2020 Season Recaps - 5th Place

5th Place: A Finkle In Time (6-7) – Jon Frader

Coming in 5th place with 1,529 points scored (7th) is Jon Frader.

What Went Right:

Frader took a bit of a risk on Kyler Murray, drafting him in the 5th round ahead of guys like Dak, Watson, Russell Wilson and Josh Allen. The risk was worth the reward. Kyler is QB2 as of this reading and averages 30.5 points per game (1 point behind QB1). The first 10 weeks of his season were outrageous, just look at the point totals: 32, 37, 25, 28, 34, 29, 47, 47 and 35. Damn. He dropped off a bit due to a bum shoulder, but he still has 3800+ passing yards, 26 passing TDs, 800+ rushing yards and 11 rushing TDs with 1 game to remaining. That’s not that far off Lamar Jackson’s MVP season last year.

David Montgomery broke out in a big way this year and stabilized Frader’s RB position. He fell to the 7th round in our draft after a poor rookie season but ended up as RB5 in our scoring this year. He’s totaled 1,400 total yards and 9 TDs, while averaging 19 points per game. The best part is that he really turned it on when it mattered. From Weeks 12-16 he put up 28 or more every.single.week. and averaged 29 points per game in that time frame.

Looking at his game log, Frader did have two gimme wins on his schedule. Ken put up 70 against him in Week 7, while Rob D put up 83 against him in Week 8. When you make playoffs by as slim as a margin as Frader did, wins like that are often the difference.

What Went Wrong:

This….

Need I say more? No, but I will. You’ll notice a trend for most of these bottom-6 teams and that trend is injuries. Frader was no different as he lost his 1st round pick (Saquon), his 2nd round pick (Kittle) and his 3rd round pick (Odell) for large chunks of the year. Tough tough losses to overcome. Saquon was the worst of the bunch – the #2 overall pick scored 15 total fantasy points before tearing his ACL. Odell hurt a little less – Frader’s 4th round pick played 6 games before tearing an ACL of his own. At least he averaged 10 points per game when he did play. Kittle was another painful loss. He was injured in Week 1 and missed Weeks 2/3. He played well in Weeks 4-8, but then missed from Week 9 through Week 15. By the time he was healthy again Frader was out of the playoffs.

While he didn’t have the most points against, or even close to it (7th most), the last 4 weeks of Frader’s season were capital-B Brutal. His opponents combined to score 597 points in those 4 weeks, for an average of nearly 150. That number is skewed a bit by the 200 (wtf) that Keetz scored in Week 12, but my team also put up 158 against him in Round 1 of the playoffs. The other two opponents put up 116 and 122, which are respectable totals. As you can imagine, Frader lost all of those matchups and was bounced from the playoffs in Round 1.

Speaking of the playoff loss – obviously a bad beat. Frader managed to put up 113 points, but duds by Mike Evans (7.1), Deebo Samuel (injured 1.1) and Corey Davis (2.9) killed him.

Preseason Prediction:

“I predict Frader goes 7-6 and loses in the first round of the playoffs.”

Finally back on the board, sheesh. 2 right, 4 wrong.

Final Thoughts:

A solid season from Frader and I have to give him props for making the playoffs despite losing the aforementioned players to injury. Across my 4 leagues I don’t think there was one other team that had Saquon and still made playoffs. So – tip of the cap there. I don’t see how he can get that unlucky two years in a row, so hopefully next year goes more smoothly.

PS: screw you for trying to jynx me in the finals. Jerk.