2019 RECAPS: 9TH PLACE
The Skid Row Nightcrawlers (3-10):
Coming in 9th place with a record of 3-10 and 1,459 points for is the Skid Row Nightcrawlers owned by H. Guy Ritch. While Tieg had the trifecta of misery, Guy had the trifecta of misery-adjacent. He had the 2nd worst record, scored the 2nd fewest points and nearly finished as the Gabriel. Despite actually drafting his team, Guy only finished 1 game and 36 points ahead of TieGabriel.
What Went Right:
Guy’s first round pick, Christian McCaffrey. Run CMC is the MVP of the first round, arguably the MVP of fantasy. The third overall pick is the #1 RB in our scoring with 383.4 fantasy points, or 32 per week. Only Lamar Jackson has more points than him (just 13 more) and he’s the MVP of the entire NFL. He’s also a QB so it’s kind of unfair to compare the two. Going down the list, the 3rd highest scoring player in our league (Deshaun Watson) has SIXTY fewer points than McCaffrey. If you only include FLEX eligible players, the next highest scoring player has 80 fewer points (Dalvin Cook). 80!!
McCaffrey currently has 1,167 rushing yards, 75 catches, 644 receiving yards and 16 total TDs. That’s a 16 game pace of 1,400+ rushing yards, 92 receptions, 800 receiving yards and about 20 TDs. Aka one of the best fantasy seasons ever.
What Went Wrong:
Guy’s season got derailed by two major things. The first was injuries and the second was a stat correction.
Guy’s 2nd round pick James Conner has been hurt for much of the year. He’s missed 4 games but has been injured during at least 3 others. It just always seems like he’s missing time or limping off the field. The timing of his injuries also sucked as he missed Weeks 9 and 10, got hurt and scored 3.1 points in Week 11, then missed Weeks 12 and 13.
His 3rd round pick Kerryon Johnson also got hurt. He was averaging 16+ points per week until he went down in Week 7. He was then put on IR and will miss the remainder of the season.
Moving right along to his 4th round pick, TY Hilton. Hilton is WR57 on the year and has missed 5 of 13 possible games. He’s gotten hurt in two others so effectively missed 7 of 13 games.
Overall 3 of his first 4 picks missed substantial time with injuries and that is nearly impossible to overcome.
The other thing that killed him was a stat correction. Guy beat Keetz by about 2 points in their Week 7 matchup. Things weren’t great, but Guy was 3-4 and still in the hunt. A really really really late stat correction came and on Thursday, nearly 3 full days after their matchup ended, Keetz was awarded 3 points and beat Guy by .9 points. Doesn’t get any worse than that.
Genius Move:
Christian Kirk in the 9th round was a solid draft pick. Kirk is only WR35, but that’s because he’s missed 3 games with injury. He averages 12 points per game in weeks he does play which is solid.
Another one – Guy added John Brown for $0 on October 3rd. Brown has become Josh Allen’s #1 WR and is WR17 in our scoring. Over the past 5 weeks he’s put up 10, 10, 32, 11 and 10 points. Not bad for $0 of FAAB and that rhymes.
Dumbo Move:
Drafting Baker Mayfield in the 6th round was a bad move. A lot of people bought into the hype and Baker was severely overdrafted this year. He’s had a few bright spots, but Baker is QB21 on the season and ultimately a bust.
Drafting the Bears D in the 10th round was also a bad move. Fantasy lesson: never over-draft the #1 defense from the year before. With NFL free agency rules and general regression it’s nearly impossible to repeat those types of seasons. It happened 2 years ago with the Jags and this year with the Bears who are currently the #16 defense in fantasy. Number 16. They just scored 4 fantasy points against the Lions 3rd string QB.
Pre-Season Prediction:
“I say Guy finishes 6-7 and misses the playoffs on a points tie-breaker. I like Guy’s team, but I don’t love it.”
Two for two thus far for the Commish.
Final Thoughts:
A pretty rough season for Guy and he’s officially on watch. I’m hoping we can keep him in the league, but he’s openly stated he doesn’t like football and openly questioned whether he wants to be in the league next year. We’ll have to revisit this next summer, but for now this is a season to forget.
