GWBL WEEK 6 - FEATURES
GWBL - Week 6 Entertainment - Features
Welcome back for another edition of GWBL entertainment - Week 6. This week we’re going to look at 2 defining features of each team. I stole this idea from Old Balls on Barstool and it goes like this - when the Pats are doing something consistently, week over week to the point where it’s normal he says “this is no longer a bug, it’s a feature”. It’s usually referencing something bad (like turnovers and penalties these last few years), but I think it can go both ways. Good features and bad. Now that we’re 6 weeks in I think we can look at each team and identify the “features”. These are not “bugs” that can be sorted out or changed (barring injury). These are true design features of each team. From best to worst:
Tool Time - Rob D (5-1):
Luck. I don’t know how to plan for this, but Rob D is lucky as hell. He got the first pick in the draft and has the fewest points against (771). He has 130 fewer points against than Lamone and myself, more than 20 per week. He hasn’t even had Jonathan Taylor the last few weeks and he’s still winning. He won 109-105 last week vs Kev. By far Kev’s lowest output of the year. Even in this inflationary scoring environment, his opponents have scored fewer than 120 in 4 of 6 weeks. Must be nice.
Aside from that its Travis Kelce. While Mark Andrews overtook him for TE1 in scoring last year, I think Kelce is still the alpha dog at the position. He’s averaging (AVERAGING) 22.6 points per game which is insane. Somehow this guy fell all the way to the last pick of the 2nd round in our draft. Which is both lucky for Rob D and shows how dumb the rest of us are. Twice. (In fairness I had him in another league and didn’t want to double up. I still suck at fantasy though.)
Jimmy 2 Times and the Mafia Don - Dyl (4-2)
Josh Allen. This dude is making fantasy football and real football so much less fun for me right now. The QB1 and highest scorer in fantasy football averages 35 points per week. He doesn’t have a single week with fewer than 26 points and has 34 or more points in 5 of 6 weeks. The next highest scoring player is Jalen Hurts, who has 33 fewer points on the season. In all likelihood, Allen will still lead the league in fantasy points after his bye this week.
Rookie RBs. Dylan should play dynasty fantasy football or something because he is all about the rookie RBs. Last year it was Javonte Williams and this year its Breece Hall/Kenneth Walker. (He did draft Williams this year too.) Every year it looks like Dylan is weak at RB to start, but then he has good young RBs by the end of the year. Breece Hall and Walker are going to be beasts the rest of the way.
I LOVE KISSIN TDS - Kev (4-2)
The first feature is that our scoring is so unique. The reward for RB volume over efficiency has always been unique to our league, but with the move to full PPR its pretty staggering. Case in point - Christian Mccaffrey. He’s RB4 on the year and averages 23.5 points per game, despite the fact he only has 3 TDs in 6 games and plays on the worst offense in football. By contrast, I have him in a no PPC, half PPR league and he averages 17.6 points per game. It’s all relative I suppose, but I can’t help but feel like I’m getting less than him in that league than Kev is in this league. Get those tiny violins playing for me.
The FLEX depth Kev has is the other feature I’m looking at. His RBs are CMC, Aaron Jones (bust), Josh Jacobs, James Conner and Nyheim Hines. His WRs are Amari Cooper, Chris Godwin, Mike Williams, Tyler Lockett, Robert Woods and Jameson Williams. Kev is going to be a force through the bye weeks with this kind of depth and has the ability to cover up for busts like Aaron Jones.
HILL BILL - DMO (4-2)
As with Kev I’ll start with an RB who is getting a lot of help from our scoring system - this time Najee Harris. Like Mccaffrey, Najee is getting a ton of help in our format. Unlike Mccaffrey, Najee harris is widely accepted as a bust this year. Between the downgrade in QB, bad offensive line and his own poor play, Najee is in the conversation for biggest bust of the year. Back to volume vs quality though - Najee has 81 fantasy points. By my count, 31.6 of those are from touches alone (15 catches 83 carries). That’s nearly 40% of his points! Crazy.
Switching to a positive feature, Tyreek Hill has been an absolute monster this season. He put up 31.7 points in Week 6 and averages 23.5 per game on the season. Many analysts were concerned that Hill would take a step back without Mahomes, but if anything he’s been better without him. His career high in catches, yards and TD are: 111 - 1,479 - 15 (all separate seasons). This year he’s on pace for 141 - 1,986 - 6. The TDs aren’t crazy, but those reception and yardage totals would blow away his previous career highs.
Super Coopers - Keetz (4-2)
Keetz is getting crazy production from Leonard Fournette, who is a top 5 RB in the NFL (at least for fantasy). Every year the fantasy experts underrate him and every year (with TB12) he puts up absurd numbers. Fournette has 4 games with 19+ points and a season high of 38.7. He’s on pace for 90 catches and 1600 total yards. What a beast. He should have been rated as a first round pick but he fell to his ADP at 19 overall. I wonder if his value takes a hit because he burned so many people early in his career. Or because he looked like a fat bastard in the offseason. In any case he’s a key leader of Keetz squad.
The other feature is a league wide feature - holy shit is it hard to make trades in this league. Keetz and I have been dancing around a trade for about 3 weeks now and cannot seem to make any progress. I’m willing to give up Davante Adams, who is a top 8 WR even after his early bye week. He averages 21 points a game and is a complete stud. Even though I’m willing to part with him, Keetz and I just cannot get a deal done. Maybe I’m hoping for too much in return or Keetz knows I’m negotiating from a position of weakness and is strong arming me. (Definitely not blaming Keetz, he’s been fairly reasonable.) Whatever the reason, I just don’t understand how it’s so hard to trade when I’m willing to give up a top 10 player. Sadly unless we make this keeper or dynasty I’m not sure this will change, but it’s an undeniable feature of this league.
