had the most left. I wanted to make sure that I picked up Foles in the playoffs so I simply outspent more than the player who had the 2nd most money left to ensure that I got him. I ended up overpaying for him by quite a bit but I still thought that was a fun strategy and it's not like I needed the fake cash. My team would have won both rounds regardless, but I thought that extra little edge was a nice touch.
Picking up the Jaguars D/ST was a coup for me as well. Though they blew it this week against the 49ers, they still ended up with many games with more than 10 points and a few with 20+. For a position that often yields negative points that was a huge win for me. Had I stuck with the Vikings D/ST I would have been ok, especially in the post season, but having the Jaguars probably won me a game or two, which is great for a position I filled via waivers.
It wasn't a perfect season though. I never did seem to find a solution for the WR2 slot. T.Y. Hilton ended up being a huge bust, despite a couple of big games and I probably stuck with him for too long. Chris Hogan was decent before he got hurt but after that I didn't have much, with Rishard Matthews being the best of a bad bunch. Had this been anything other than a blessed year that weakness at WR could have killed my chances but I lucked out and it didn't hurt me much.
Will I play again next year? I don't see why not. I may be pissed at the NFL, but I still enjoy fantasy football and it wouldn't be right of me to not let the rest of the league get a chance to beat me after this season. I don't expect a repeat performance of this year but I do think that I learned a lot this year and should at least be in the hunt for a championship!
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