GWBL - 2022 Season Recaps - CHAMPION
Team:
I Love Kissin TDs - Kev (10-4) - 2,275 points (1st of 10)
What Went Right:
This was a season to remember for Kev and he was a title favorite for the title for much of the year. Rob D had him beat in win/loss record for a while there, but there wasn’t much doubt as to which team SHOULD win the league. Fantasy is fickle and the best team doesn’t always win. It’s a fairly rare thing for that to happen actually, especially in this league. I’m happy to say that in 2022 - the right team won.
We can start with the point totals. There’s so much excellence and dominance to unravel, I have to bust out the bullet points:
Kev’s 2,275 are the most points ever scored in the GWBL.
We changed the scoring to full PPR this year, but he still scored 325 more points than the 1,950 that my team put up back in 2018. That was one of the best teams ever assembled (NBD) and it didn’t even win the title - see above. #stillbitter
The 2,275 points were 257 more points than the second highest scoring team this year (Tieg). That could be approximated as two extra weeks worth of points.
The lowest scoring team (Ken) scored 1741. Kev scored 534 more points than that. Unbelievable.
Kev outscored his opponent by 25 or more on 9 separate occasions including playoffs. Of his 12 total wins, 9 of them were blowouts. As coach Bill Yoast once said “RUN IT UP HERMAN!! LEAVE NO DOUBT!!”
Kev finished as the weekly high scorer on 5 separate occasions. No one else had the weekly high score more than twice.
You can spin this a few different ways, but let’s see who did all this damage:
I’ll begin with Patrick Mahomes. Kev’s 5th round pick (seriously?). Mahomes is QB1 and averages 30 points a game. His “worst” game was the 18 point performance he put up in Week 18. He led the NFL with 41 passing TDs and 5,200 passing yards. Justin Herbert was second in yards with 4,700. Almost 500 more than the #2 guy. Josh Allen had the 2nd most passing tds with 35. A ridiculous season for Mahomes.
Christian Mccaffrey also deserves recognition. The 3rd overall pick in our draft finished as RB1 this year with 1,100 rushing yards, 740 receiving yards and 13 total TDs. He averaged 24.7 points per game and really showed up when it mattered most - 38 points in the finals. Mccaffrey burned his owners in 2020/2021, but he finally stayed healthy and reestablished himself as the RB1 in fantasy.
I can’t go any further without mentioning Josh Jacobs, who was arguably the fantasy MVP. Kev’s 6th round pick finished as RB3 an was a monster this year. The experts REALLLLYYYYY botched the preseason analysis here, but that’s a topic for another day. His 1,600 rushing yards led the NFL and he was the only FLEX eligible player to go for 2,000+ total yards this season.
His 3rd and 4th RBs were Aaron Jones and James Conner. Those could have been the RB1 and RB2 on most teams, but they were RB3 and RB4 on Kev’s team. An embarrassment of riches. Jones finished as RB7 while Conner finished as RB19.
Kev found good production from various WRs (Mike Williams, Tyler Lockett, Chris Godwin) and TEs (Goeddert/Higbee), but it was Mahomes and the 4 workhorse RBs that carried his team.
What Went Wrong:
Not gonna waste much time here, but I’ll dig something up..…. He lost a Week 6 matchup to Rob D by 3.4 points. That ended up costing him $50 in the “best record” payout as they had to split. He lost another tough game in Week 8 when he scored 166, but I’m not even sure what a good score is anymore. My team certainly didn’t put up many. Moving on…
Best Owner Move:
Kev did a great job of letting the draft come to him and had some insane value picks when looking back at the draft recap. Mahomes in the 5th round and Josh Jacobs in the 6th were league winning picks. Literally. Godwin in the 7th and Amari Cooper in the 9th were great as well. He bought in on talent and it paid off.
Worst Owner Move:
The trade I made with Kev didn’t work out great for him. Kev gave up Amari Cooper and I gave him Marquise Brown and Geno Smith. I guess I won that trade, not that it mattered for either team.
Preseason Prediction:
I said he’d finish 2nd, losing a heart breaking final. 6 of 10 here, meh.
ESPN said 2 of 10 - ESPN is 8 for 10 and beat me on these. FML
Final Thoughts:
Kev’s misfortunes in this league are well documented. In the 11 GWBL seasons on record* prior to 2022, he only made playoffs 3 times. While he never stooped as low as the Gabriel, the track record hasn’t been ideal. It’s not that Kev’s been a bad owner, he hasn’t. He’s been competitive in most years, sporting records of 6-6, 5-7, 5-8, 6-7, 3-10, 6-7, 5-8, 4-10 in those non-playoff seasons. By my count, he was right on the cusp of playoffs in 6 of those 8 seasons. I think he was the 7 seed - first out of the playoffs - on a number of occasions. If one matchup flipped his way in a given season he’s a playoff team. Sadly for Kev, for the better part of a decade those matchups never flipped his way.
I’ve mentioned this in past writeups, but I have to remind everyone of his 2013 playoff appearance. This was the third year of the modern GWBL and the first time Kev made playoffs. He was famously on the wrong end of the “Justin Tucker game” in this one. That was the Monday night football game where Tucker hit 6 FGs, including a 61 yard game winner. This was back when we followed standard scoring for kickers and Tucker got Dylan somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 points. Kev was up by around 22 and just needed Tucker to, you know, not hit 6 field goals. We all watched in shock as Tucker made a miraculous comeback for Dyl and dashed Kev’s dreams. For more than a decade that was Kev’s luck in the GWBL.
Things turned around 2020 when he then finally made the title game in the covid-2020 season. He’d go on to lose that game to my team (coming off back to back finals losses), but it seemed that Kev had turned a corner. He wasn’t constantly getting boned and maybe he’d gotten the monkey off his back. Two years later, we can officially say that Kev got the monkey off his back.
I’m starting to ramble so I’ll end here with a huge congratulations to the O’Connell organization. As most of us know, fantasy titles are hard to come by. Cherish it, relish it. Put that trophy plate in a place of prominence knowing that you are now among the George W. Bush League Champions. Props to Kev on arguably the most dominant season we’ve ever seen in this league. Well done.
*I think this league technically started at Bryant in 2009, but the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 years are lost to history. I think Kev and Dyl won the titles those two years.
