2019 RECAPS: 3RD PLACE

HOW’S HOOTERS? KiTTLES? (6-7):

Coming in 3rd place with a regular season record of 6-7 and 1,589.9 points for (4th) is HOW’S HOOTERS? KiTTLES? Owned by Lamone.

What Went Right:

Luma’s favorite player George Kittle was a beast again this year. His third round pick is the #2 TE in fantasy and averages 13.4 points per game. He’s caught 78 passes for 967 yards and has tied his 2018 mark with 5 TDs (oddly enough he’s not a big TD scorer). Things were a little sketchy the first three weeks when he was averaging 8 points per game, but from Week 5 through Week 16 he averaged 15 points per game.

Aside from TE, Lamone’s WRs were the strength of this team. Between Michael Thomas, Julian Edelman and Chris Godwin he has 3 WRs in the top 7 of scoring. One other team has 2 in the top 7, but aside from that no one has even 2 in the top 14 of WR scoring. Those three receivers have combined for 770 fantasy points on 328 catches for 4,112 yards and 24 TDs.

The fact that Lamone even made the playoffs probably should have been the #1 thing here. Why? Two reasons. The first is that he started off the season at 0-5. From 0-5 to playoffs is an insane turnaround and I’m 99% sure we’ve never seen that before. I think Tieg had an 0-4 to playoffs run, but I’d be shocked if anyone ever went 0-5 and made playoffs before. It takes a lot of fortitude to dig yourself out of a hole like that and I tip my cap Luma. The other is that a 6-7 record was even good enough for playoffs this year. In most years a 6-7 team doesn’t make the playoffs, but this was a weird year. Oh well, his points scored was more of a reflection of his team than his record was.

So how did he do it? By winning 6 of his last 8 games of course. This includes a 4 game win streak from Week 6-9 where he averaged 127 points per week and back to back wins in Weeks 11/12 where he averaged 144 per week. The marquee win of his regular season was in Week 12 when he beat Dylan 158.7 to 131.3. That effectively killed Dylan’s season and kept his going.

What Went Wrong:

Speaking of 6-7 records… a lot of that was due to the fact that he had the 2nd most points against (1,649). He was one of two teams to have more than 1,600 and the other team finished 2-11. Things were especially bad at the beginning of the year when his opponents averaged 146 points per week. (4 of 5 weeks were over 140.)

Odell Beckham was another thing that went wrong – the diva of all divas. Lamone’s 2nd round pick isn’t even a top 30 WR and only has 3 TDs on the season. He put up acceptable catch/yardage totals this year (71-954), but the lack of TDs and the bad weeks really killed him. He put up fewer than 10 points in 8 of 16 games and wasn’t even startable by the end of the year.

His semi-finals loss was a rough one. He put up a very respectable 133.7, but still got blown out. The Vikings D was his achilles heel… or reverse trojan horse? Anyways he had dropped them a few weeks prior only to see his semi-finals opponent pick them up and start them against him. They scored 25 points which was a season high - 25 was pretty high for one week considering they’ve only scored 119 total points this season. Aka they scored 1/5 of their points (21%) against Lamone in one game. In the semi finals. Bad luck.

Genius Move:

Austin Ekeler in the 7th round was an awesome pick by Lamone. Despite the fact that Melvin Gordon is a coward and ended his holdout 4 weeks early, Ekeler still produced big numbers and is RB8 this season. He’s accumulated 1,450 yards on 200+ touches and has 11 total TDs. Most of his production has come via receiving (83-950-8), but points are points no matter how you get them.

Alright, now for the elephant in the room. The Michael Thomas trade. This trade was arguably the biggest landslide in the history of football, fantasy football, land or slides. We all know what happened: Lamone acquired Michael Thomas (1st round pick) for Carlos Hyde (free agent) straight up. Now that the fantasy season is over, let’s check the official score board:

Michael Thomas: WR1, 314 fantasy points on the year. He’s 5th highest scoring player among FLEX eligible players and he’s still in the top 15 of scoring when you add QBs in. He has 145 receptions this year (an NFL record) to go along with 1,688 yards and 9 TDs. He needs just 11 more receiving yards to move up to 8th place for receiving yards in a single season and that will happen on the first play of Week 17’s game because the Saints throw him the ball every fucking play and NFL defenses are too stupid to stop it.  

Carlos Hyde: RB15, 204 fantasy points on the year. He’s the 30th highest scoring player among FLEX eligible players and he’s 58th when you add QBs in. He has a respectable 241-1,057 rushing line, but he’s only scored 6 TDs and only has 42 receiving yards all season.

Lamone pulled off the greatest heist of all time.

Dumbo Move:

Not much here, Lamone did a good job throughout the season with his draft, free agency and trades. I guess I’ll say dropping Kenyan Drake on 10/22 was a dumb move. From that date on, Drake had games of 14.2, 8.7, 10.4, 46.5 and 39.7 fantasy points. If Luma had started him in the semis he woulda scored 46 points and he might have won.

Pre-Season Prediction:

“I say Lamone goes 6-7 and misses the playoffs. There are just too many question marks for me to be comfortable with…..Barring some big FA pickup I’m just not sure I see this team making much noise”

Spot on with the record, but wrong with the result. That said I’ll give myself partial credit here – first because I got the record right, but also because that last part about the big FA pickup (Michael Thomas counts even though it was a trade). Also because while Lamone’s bugging me about the $200 I owe him, I’m hangin by a thread...reading don’t kill myself books. 4.5 out of 8 on the predictions.

Final Thoughts:

This was definitely one of the most interesting fantasy seasons I’ve seen a team have in this league. Starts 0-5, makes the most questionable trade of all time, goes on a tear and gets back into it, pulls to 6-6, loses in Week 13 when it was win or go home and…. still makes the playoffs at 6-7. Then goes on to win in the first round, put up a really strong effort in the semis but lose, and finally finishes in 3rd place. All in all it was a good season by Lamone and not only did he win his money back, but he made a $25 return for leading the league in points in Week 12. A solid season overall and a bit of a redemption tour after missing the playoffs in 2018.