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It’s finally over. The Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football season for 2019 has ended. Our team called “Swamp Gas” was overwhelmed in the championship game by a 142-107 count.
No excuses in defeat. Our team still exceeded the predicted score, but our opponent simply had a terrific day. You must tip your cap to the victor for a great performance!
The best news to me is that we made the Yahoo! Sports predictions look so bad. Initially forecast to finish 8th in this ten team league, Swamp Gas overcame some crucial injuries to several starters, managed to find some terrific bench players, and then utilized them well to get into the playoffs and, eventually, into the championship game.
So, we won the silver cup for second place in 2019! Not too shabby!
Let’s review our season and give some awards to a few of this year’s team members. First, let’s recognize a few of our star performers in 2019!
- Austin Ekeler (RB – Chargers) – “Overachiever Award” Ekeler started the season as the Chargers’ back-up running back behind Melvin Gordon. Gordon, though, sat out the first few games in a contract dispute, so Ekeler literally took the ball and ran with it! He scored well early in the season and continued to contribute weekly even after returning to his back-up role.
- Drew Brees (QB – Saints) – “Hall-of-Fame Award” Brees was injured in Week 2 and sat-out five games nursing an injured thumb on his throwing hand. Our Hall-of-Famer came back to lead Swamp Gas to consecutive playoff wins and show the leadership our team needed!
- Wil Lutz (Kicker – Saints) – “Mr. Consistency Award” Lutz earned NFL Pro Bowl status by making an amazing 32/36 field goals (nearly 90%) including 3 of 5 from 50 yards or more. Lutz was clutch all season for our team!
- Buffalo Bills (defense) – “Best Value Draft Pick” We grabbed the Buffalo Bills’ defense with our final draft pick. The Buffalo defense is currently ranked #3 in the NFL and had some stellar games for Swamp Gas this season. Let’s go, Buffalo!
- D. J. Chark (WR – Jaguars) – “Best GM Move” This was a tough decision, because of competition with free agent pick-ups A.J. Brown (Titans) and Deebo Samuels (49ers). We had D. J. Chark (a former LSU wide receiver) on our draft radar but opted to wait to see how he performed early in the season. We picked Chark up on Week #2, and he quickly became a starter for us most of this season until an ankle injury slowed him recently. We had many successful pick-ups this season, but D.J. Chark contributed valuable points while our drafted wide receivers were injured!
Now, let’s take a look at a few of our clunkers for this season:
- Adam Thielen (WR – Vikings) Thielen was our third round draft pick and expected to be a significant contributor to our team this season. However, he was injured much of the season with a hamstring pull. He tried to come back too soon and re-injured the same leg! Oops. Thielen also laid a goose egg (zero points) in our championship game this week. All in all, I think he was our biggest disappointment of the season.
- Le’Veon Bell (RB – Jets) Lest we forget, Bell was great with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Then, he sat out all of 2018 in a salary dispute. He received his money with the New York Jets, but he didn’t have an offensive line to block for him in New York! Bell was our second round pick in 2019 and never contributed the amount of points he was predicted to score this season.
- Kerryon Johnson (RB – Lions) Kerryon was also an early round draft pick. He started this season on fire with some great performances and solid point production. Alas, he went down early in the season with a leg injury and was placed on the injured reserve list (out for ten weeks).
- Derrius Guice (RB – Redskins) – We picked Guice (another LSU standout) toward the end of this year’s draft based on the hopes that he had recovered from a leg injury last season. Guice played well for a couple of weeks, and then he suffered a knee injury early in the season. He went on the injured reserve list (ten weeks!) and obviously didn’t live up to expectations this season.
- T. J. Hockenson (TE – Lions) – Hockenson was the Lions’ first round draft pick this season, so we grabbed him late in the fantasy football draft to back-up Jared Cook of the Saints. Hockenson had a fast start (on our bench, alas), but floundered after week 2. He suffered a few injuries and two concussions, too. Hope he heals and is able to play for us next season!
I hope that you enjoyed learning about how we managed our fantasy football team. I wanted to give you the chance to see how we made the weekly decisions to add or drop players and who we should start week-to-week.
It’s always great to finish well, but, as you may have noticed, there is a lot of luck involved, too. Our fantasy football team was fortunate to win a couple of games in 2019 when the scores for both teams were less than 100 points.
Luck was definitely on our side for much of this season!
We now celebrate a second place finish in 2019 and look forward to next summer’s annual Fantasy Football draft!