2020 Season Recaps - 7th Place

7th Place: Covid Dak-cine (6-7) – Ken Peabody

Coming in 7th place with 1,504 points scored (8th) is Covid Dak-cine owned by Ken Peabody.

What Went Right:

I suppose it’s nice when you rank lower in points scored (8th) than you do in the league standings (7th), but that observation doesn’t move the needle much. Then again Ken had the 3rd fewest points against, which moves the needle a little more.

Peabs made some nice draft picks, specifically, Robert Woods in the 4th and Jonathan Taylor in the 5th. Woods is WR11, while Taylor is RB8 on the year. Justin Jefferson in the 12th round was a great pick as well.

I don’t want to spend much time here as I want to devote more of this recap to the next section. Sorry Ken.

What Went Wrong:

Joe Mixon was a bust. Ken’s 2nd round pick hasn’t played since week 6 and is RB44 on the season. Julio Jones was another bust. Ken’s 3rd round pick is WR43 on the season and has missed 6 games with injury.

The Dak Prescott injury was a huge loss for Ken’s team. Dak was on FIRE the first 5 weeks of the season and was arguably the #1 QB in fantasy. He was averaging 34 points per game, which would have made him the #1 QB in our scoring if he played the full season. Sadly for Ken, Dak got injured in Week 5 and missed the rest of the season. Peabs would lose his Week 5 matchup and instead of having the #1 QB in fantasy, had to rely on the waiver wire for his QB going forward. (Cannot believe no one made me a trade offer for Josh Allen, he was sitting on my bench all season.)

Not only did the Dak injury hurt Ken, but it had collateral damage on Ken’s first round pick – Zeke Elliott. During the 5 games that Dak played, Zeke averaged over 23 points a game. In the 9 games Zeke played without Dak, he only averaged 13 points. Zeke nearly scored more points in the 5 games with Dak (117) than he did in the 9 games without Dak (118).

The other thing I wanted to dig into is Ken’s Week 13 matchup vs. Tieg. This was one of “The Taysom Hill Games”, where Tieg used a QB in his TE spot due to an ESPN glitch/fuckup/I don’t know what to call it. Ken lost this matchup by 20.2 while Tieg got 30.55 points out of Taysom hill in his TE spot…… so did Tieg win strictly because of Taysom Hill, thereby ruining Ken’s season and taking his playoff spot? My initial gut reaction says yes, but let’s pump the brakes here.

Tieg didn’t start a WR2 in Week 13 as Curtis Samuel was on a bye. He gambled that Taysom Hill would score enough points to make up for the 0 in his WR2 spot and the gamble played off. (Only fucking Tieg would take that risk. Really Tieg? Really? BTW, we’re putting in a “have to field a full lineup” rule next year.) Anyways for this exercise let’s pretend I took Hill out of Tieg’s TE spot before Week 13. If you assume Tieg would have started someone in that WR2 spot and added a TE off waivers, do you think Tieg would have gotten enough out of those players to still beat Ken?

Looking at it now, I think so. Tieg would have scored 88.35 points without Hill in his TE spot. He would have only needed 10.35 points from the hypothetical WR2/TE combo in order to beat Ken. Tee Higgins scored 8.1 points on Tieg’s bench, so if Tieg started Higgins, he would have only needed 2.3 points from a TE to win. I think it’s fair to say he might have gotten that production off waivers, so final verdict: the Taysom Hill thing did not strictly cause Tieg to beat Ken in Week 13. Instead, it was Ken’s team shitting the bed when it mattered most. (The crusade to justify my title begins….)

Preseason Prediction:

“I predict Ken goes 7-6 and loses in the finals.”

Damn, 1 for 4 so far. Never could have predicted the injuries to Mixon, Julio AND Dak. I was only 1 game off on the record, so I guess it was close.

Final Thoughts:

Like most of our non-playoff teams, there isn’t much to take from this season. Injuries to key contributors killed his season in its tracks and that was all she wrote. One interesting tid-bit – I have to wonder how invested Ken was as he didn’t spend a single dollar of FAAB. He also only made 11 add-drops all year. Hmmmm. That’s very “Guy Ritch on his way out of the league” like, which is concerning. I’ll chalk it up to being a new dad, moving into a new home and a down year in general. Don’t pull a Guy, Ken!