What Went Wrong? Analyzing my 2014 fantasy football mess of a team
It’s the first day of Week 14 and I’m at a loss. But that’s nothing new after a disappointing and underachieving 2014 campaign. Hell, Eeyore applied to become my team’s mascot.
When it comes to our FOX Sports fantasy football league, my 5-8 record has two bottom lines: failing to stick to my draft strategy of seasons past and ninth round decision making during the draft.
I’ve always focused my attention on obtaining quality running backs in the early rounds of fantasy football drafts. I bucked the trend this year and drafted Calvin Johnson fourth overall in our PPR-league. Hiring a top-tier wide receiver that early didn’t burn me too bad with Alfred Morris joining the roster on the bounce back.
However, when RG3 hit the shelf early on in the season, so did Morris’ consistent production. ALF only averaged 10 fantasy points through the first seven games this season and only has one 100-yard performance on his 2014 resume. Combine that lack of production with Megatron’s two-week decoy role in games four and five followed by three missed games and a BYE and, yeah, my first two investments failed to live up to expectations.
For what it’s worth, if you remove Johnson’s season-high point total (37.6) and season-low (1.7), he’s averaging roughly 16 fantasy points per game or five fantasy points less per game than a season ago (14 games).
A quick rundown of the rest of my top draft picks features Tony Romo (QB14) and Philip Rivers (QB8), which I interchanged as my starting QB based on consistency, health status and matchups throughout the season.
Joique Bell’s RB18 status is deceiving in that his point totals have ebbed and flowed as the Lions’ RB1 when Reggie Bush sat out and my (lack of) confidence that he would warrant RB2 status on any given week in the midst of a RBBC when Bush was healthy. Overall, Bell was the smart play more times than not with seven games of more than 10 fantasy points, but that confidence made more sense in a FLEX role.
Let’s pretend Riley Cooper in the 8th round didn’t happen and Nick Foles and he are shredding secondaries in some alternate universe. Julius Thomas (TE6) made sense in September and first week of October, but over the Broncos past seven games (including two games where's he's been INACTIVE), Thomas is averaging less than seven fantasy points per game.
That brings us to round nine when I drafted Andre Williams like it was some Jedi mind trick when we’ve all learned, when up-right and healthy, Rashad Jennings can run that Giants’ show. I was accurate in targeting a rookie, but the names Sammy Watkins (WR27), Mike Evans (WR13) and Kelvin Benjamin (WR14) all fell to other owners later in the ninth. Russell Wilson (QB7) and DeAndre Hopkins (WR11) also fell off the board in the ninth. I drafted Williams (RB40).
The ninth round will be approached differently in future drafts, but as often as we are deemed “experts” we are not soothsayers and those tea leaves tend to be cloudy with a chance of swift-kick-to-the-balls. As I often tell my fellow owners during our Twitter therapy sessions, in the words of Sean Maguire, “It’s not your fault.”
Click on the link if you are interested in reviewing more about the highs, lows and results of the FOX Sports Fantasy Football League as we head into the first round of the playoffs this week.
