2019 RECAPS: 7TH PLACE — Protector Of The League

Tell Sloan I Said What Up (5-8):

Ending his season in 7th place with a record of 5-8 and 1,568 points for (6th) is Tell Sloan I Said Whatup, owned Dylan Whiting (aka DbD).

What Went Right:

After winning the league in 2018 Dylan got the 1st pick in the draft. That was probably the high point of his season.

Dylan’s 2nd round pick Dalvin Cook was another thing that went right. The former FSU standout is currently RB2 on the season behind Christian McCaffrey. His 323 fantasy points are the 6th most among all players and the 2nd most among FLEX eligible players. He’s totaled 1,600 all-purpose yards through 14 games and has 13 rushing touchdowns. Those 13 rushing TDs have him in a tie for first with Derrick Henry across all RBs and only Christian McCaffrey, Aaron Jones and Derrick Henry have more total TDs than him. Cook totaled 100+ yards or scored a TD in every single regular season game this season (was injured in Week 14 and didn’t get a full workload). His season low was 13.7 points and he scored 20 or more points in 7 of 14 games (15 or more in all but 1). Just an unreal season by a very talented RB.

Dylan went on a tear from Weeks 3-7 of the regular season and won 5 straight games. He averaged 130 points per game during that stretch and had noteworthy wins against 2 playoff teams – Lamone and Keetz. Sadly for him those would be the only 5 games he won all season - but a 5 game winning streak is impressive no matter how you look at it.

What Went Wrong:

We’ll start with his first pick - Saquon Barkley. After lighting the world on fire and breaking out in 2018, Saquon has arguably been the biggest bust of the 2019 season. As it stands, he’s RB21 in our scoring and averages 16.6 points per game. The #1 RB, no, the number one player in the entire draft isn’t even in the top 20 at his own position! I could end there, but let’s pile on…. His yards per rush has dropped a full yard from 5.0 last year to 4.0 this year. His yards per reception have dropped from 7.9 to 7.1. After totaling 15 TDs last year, he has just 3 this year. Not only has his efficiency been down, but his usage has been as well: after getting 352 touches last year (261 rush, 91 receptions), he has just 195 touches this year (154 rush, 41 receptions). A lot of this is probably due to injury - he got hurt early in Week 3 and essentially missed 4 games with injury (seemingly came back early too). Regardless, I don’t think many Saquon owners are happy with him right now.

Sticking with the theme of underperforming RBs… well talk quickly about Leonard Fournette. Fournette hasn’t been bad – he’s RB8 - but he could have been SO much better. Despite getting 235 carries (7th) and 68 catches (tied for 3rd among RBs), he only has 3 TDs on the year. He scored 2 of them in 1 game so he’s pretty much scored 1 TD in 13 games. Really frustrating.

Moving to another position – Dylan never got the TE spot nailed down. He started the year with Vance McDonald and TJ Hockenson which seemed solid at the time. Hockenson broke out in Week 1, but then did NOTHING the rest of the year. Then Big Ben got hurt and McDonald suffered. Dylan picked up Will Dissly at one point which was a great pick-up…. only to watch him get injured. He then cycled between Jason Witten, Dallas Goeddert and Jack Doyle for the rest of the year and barely got any production from the position. Frustrating.

Lot of busts at WR: Brandin Cooks, Stefon Diggs (sometimes), Alshon Jeffery and Curtis Samuel all disappointed.

For the second straight year, Dylan’s opponents scored more against him than he scored against them. While his points against weren’t horrible, he still had the 4th most against. Hard to go anywhere when your point differential is negative. (Even though he somehow won the fucking league last year when it happened. NOTBITTERI’LLGETOVERITSOMEDAY.)

Genius Move:

Josh Allen was a great mid-season pickup by Dyl – added for $14 on October 25. That was right before his week 8 game and since then Allen has been one of the best QBs in fantasy. In the 7 games since then he’s scored 18, 21, 27, 38, 22, 29 and 10 fantasy points – an average of more than 23 points per week. Take out his Week 14 dud (which probably ended quite a few fantasy seasons) and he averaged 26 points per game in the 2nd half of the fantasy season.

Honestly there wasn’t much else – Dyl just didn’t have any late round draft picks or big name free agents who made a difference. It wasn’t for lack of trying as he had the 2nd most acquisition (35), he just didn’t get that one lucky add or late round pick that makes your season.

Dumbo Move:

Going into the year with Jared Goff as his QB. Goff had a big year statistically in 2018, but the total line hid the fact that he was pretty bad during his last 8 games. An average NFL QB has a passer rating in the 85 range – over his last 8 games of 2018, Goff had a rating of 68, 19, 76, 118, 121, 74, 83 and 58. He’s clearly a below average QB and not someone you should bank on in fantasy. This year was bad for QBs and Goff’s bad season was one of the reasons.

Pre-Season Prediction:

“DbD will go 8-5 and unfortunately wins the league again. Starting with the #1 pick is a huge advantage and the rest of the draft went very well for him..”

Eeek, very wrong on that one and that brings me to 50% on these (2 right 2 wrong).

Final Thoughts:

It was a really strange season for teams with the #1 pick. Out of my 4 normal leagues, the team who picked Saquon at #1 only made the playoffs in one of them. 25% playoff success rate if you had the 1st pick… 25%! (And that team lost in the first round.) That’s crazy in my opinion but shows how much of a let-down Saquon and some of the other players drafted at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd rounds were. (Fournette, JuJu, Conner, Thielen, Hilton, Keenan Allen, etc). While it appeared to be the best place to draft going into draft season, it was actually one of the worst.

Ultimately this was just a year of regression for Dyl. Not to be bitter (totally being bitter), but he had no business winning the league last year. He was the 5th seed and wasn’t even top 4 in scoring during the regular season. His team was okay, but he was starting guys like Elijah McGuire in the fantasy championship. If you’re asking “who?” then you’re probably not alone (I’m not with you there because that sonofabitch will haunt my dreams forever). Anyways despite the average-to-above-average-team, he somehow bypassed the juggernaut teams of Kenny, Keetz and myself and won the league. This year was simply regression to the mean – the pendulum of fantasy luck swung the other way and his season was a dud. Now that he’s paid his dues to the fantasy gods and sacrificed his 2019 season, hopefully he can move on. Regardless, he’ll always have the championship on his resume.