3. Geoff
Writing these things is not easy, ya know?
Sure, it sounded like a good idea. Make a website for the league, you thought. A permanent home for your myriad fantasy ramblings with more room for long-form content than in the comments of a Facebook page. Maybe I'll create a special draft preview, you thought, with commentary on each owner. It'll be fun.
Spoiler alert: It is not fun.
Okay, it's not exactly a root canal, but shortly after I had poured countless hours into a 3,000-word essay on the prospects of Gray's season—my first entry—I realized I had made a grave error. I had to repeat this process again. And again. And again. One down. Eleven more to go. Oof.
And with each new entry, I realized it was becoming harder to find some unique angle with which to cover the team owner. It was my fear that they would all start to sound the same. That without some narrative, these essays would just start to wash over you like a string of meaningless names and numbers.
My anxiety reached its peak when I got to this very entry. You see, typically I start by surveying a team owner's statistics, looking for anything that pops out or differentiates an owner from the pack. Are they really strong at one position? Or weak? Have they been especially dominant over a certain time period? Or particularly terrible? Do they draft well? Or poorly? Do they get a lot of scoring from free agency? Or trade? Has their team been unlucky? Or extremely lucky? Do they draft players with first names that start with the letter "Q?" I look for anything and everything that might provide an angle. And after four years of doing this and seven years worth of statistics, my spreadsheet is so massive that I have a lot to go on.
But with Geoff, there is no angle. I'm sorry, but Geoff's data is boring. His story is one of mediocrity. It is middling, run-of-the-mill, replacement-level, milquetoast. Over the years, his performance has been perfectly average. He is the Jeff (or Geoff) Fisher of The Worst League—a coach who consistently gets his teams to 8-8 or 7-9. Which is not a bad thing. Jeff Fisher won a lot of games. There are worse coaches. It's just... boring.
Let me show you what I mean.
Imagine an average owner whose statistics perfectly mirror the average performance of a member of The Worst League over the last seven seasons. For his or her career, that owner would be 45-45-1 with a TW% of .500. They would have averaged 86.0 ppg with 76.2% coming from the draft, 19.9% from free agency and 3.9% from trade. Positionally, they would have averaged 17.2 ppg from QB, 23.5 ppg from RB, 22.5 ppg from WR, 6.6 ppg from TE, 7.8 ppg from D/ST and 8.4 ppg from K. Over seven seasons, their average draft position would be 6.5 and they would have made the playoffs approximately 2.3 times.
Now let's look at Geoff. For his career, he is 41-48-2 with a TW% of .489. He has averaged 85.1 ppg with 77.5% coming from the draft, 19.5% from free agency and 3.0% from trade. Positionally, he has averaged 16.3 ppg from QB, 19.8 ppg from RB, 24.8 ppg from WR, 8.7 ppg from TE, 8.0 ppg from D/ST and 7.5 ppg from K. Over seven seasons, his average draft position is 6.6 and he has made the playoffs twice.
Are there differences? Sure. Geoff is slightly below-average in wins, but some of that is due to bad luck, for which he ranks fourth. (For what it's worth, his TW% ranks exactly sixth.) His scoring is also slightly below average, but just barely. And positionally, he does underperform at RB by 3.7 ppg, which he happens to make up for at WR and TE. But almost everything else is DEAD ON!
And it doesn't stop there. His average to below-average tendencies span the gamut. Geoff is a slightly below-average drafter, where he ranks ninth. In terms of league activity, he is the eighth-most active team owner, averaging 0.7 trades per season with 1.0 free agent pickup and 2.9 roster activations per week. (The league average is 1.0, 1.5 and 3.5.) And perhaps most miraculously, he is one of only three owners to have ever finished a season with a record that is exactly .500. He accomplished that feat in 2013, finishing 6-6-1. I mean, you try coming up with something compelling out of that.
And yet, Geoff won a championship in 2016. Yes, he was exactly the sixth of 12 team owners to win a championship. But he won one for chrissakes.
And that's when I realized... his dullness is his story. His mediocrity is his strength. Because for all the average numbers, Geoff is a tribute to the notion that any one of us can emerge from the middle of the pack to take the crown. To hell with Gray and his shiny .664 TW%. Geoff is the triumph of the middle class. Geoff is not a bore. He is a daggum inspiration! Hell, even Jeff Fisher made it to the Super Bowl in 1999. And so if Jeff and Geoff can do it, why not you?
Stepping down from my soapbox for a second, I have to admit that Geoff is not perfectly average. There are some variations from the norm that are worth pointing out.
First of all, while many of Geoff's career numbers closely mirror league averages, his season-by-season numbers tend to fluctuate. So unlike Jeff Fisher, Geoff is not finishing every season 7-6 or 6-7. In fact, in four of seven seasons, he's finished with 4-5 wins. And while he does have one previously mentioned 6-6-1 season, the other two were smashing successes with between 8-9 wins and a playoff appearance, including the aforementioned championship. So yes, it averages out to a middle-of-the-road performance, but there is some variation.
His Power Rankings confirm the notion that Geoff has had three good seasons and four bad ones. In every case, he's either finished in the top-four of the Power Rankings (2011, 2013, 2016) or the bottom-four (2012, 2014, 2015, 2017). The year he went 6-6-1 was actually an above-average season by TW% despite the record. For what it's worth, he was probably robbed of a playoff spot in 2013 by Terryn who was extremely luck that season going 8-5 despite a true record of 40-101-2 and a TW% that ranked 12th in the final Power Rankings.
So yes, Geoff has swung between seasons of good and seasons of bad. Not that anyone really tries in the consolation bracket, but Geoff has three 12th-place finishes and an 11th-place finish in the standings to pair with his first- and third-place finishes. Those aren't exactly "average" finishes.
And because of that fluctuation in the standings, we do see some variation in Geoff's approach that is worth exploring. Specifically, what did Geoff do differently in 2011 and 2016—his two playoff years—than in every other season. Or as we say on Passover, what makes this fantasy season different from all other fantasy seasons?
First off, we can say that to some degree Geoff drafted better in those years than his less successful seasons.
Of course, we don't have VBD data for 2011 since that is before the modern era, but if we extrapolate by looking at his box scores, we notice that many of the high-scoring players were the same guys he drafted. That includes a solid RB trio of Adrian Peterson, Marshawn Lynch, and BenJarvus Green-Ellis and the WR duo of Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. Overall, drafted players accounted for more than 85% of his total scoring that season, which is above average.
Then for 2016, for which we do have VBD, Geoff's draft ranks within the top-20 in the modern era. Specifically, he drafted three RBs in the second, fourth and sixth rounds in Le'Veon Bell, Jeremy Hill and Frank Gore that would go on to finish as top-26 players by VBD. Bell would even finish as the fourth overall player, a steal with the 13th pick. That season, his championship season, he would pair those RBs with name-brand WRs in A.J. Green and T.Y. Hilton. Then top it off with another steal—Andrew Luck in the fifth round, who would finish as a top-40 overall player by VBD. All in all, a great draft.
By comparison, his 2014 and 2015 drafts were terrible. Specifically, in 2015—his worst season—he succeeded in overseeing the worst draft of the modern era, ranking 48th out of 48 total drafts. Nine straight picks to start the draft that underperformed the position at which they were selected and not one top-20 player in the entire draft. We're talking C.J. Anderson, Alfred Morris, Mike Wallace, Marques Colston, Tony Romo and Bishop Sankey. He even struck out at TE, where Geoff normally shines, drafting Owen Daniels.
So yes, bad drafts led to bad seasons. But ironically, Geoff's championship season was not his best draft. That designation belongs to 2017, which currently ranks as the seventh-best draft of the modern era, much of that driven by his selection of Todd Gurley with the 16th pick, who would go on to finish as the top overall player by VBD. And yet, he finished 5-8 with a sub-.500 TW%. In fact, it's the only team with a top-10 draft to post a losing record.
So what happened? It's hard to say, honestly. Some of it was bad luck. Geoff should have won more games than he did. But even still, he underperformed his draft, finishing ninth in the Power Rankings despite the third-best draft last season. He was weak at RB, despite the presence of Tood Gurley. And weak at QB, where he drafted Drew Brees, who had a disappointing season and failed to deliver on his fifth-round price tag. He also traded away Zach Ertz in Week 8, who had his best game in Week 12. Still those 16 extra points wouldn't have made a difference in a week Geoff lost to JT by 35. Ultimately, he relied a little too heavily on a draft that was not quite good enough in a season in which he got fewer points than ever out of free agency.
Ironically, that brings us to our second point of differentiation. In Geoff's successful seasons, he generally gets a greater proportion of his points from the draft than he does in unsuccessful seasons. For example, in 2015—his worst season—he accomplished the rare feat of scoring fewer than 400 total points from players he drafted, the fewest in league history. That total represented just 41% of his total points, also a record low. By comparison, in his good years, Geoff got 85% of his scoring from the draft—more than double.
Finally, the third thing that signals a good season for Geoff is production at RB. Nearly every season, Geoff has above-average production at WR. But in his successful seasons, he gets significantly more points from RB than he does in his down years. In seasons Geoff makes the playoffs, he gets 29.8 ppg from RBs. In seasons he doesn't, it drops to 15.8 ppg.
This year, Geoff will be drafting with the third pick, which I'm sure is a welcome sign for him. It's his second top-3 pick, but just his first since 2011. It's worth noting that Geoff's most successful seasons came when he drafted either 1st (2011) or 12th (2016), so perhaps he likes the turn. This year, he won't have that luxury, but the last time he drafted in this neighborhood—2013 with the 4th pick—he had what amounted to a fairly successful season.
In terms of draft bias, it probably won't surprise you to learn that Geoff has approximately average preferences toward each of the major skill positions. However, he does display a strong preference toward the most boring position—TE. In four of seven seasons, Geoff has been one of the first two team owners to draft a TE, though in recent years he has shown more of a reluctance to use an early pick on the position.
Only Alex has a stronger bias toward TE, but perhaps Geoff has shown to be the most savvy. He's kind of a TE whisperer, having drafted a TE in their breakout season multiple times. There was Jimmy Graham in 2011, back when you could draft him with the 121st pick. (Notably, Geoff drafted Graham four years in a row, twice with his first pick.) Then there was Jordan Cameron in 2013, who he selected as a backup with the 124th pick in what would be his lone Pro Bowl season. Finally, just last year he drafted Zach Ertz in the sixth round with the 88th pick. Ertz, of course, went on to have the first Pro Bowl season of his career and is now considered among the top tier of TEs. Who is Geoff targeting this year? Kyle Rudolph and Jordan Reed are currently going in 2017-Ertz territory by ADP. And sleeper TEs going 120th or later include Tyler Eifert, Charles Clay, Benjamin Watson and O.J. Howard.
As we enter our eighth season, Geoff looks to return to the playoffs after a one-year absence. Normally, the odds aren't good for the average player to make the playoffs. After all, historically only four of 12 teams make the playoffs. But now that the playoffs are expanding to six teams, suddenly things may have gotten interesting.
Maybe it'll be another boring season. Maybe Geoff will win six games and average 86 points.
Or maybe, just maybe, he'll give us something to write home about.
