2019 RECAPS: 6TH PLACE — Protector Of The League

6TH PLACE: Daddy’s Little Gurl (9-4):

Coming in 6th place with a record of 9-4 and 1,627 points for (3rd most) is Daddy’s Little Gurl owned by Ken Peabody.

What Went Right:

Some of my old takes have been exposed this year and for the sake of accountability, I have to admit another one. I was SO SO SO SO SO wrong about Aaron Jones. I don’t want to pull up my exact words and discredit my draft recaps even further, but I remember being concerned about the Packers schedule, his injury history, their offensive line and the fact they would probably be a pass-first team. Wrongooo.

Ken’s 3rd round pick has been a top RB in fantasy all year long and ranks as RB6 through 15 weeks. He’s tied for the league lead with 14 rushing TDs and only McCaffrey has scored more total touchdowns (1 more) than Jones (non-QB). He’s rushed 188 times for over 800 yards and a solid 4.4 YPC average. While he wasn’t thought to be a huge threat in the passing game coming into the season, he’s really developed as a pass catcher and caught 45 passes for 425 yards. He had some brutal weeks (5 games with 8 or fewer points), but he also had some week winners with high scores of 30, 52.5, 42.7, 30 and 34.4 in the first round of the playoffs. Ken may have lost to Lamone in Round 1, but it wasn’t because of Aaron Jones.

I don’t want to discredit Ken’s squad or call him lucky - he had a good team and earned this playoff spot fair and square. He also scored the third most points. That being said he did win quite a few cupcake matchups. If you look at the total points scored by each team, the average team in our league scored 1,508 points this year. Over the course of 13 weeks that’s an average of 121 points per week by each team. So where am I going with this? During 5 of Ken’s 9 wins, his opponents scored 83, 95, 103, 98, 108 and 112 per week. Those figures are significantly lower than the league average and while no wins are “easy” in fantasy football, those weren’t hard fought. (In fairness Ken did have a few big wins when his opponents scored 156, 132 and 150).

What Went Wrong:

Injuries to key pass-catchers definitely hampered Ken’s season. We’ll take them one by one:

Tyreek Hill: 2nd round, 11th overall as the 3rd receiver off the board. After being the #1 WR in football last year, he’s currently ranked as WR27. (Was #36 before this week.) Much of that is due to the fact he essentially missed 6 games with injury out of a possible 14. To make matters worse, he got hurt in the first quarter of 2 of those games, scoring 3.3 in Week 1 and 0 in Week 11 before leaving.

Adam Thielen: Thielen was Ken’s 4th round pick and he’s been even worse than Tyreek. He’s currently outside of the top 55 WRs and has missed 5 of 14 games with injury. In a 6th game he played 7 snaps before leaving and he also got hurt in one game. When it’s all said and done he missed the equivalent of 7 games due to injury and that just sucks. The timing was brutal too since the injury affected him from Weeks 7-14.

Evan Engram: this guy just can’t stay healthy. Ken’s 6th round pick has only played in 8 of a possible 14 games and just today the Giants announced he’d be out for the year. When its all said and done hell rank outside the top 15-20 TEs in our scoring which is brutal for a 6th round pick.

Of course I have to end with his playoff loss: a 119-150 point drubbing at the hands of Lamone. 119 isn’t a bad score by Ken, but as we saw earlier – that’s not even weekly league average. There are a couple of unfortunate occurrences here:

- Courtland Sutton scored 5.9 and Allen Robinson has 20 on Ken’s bench.

- Tyreek Hill only scored 10 (scored 21.5 the following week).

- Lamone had Austin Ekeler go for 35 points which was a season high.

- Speaking of season highs: Lamone had only put up 150+ once before this season.

- Lamone scored 86 in Week 13, then 150 in Week 14. Really bad timing for Ken.

Genius Move:

Dak Prescott in the 14th round was an unreal pick by Ken – touche. Dak is QB3 in our scoring and averages 26 points per week. He’s gone over 4,000 passing yards, is on pace to eclipse 30 TDs and has rushed for 235 yards and 3 more scores. Great pick.

Courtland Sutton was another solid late round pick by Ken – 10th round. The second year player has 1,000 yards receiving and 6 TDs and will definitely be drafted in the first 5 rounds next year. He’s WR17 as of now, but was ranked much higher before Week 14/15 when he put up 5.9 and 9.9 points. Bad QB play has definitely limited him.

Acquiring Allen Robinson was a good move – acquired as part of a larger trade with Lamone. Robinson sucked in 2018 (his first year in Chicago) and wasn’t highly touted during draft prep season. He reminded us all of why he was such a hot commodity a few years ago and is WR12 on the season. He’s accumulated 83 catches for 1,000 yards and 7 TDs.

Dumbo Move:

Ken did a nice job of managing his team so there isn’t much here. I guess I’ll say drafting Aaron Rodgers was a “dumbo move”. Ken took him in the 5th round as the 2nd QB off the board….ahead of Deshaun….when he had already drafted Aaron Jones. Not only was Deshaun a better option but drafting a QB and an RB from the same team isn’t a great strategy IMO. He then traded Rodgers after 2-3 weeks - more or less admitting defeat on the pick. All of that said, Ken had the wherewithal to realize the poor investment and move on (/realize what he had in Dak). Rodgers is only QB10 on the season so he got that right. I think I just turned Ken’s dumbo move into a smart move, which proves that Ken did a good job with his team this year.

Pre-Season Prediction:

“I say Ken goes 7-6 and loses in the first round of the playoffs. I think it’s a competitive team, but not a league winner.”

Didn’t get the record but spot on with the ultimate result so I’ll take it. Shooting 3 for 5 right now.

Final Thoughts:

It was a tough end to an otherwise solid season for Ken. If you go 9-4, you typically get a bye but this was a weird year and we had two teams with better records or more points scored. Instead of getting a free pass to the semis and being in the money, Ken got trounced in the first round and comes away with nothing except 1-2 weekly high scores.

All of that being said - it was a statement year from Ken. He got a ton of shit last year for having someone else drafting his team and this year he proved that he’s more than capable of building a good team on his own (unless Hasudin was there on draft day which is definitely possible - CONSPIRACY!). Anyways while the result wasn’t great, you have to trust the process and ignore the results in these situations.