If Your Goal Was To Miss The Playoffs, The Best Strategy Was To Draft Tom Brady – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 14 Update

What is FGW? Go back to the shadows, I mean Go Back To Week 1.

Short Version – FGW is the likely number of Head-to-Head fantasy football matchups a player has won his team. dFGW is FGW adjusted for ADP.

Tom Brady has spent the last 5 years making fantasy managers question their sanity as they hesitate to draft a 40/41/42/43/44 year old quarterback.

Now, finally, in his Age 45 season, it seems like he’s lost a step.

Depending on your scoring system, Tom Brady has scored about 215.7 Fantasy Points this year. That might not seem that bad – Jared Goff is at 234.2, and he’s been seen as a fairly good this year. The problem is Brady has only had one above-average scoring week (Week 4).

Brady scored an average of 16.6 points per week in his non-bye weeks. Starting fantasy QBs tend to average 21.1 points per week. That means that Brady was dropping your expected win percentage down from 50% to 40% each week you trotted him out there.

This guy kept starting Tom Brady every week.

I’m a Jets fan, so I’ve been waiting for the day Tom Brady diminishes as a threat for decades now. When he “retired” I went back and checked…At the current rate since 2001, the Jets will have as many playoff wins as Brady has today in around the year 2080. The last time the Jets beat Brady was before I got my dog (who’s turning 7 in January), whom also happens to be older and all 3 of my kids.

All my dog wants is to see Brady fail.

Who Won The Week?

  • Christian McCaffrey is the Brock Purdy of RBs right now. Another solid Thursday game means that the psychos that took him over Jonathan Taylor feel vindicated in their trend-bucking enough that they’re probably following their gut and taking Jonathan Taylor first over McCaffrey in 2023.
  • On second thought, Justin Jefferson might be making an argument for #1 overall in 2023. Imagine him with year 2 of Kevin O’Connell.
  • I had a buddy in college claim that the successors to Brady and Belichick in New England would be Kevin O’Connell and Nick Saban. I guess he meant Kevin O’Connell as the coach and Nick Saban’s future grandson Nick IV.
  • Don’t bother Googling Nicholas Saban or you’ll just run into a bunch of AI-written articles.
  • Speaking of AI, I need to consult with some intelligent computers to figure out who the hell to start between Tony Pollard and Nick Chubb this week. Fantasy football can be difficult.
  • If you have Jeff Wilson, probably don’t start him anymore. Fantasy football can be easy.
  • Tee Higgins just made a lot of enemies this week. It’s funny because as far as Bengals receivers go, Tyler Boyd isn’t exactly easy to predict either. Boyd seems to have his random best games when he’s the lowest on the depth chart – while Higgins returns to action after being leveled but leaves games with mysterious hamstring pulls. Fantasy football can be easy if you do the opposite of what makes sense.

Leaderboard Updates

  • Check it out – a huge cliff after the top 12. If not for the fact that Hurts/Mahomes/Jacobs could be had in Round 3 or later, you could say that the top 12 here was the “correct” first round of players.
  • Ja’Marr Chase might crash the party. If he has anything like the fantasy playoffs he had last year, he’ll end the season as a top 10 player.
  • Tony Pollard is now in the top 20 fantasy assets of the year, despite not technically being a starter. When was the last time that happened? Jonathan Stewart in 2009, maybe?
  • DJ Moore decided he has Moore fantasy losses left in the tank. For all that is good in the world, please stop starting him.
  • I’m kind of disappointed that Pitts probably won’t end the season as the LVP. He will always be the LVP in my heart.

Byron-Cobalt.com Exclusives

  • Jared Goff is is looking at lot like the king of the bench for 2022. Not sure everyone has figured out the home/away splits for him.
  • Meanwhile this is a classic week for a player like Christian Watson to burn everyone that starts him.
  • Speaking of home/away splits, Amari Cooper has an interesting one, but his doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do well in Cleveland? Goff at least has a dome.
  • Remember Cooper Kupp? That guy’s awesome. If nobody else emerges, I could see him being a #1 overall pick in some leagues in 2023.

The Full List

  • Another check-in on the best hypothetical draft (that inevitably someone out there had): Justin Jefferson, Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, Breece Hall, Josh Jacobs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Miles Sanders, Tony Pollard, DeAndre Hopkins, Kenneth Walker.
  • And the worst: Najee Harris, Mike Evans, Kyle Pitts, David Montgomery , Diontae Johnson, Tom Brady, Devin Singletary, Darnell Mooney, Drake London, Michael Carter.
  • If you know someone who drafted Harris, Evans, and Pitts, maybe check in on them this holiday season, see how they’re doing. Make sure they’re not referencing black metal lyrics on Facebook. See how many times they’ve re-watched Breaking Bad and maybe discourage Season 5.

Gotta go, it’s time to get the family mentally ready for Saturday AND Sunday of Daddy pensively watching the TV with a 6-month-old staring wide-eyed in the front pack. (Yeah, that’s a referral link, because of course it is). For those of us that will be wide-eyed because we thought were entering the playoffs with a healthy Kyler Murray, just know that we’re all going down in this ship together. It has been a privilege and an honor.

Leave a comment