One of the great things about sports is those last-minute, edge-of-your-seat wins. To see a game play out full of drama and to be capped off with a drama-filled win is what keeps us coming back for more.
Week 15 was not like that.
Instead, we had a week filled with inactive players, disappointing performances, and underwhelming scoring that brought an ultimately unsatisfying end to the 2021 season for half of fantasy football fans.
Sunday was like a great movie that had a terrible ending. 
2001: A Space Odyssey – Really ground-breaking film with plenty of iconic scenery and an amazing score still used by Ric Flair, but the ending? I guess we shouldn’t be shocked, it was Stanley Kubrick. It would not be his final film that left a lot to be desired…not by a long shot.
Titanic – The entire film Rose makes a case for being a completely unlikeable person, then, just as we start to sympathize with her, it turns out she simply tosses the necklace into the water. She’d had that thing for like 80 years, it could have set up all her loved ones for life, and she selfishly kept it a secret and throws it away?
The Big Lebowski – I have to be honest here, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever suffered through, and, to this day, I have no clue how it ended. But going by the rest of this abomination, I’m just assuming it totally sucked.
Putting in the time to do something you love can be ruined by just a fraction of the commitment if it comes at the very end. Unfortunately, fantasy football often turns out that way, and Week 15 is going to leave some bitter feelings for quite some time.
It must be (insert anyone else)’s fault
So you made some bad decisions in Week 15? We all did. Despite being the No. 1 scoring team in my division in my longtime home league, I didn’t even get into the playoffs. And I know exactly whose fault it was.
See, my job is to gather predictive data, interpret the most likely outcome, and offer assistance to you fine people. And I take that job very seriously. I should, I’m extremely fortunate to have it.
But when I read comments blaming me, suggesting I should have known ridiculously random plays or that you would be better than me at my job, it gets pretty annoying.
I always feel terrible if I give the wrong advice. You don’t tell me about it. None of us who do this for a living are right all the time. In fact, we’re fortunate if we end a season with a winning record of suggesting which random WR4 will have more yardage than some other guy who wasn’t even drafted four months ago.
We always try out best to think of every possible outcome and suggest the moves we would make in a similar situation.
But when we’re wrong, understand something.
I didn’t log into your fantasy account and hijack your roster to submit all the wrong guys. You did that. Ultimately, the person that hits “submit lineup” is responsible for how things play out, whether you got good advice or not.
That’s the downfall of this gig- you take all the credit when things go as expected, then want to blame somebody else when things go badly- after all, it couldn’t possibly be your fault, right?
We’re all fortunate to be able to expend time or resources on something like fantasy football. The up and down swings are what make it so much fun. Just know I try my best to dispense the proper advice and hate when I miss, especially in a critical playoff week.
Now, can we talk about how Cam Newton can be so bad but somehow enter the afternoon games as the overall QB2?
Where We Were Right
Brandin Cooks was our WR16 in PPR scoring and Cooks came through with a huge game in Jacksonville. Despite the rainy conditions, Cooks accounted for nearly half of Houston’s passing yards, posting a nifty 7/102/2 line to enter Monday as the No. 2 overall wideout.
Despite the lack of volume and Mac Jones‘ struggles on the road, we boosted Hunter Henry up into our top-10 this week due to Indy’s struggles defending tight ends. Henry came through with a pair of scores and a top-3 showing on what was ultimately a big week for the position.
The Baltimore secondary has been decimated by injuries and vulnerable to deep balls, which caused us to boost Marquez Valdes-Scantling into our top-30 this week. MVS exceeded that, hauling in 5-of-7 targets for 98 yards and a score en route to a top-10 fantasy showing.
Carson Wentz was an easy fade this week against the Patriots. Although the Colts managed to get the victory, Wentz only completed five passes and threw for 57 yards. The QB position was so erratic on Sunday that we have to take any small victory that we can.
Where We Were Wrong
Entire teams put up disastrous performances right when we needed them most. While the Steelers, Cardinals, Titans, and Broncos get a lot of blame for no-showing this week, nobody gets more condemnation than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers getting shut out at home. Not only was Tom Brady awful, Leonard Fournette, Mike Evans, and Chris Godwin also got hurt and could miss the rest of the fantasy season. What a s***show that was.
Brandon Aiyuk had really started coming on strong, scoring a touchdown or surpassing 50 receiving yards in five of his previous six outings before meeting up with an underrated Atlanta secondary that held Aiyuk to his lowest output since Week 7. Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins also were ranked similarly and had awful performances.
After being activated from the reserve/COVID list, we thought Myles Gaskin would post solid RB2 numbers against the feeble Jets, so Gaskin was RB25. We were half right, as Miami did, in fact, run all over New York, but it was Duke Johnson who leads all running backs in fantasy points after a 107-yard, two-score showing. Gaskin wasn’t a total loss, posting RB34 numbers yesterday, but we totally whiffed on Duke.
