Let's not bury the lede, congratulations to TJ on winning his first STG Fantasy Football League Championship!
I knew if TJ won that I wanted to do a specific video celebrating his win, but I am a terrible video/photoshop editor. It's from The Return of the King (specific link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjZY2EfR-f8) and I would have photoshopped TJ's head over Aragorn giving the speech. When he says "Stand, men of the West", I would have put the faces of Tyler, Kyle, and Jordan, as well as people from TJ's team all pulling their swords out. In the opposing army, it would have been Matt, people from his team, and then Brady, Rob, and me in the corner somewhere -- not because we were inherently against TJ, but just because of the theme last week of West vs Blue Bloods. Anyway, unfunny descriptions aside, let's get to the game recap.
Game Recap
Things started on Christmas with Worthy, Schultz, and Tucker for Matt, while TJ only had the Chiefs DST. Worthy was a bright spot for Matt as he saved his best game for the last game of the season. Schultz had a bottom 5 game of his for the season. Tucker was middle of the road by his standards. The Chiefs had their second-best game of the season in the championship, with their best game also happening in the playoffs (when TJ beat Rob by a narrow 3 points). I'm not saying they were the playoff MVP, but they definitely pulled their weight in the postseason.
Thursday saw Matt trot out JSN and Charbonnet to awful and middle-of-the-road results respectively. JSN hadn't scored single digits since week 7, and the only other times he did this season before that were weeks 1 and 3. For someone who was a revelation all year for a 9th round pick, he let down Matt in the biggest week of the year.
Saturday is when the championship trajectory really became clear -- to the point TJ tempted fate and spat in the face of the Fantasy Gods -- but more on that later
Matt had Ja'Marr Chase, who much like the rest of Matt's team, decided to stay in the middle-of-the-road with 19.2 points. Let me be clear, 19.2 is a good week for most people, and for most teams in a given week, they would be happy with their top WR on the week scoring 19.2 points. 19.2 points a game multiplied by 16 games gets you 307.2 points on the season, which would have been the 4th best WR on the year. However, Ja'Marr chase is not most WR -- he was the #1 WR this year and scored 403 points this year (25 points a game), and 85 points better than #2 ARSB. If he had hit his average and scored the 6 extra points, it wouldn't have given Matt the win. It's just that you need your best WR to be at their best in the championship, especially when 1) that WR real-life QB goes off for 4 total TD's [while you have 0], and 2) said real-life QB is playing for the fantasy opposition.
TJ had an outstanding game from Burrow in the finals, as he went for 42.98 points (it was his second best game of his season, less than 1 point from his season high), with 4 total touchdowns, and 0 of them going to Chase, which led to this exchange:
Assuming you have normal eyes and can't zoom in properly, that's just a gif of someone saying 'you jinxed it'. Most members of the fantasy league would try and reverse jinx their opponents, but not Mr. Goodtimes. Thankfully for him, Puka got the memo and put up a top 3 game for his season and actually outscored Ja'Marr Chase.
I don't want to say it was all over from that point, but Matt needed a miracle from his remaining players, and while he needed a total collapse from TJ. There was a brief scare for TJ and a glimmer of hope for Matt when Ford went out early, but Bowers was right down the middle for his season, while JT put up his 2nd best game of the season. Drake London was down the middle as well, but it was his best game in nearly 2 months. On Matt's side, the Eagles DST actually had their 2nd best game of the season, but it wasn't enough to boost him back up after Cook put up a bottom 4 performance for the year, while Goff put up a top 3 game for his year, but was only 'really really good', but not phenomenal on MNF.
In the end, TJ ended up winning by nearly 20 points, and as mentioned last week, is the first person to newly join the champions club since Brady in 2018. He is the first person from the West to win since Tyler in 2013.
Award Season
MVP: Joe Burrow
LVP: Ja'Marr Chase and JSN
End-of-Season Recaps
Interesting Players of Note: Michael Pittman just went back to back in our league. Justin Tucker would have gone back-to-back if Matt had won. Dalton Schultz has lost back-to-back championships. Justin Jefferson had appeared in back-to-back championships before this year, but missed the championship this time around. At least he had an LSU teammate on both rosters this year. Ja'Marr Chase has appeared in 2 of the last 3 championships, and Joe Burrow has appeared (and won) 2 of the last 4 championships. It looks like you have to go all the way back to 2019 to find roster in the championship without an LSU Tiger involved as Fournette appeared in the 2020 game for Trevor.
I'll do some quick awards with some gut feelings and light stat-checking on the best and worst pick from each round of the draft -- although worst will disappear at round 10.
| Best | Worst |
| 1 | Bijan | CMC |
| 2 | Saquon | Mahomes |
| 3 | Evans | McBride |
| 4 | Kamara | Pittman |
| 5 | Kittle | Kincaid |
| 6 | Pollard | Pitts |
| 7 | BTJ | Zamir White |
| 8 | Bowers | Christian Kirk |
| 9 | JSN | Brooks |
| 10 | Rico | |
| 11 | Dobbins | |
| 12 | Mooney | |
| 13 | Goff | |
| 14 | Hubbard | |
| 15 | Mason |
Award Season Recaps
This isn't to say the team was the highest scoring team on the season, or the luckiest team over the whole season, but who won the season-long awards the most times.
Luckiest: Matt won this award in 4 different weeks.
Unluckiest: Tommy and Brady each won this award in 3 different weeks. It makes sense you would win this award so much when you play in the historically toughest division.
Highest: TJ has the most wins at 3, and wins this award. Matt, Jordan, and Trevor all won the award twice this season. Skyler, Tommy, and Rob were the only teams to never win it this year
Lowest: Skyler has the most 'wins' at 4. Tyle, Kyle, and Matt each have 2. In the 0 appearances club are TJ, Jordan, Trevor, and Scott.
Draft of Draft Order Standings - to be picked around Memorial Day
- Kyle
- Tyler
- Skyler
- Scott
- Brandon
- Tommy
- Rob
- Trevor
- Brady
- Jordan
- Matt
- TJ
Thank you all for the season, I look forward to having you as friends again instead of rivals. Congrats again to TJ on the first trophy, and being the first name on the 4th side of the trophy. Only 5 more seasons until we need to attach an extension at the bottom!
