Season Obituaries - 3rd Place — Protector Of The League

Throwback to circa 2008 - Jay Peak ski trip when Robby D, Dmo and myself were incarcerated.

Zeka-A-Virus (8-5):

Overview:

Coming in 3rd place with a regular season record of 8-5 and a league leading 1,700.2 points scored is the Zeke-A-Virus, owned and managed by Jon Keetz. Keetz took the regular season crown for total points scored and was one game away from finishing the regular season in first place. Despite finishing the regular season as the odds-on favorite to win it all, Keetz lost in the second round and finished in 3rd place.

What Went Right:

A lot went right for Keetz this year, but I’ll go with the most obvious - his first round draft pick. Zeke Elliot was one of the fantasy MVPs this season and finished as a top 5 scorer in all of fantasy. The rookie out of Ohio State finished the regular season with 394.8 fantasy points in our league, which came out to an average of 24.7 per game. Since he didn’t play at all in week 17, you could average that total over 15 games and boost it up to 26.3. When your RB1 gets you 26 points per week that’s the opposite of a bugaboo.

Zeke is going to win the Rookie of the Year and I don’t think anyone who drafted him missed the playoffs. That’s not an exaggeration. I’m in 5 leagues and the person who drafted Zeke made the playoffs in every single one of them. If you know a league where someone drafted him and missed the playoffs, please let me know. That person deserves to be publicly shamed for poor roster management.

To wrap this up, let’s go over his ridiculous stats: He rushed for 1,631 yards and 15 touchdowns this year. He also caught 32 passes for 363 yards and one more TD. Overall he finished just a few yards shy of 2,000 all-purpose yards. In terms of fantasy, his lowest output was 15.7 points and his highest was 47. In 12 separate games, he scored 20+ points. In 8 separate games, he scored more than 25. In 4 separate games, he eclipsed the 30 point mark. Just a dominating season. Thankfully for the rest of us, this is not a keeper league - Zeke is 21 years old and will be 22 in July.

What Went Wrong:

The major thing to point out here is the second round playoff loss Keetz suffered. Keetz didn’t have a bad game, he put up 119.9. In fact, he would have beat 2 of the other 3 playoff teams. That’s not how fantasy works though, it’s all about who you play each week. In typical fantasy football fashion he played the one playoff team that scored more than he did. Just dumb bad luck. Rather than scoring the second most points and making it to the title game, he scored the second most points and ended up losing.

The 119.9 he scored was usually enough to win. Sadly though, it wasn’t even close to what he could have put up. His wide receiver duo of TY Hilton and Mike Evans combined for just 13.9 points. Yes, the 3rd and 6th highest scoring WRs averaged just 7 points between them. Continuing on - his TE Jimmy Graham, who averaged 10 points per game, scored just 3.8. The list keeps going. Broncos D averaged 8 points per game, but scored just 2. Latavius Murray averaged 15, scored just 10 that week. Etc etc etc.

All of that doesn’t matter though, Robby D put up more than 150 in their playoff matchup. That’s just brutal. When your opponent puts up 150, you lose 99% of the time. The only person to ever put up 150 and lose in the playoffs is yours truly, what a surprise.

Best Owner Move:

There are a lot here, but I have to go with Jimmy Graham. Any time you get fantasy production out of your 14th round pick, the Commish will notice. The Virus didn’t just get production, it got the 4th best fantasy TE in the NFL. Coming from someone who struggled with TEs all year that is YUUUUGE. The best part is the way Keetz made the pick. He actually left the draft room and I assumed he was going to auto pick. Not so fast my Redondo Beach friends. Keetz selected Jimmy Graham from the app on his phone while he was out on the deck smoking a dart. Touche, touche.

Graham will end the year with over 900 receiving yards and 6 TDs. He will undoubtedly be drafted 5-8 rounds earlier next year and for that reason, he is the best move Keetz made all year.

Worst Owner Move:

Gonna dip back into the never ending well of information that our draft provides and go with Keetz’ second round pick. Allen Robinson was one of the biggest busts in fantasy this year and Keetz was fortunate enough to take him with the 15th pick in our draft. Five wide receivers were drafted ahead of Allen Robinson. Guess how many wide receivers scored more points than Allen Robinson this year? TWENTY SEVEN. TWENTY SEVEN!!!! And this includes scrubs such as Kelvin Benjamin/Mike Wallace and previously unknowns such as Tyrell Williams/Adam Thielen. BUST.

Robinson did average 10 points per game this year, but it was ugly getting there. In 8 of 16 games, he scored fewer than 10 points. He only scored touchdowns in 6 of 16 games this year and only had 2 games with 100 or more receiving yards. He wasn’t even the best WR on his team, that (dis)honor goes to Marqise Lee. Overall an abysmal season for Robinson owners.

Historical/Pop Culture/Literary Comparison:

Keetz’ historical comparison will be the 2004 United States Men’s Olympic Basketball Team. This was the team that the United States sent to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens (shout out to the Greeks). They were coached by Larry Brown and had high expectations, as all U.S. Olympic basketball teams do. Since 1988 when professional athletes were allowed to play, the US had won the gold in every single Summer Olympics (for basketball). They had blown their opponents out of the water and as a result, every US National team was dubbed “The Dream Team”. Some people argue that the 1992 Olympic Team was the only Dream Team, but a lot of people called every US Team “The Dream Team” up through 2004. This team was not only expected to win the gold, but anything else would be deemed a colossal failure.

Since the US runs the basketball world, all of the players on the team were super-stars. The brightest of the stars, however, were Allen Iverson, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Bron Bron and Tim Duncan. Two of these players – Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson – had won MVP awards. While the team did look good, they were missing a number of pieces. Kevin Garnett and Shaq-Diesel did not play. Vince Carter and Ray Allen did not play. Most importantly, Kobe Bryant did not play as he was up against rape charges. Still, despite missing some of the top talent they had a good team.

What happened in these Olympics, was nothing short of a fiasco. The U.S. lost their first game in group play to Puerto Rico. PUERTO RICO!! The island nation that was made famous by the Little Giants movie:

The same Puerto Rico that is technically a U.S. Territory. The same Puerto Rico that has a population HALF the size of New York City. Yes, that Puerto Rico beat the U.S. Team by 19 points. Yikes. The U.S. team would win their next two games, but lose again in their 4th game to Lithuania. If you can point out Lithuania on a map I will give you 20 dollars. The team did pull it together and make it to the semi-finals, but they lost to Manu Ginobili’s Argentina team. They ultimately won third place, but it is considered to be a huge disappointment. No U.S. team has ever lost 3 games in an Olympics and as I mentioned before, it broke a 12 year Gold Medal streak that the U.S. had.

So, how is this like Keetz? Well, for one, he was the heavy favorite. I’ve mentioned this a lot, but Keetz was supposed to win this league. He had the best team and he was the hottest team when the playoffs started. He has a laundry list of stars on his team and on his bench and I’m still wondering how he didn’t win. This was just like the Olympic team, a team that should have won it all.

The second is that the teams were young. Out of the 12 players on the U.S. roster, 8 of them were aged 24 or younger. Among those 8, six of them were 22 or younger. Meanwhile, they’re playing grizzled vets who play in foreign leagues. This was like Keetz team, they are young. Dak and Zeke are both rookies, while Mike Evans and Allen Robinson are just 23. Latavius Murray is 26 and TY Hilton is “old” at 27. A lot of people think the U.S. team lost because they were inexperienced, which is potentially one reason Keetz’ team lost.

I mentioned this above, but the U.S. team’s first loss was to Puerto Rico. As we all know, Keetz’ first loss in the playoffs was to Robby D. I’ve heard people joke and say Robby D is Mexican or Puerto Rican, so that’s kind of funny. I may be wrong on this, but I think some of Bob D’s other friends from Westford used to call him “Uncle Rico”. I may be imagining that, I don’t know why I can’t get it out of my head.

Keeping with nationalities, the U.S. team followed that loss up with a win over Greece. Whaddya know, Keetz followed his loss to Puerto Rico with a win over the Commish, who is Greek. No respect for the host nation.

Lastly, both teams finished in third place. The U.S. National Team won the Gold Medal, while Keetz got his $100 back. Both teams were severely disappointed by their results, as both were supposed to win. For the U.S., the suffering was over in 4 years. They won the 2008 Olympics and haven’t looked back. Will it take Keetz 4 years to get back to the top? Only time will tell.

Commissioner’s Prediction:

I say that Keetz goes 7-6 on the year, wins his first round playoff matchup but loses in the second round. Ultimately, he’ll finish at either 3rd or 4th in the league. He has a lot of firepower, but I don’t think he’s ever made it past the second round of the playoffs.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Commish was dead on here, raising my grade to a 5 of 8 or 62.5%. Not great, not terrible.

Final Notes:

Really good year for Keetz, he has to be feeling pretty good about his team. At the same time, he has to feel like it was a missed opportunity. Keetz CLEARLY had the best team when the playoffs rolled around and I’m pretty sure I predicted him to win it all in the Holiday Letter I sent out. If nothing else, I said it would be a shock if he didn’t win the title. Guess what, I’m shocked he didn’t win the title. Winning this league is EXTREMELY hard and finishing the year in third place with the best team has to hurt. We’ll see if he can follow up this season with a good appearance next year, but like I said, I can’t help feeling like this was a missed opportunity for him.

Random final note: this was the most success a team has ever had when they name their team after their first round draft pick. A lot of teams – including Ken – named their team after Todd Gurley. We all know how that worked out – not good. Other teams will name their team after a random guy – think FLACCOPiAN TUBES from Lamone, or "Ndamukong Suh Dude" from a guy in my other league. Aside from all that, it’s not too often you see someone name their team after their first round pick. It’s even more rare to see it work out so well. Maybe I’m making that up, but it does seem like Keetz broke an unfavorable trend. Oh well, not important.