This Is the Worst Place
The Good Place is one of my favorite comedies on TV.
If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. Seriously, the first three seasons are on Netflix. It’ll take you like 18 hours tops to get through the whole thing. I’ll wait.
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You didn’t watch it, did you? You are totally not getting into the Good Place with that kind of attitude. It’s okay. I’ll be your Janet and fill you in on the spoiler-free details. (See you’d get that joke if you’d listened to me.) Basically, it’s a show about a group of people who wake up in the afterlife in a heaven-like utopia known as the Good Place only to discover that things aren’t going exactly according to plan.
There’s Kristen Bell who plays Eleanor Shellstrop, Ted Danson who plays Michael—one of the Good Place’s architects—and D’Arcy Carden who absolutely steals the show as a being of artificial intelligence named Janet. (Now you get it.) But this GIF pretty much sums up Eleanor plus the other three main characters.
The reason I bring up the show is because of the guy in the lower-right corner. His name is Jason. Which is kinda spoiler-y because he’s introduced as Jianyu, a Taiwanese monk, but is revealed in Season 1, Episode 4 (see, it’s not that much of a spoiler) to be Jason, a DJ from Jacksonville, Florida who also happens to be an enormous Jaguars fan.
How big a fan? Early in the show, we flash back to a moment from Jason’s life on Earth when he tosses a Molotov cocktail at a rival DJ’s boat and shouts “Bortles!” the way most people would yell “Kobe!” In the clip below from Season 2, Jason pesters Michael for news of his beloved Jaguars back on Earth.
Jason’s love of the Jaguars, and Blake Bortles specifically, continued to be a running joke throughout the series. So much so that they actually had to respond to the results that were happening on the field. When the show started in 2016, the Jags were terrible. They went 3-13 that year. But then remarkably, they actually became kinda good on the strength of their defense. By the time Season 3 rolled around, they had just come off of a 10-6 season in which they won the AFC South and advanced to the AFC Championship Game.
That prompted this scene from Season 3 in which Maya Rudolph, who plays this sort of interdimensional judge, rants about how Michael’s actions on Earth have led to the Jaguars actually becoming good.
Ironically, the Jaguars did not make the playoffs last year. In part because, as the judge alluded to, Blake Bortles was just “kind of okay,” getting benched late in the season for Cody Kessler. And so there was no debate among experts this year as to whether or not he would assume starting duties in Jacksonville. Instead, the Jaguars released Bortles and signed Nick Foles, who in Jaguars fashion then immediately went down with an injury in his very first game.
Enter Gardner Minshew II.
He’s the NFL’s newest folk hero. He’s got the stache, the arm and the stories. And as with any legend, there are many stories. First there’s the name. His grandfather wanted to name him Beowulf, but instead it’s Gardner Minshew II despite the fact that his dad’s name is Flint, not Gardner. In college, he tried to break his own hand with a hammer just so he could get an extra year of eligibility. He’s been known to walk around with a handle of Crown Royal tucked inside the waistband of his jeans. And he likes to stretch in a jockstrap and sometimes completely nude.
If the Jaguars cooked up a QB in a lab, it would probably be Gardner Minshew. And that lab would probably have been a meth lab. He’s Florida Man with a cannon for an arm. There’s no doubt Jason from The Good Place is a fan.
Through four weeks this season, Minshew was QB16, throwing for a respectable 200+ yards and 2 TDs in three out of four weeks with fantasy scores of 17, 15, 17 and 16. His performance was good enough to warrant the attention of Jess who picked him up as a free agent and started him in a Week 4 loss to Alex.
As you’ll recall, Jess’s QB situation was one of our five burning questions after the draft. For a brief moment in time, we thought that answer might be Drew Brees. After the trade of Sammy Watkins and Dante Pettis for Drew Brees in Week 1, Brees was injured the following week and as a result never played a single game for Jess. Back to the drawing board and 16th-round pick Derek Carr who scored just 15 points in Week 3 and was QB22 entering Week 5. Barring a trade, her best option moving forward was probably to troll the waiver wire and stream QBs based on matchups from week to week.
Without a doubt, it was the biggest weakness of a team that doesn’t have very many. Entering Week 5, she was tied for third in the Power Rankings and second in scoring with 104.5 ppg. Much of that scoring came from her backfield where she was getting an unprecedented 52.0 ppg from RBs including David Johnson, Dalvin Cook and Austin Ekeler—all top-11 RBs. In fact, Cook and Ekeler were tied for RB2. And now Melvin Gordon is back.
But at QB, she is getting just 13.3 ppg (through Week 4), which ranks 11th in the league, ahead of only Samantha who has likewise struggled at the position. That would rank 101st out of 108 teams in league history. Only one team has ever made the playoffs averaging that many points or fewer from the QB position. And that team (Terryn, 2013) was objectively the luckiest team of all time.
So this weekend, when JT offered up Carson Wentz (QB5), his eighth-round pick and the seventh QB taken off the board in exchange for undrafted, free agent pickup Gardner Minshew (QB16), the WhatsApp chat nearly exploded. At 12:44 PM ET, this message from JT was the match that lit the fuse.
@Jess I’m mad at you for snagging the Shew. I don’t want to let my memes be dreams. I’ll trade you Wentz for him.
Seven hours and 87 messages later, the league was embroiled in controversy the likes of which we have never seen. And I’m old enough to remember when Jess traded Arian Foster to Trevor for Sidney Rice and Eric Decker. Or that time when I traded Adam Vinatieri to Nick for the Cardinals D/ST. Now that was controversial. Seriously, I think Geoff is still mad at me about that one.
Reactions this time included:
Do it Jess. Do it. —Erik
Hate that. —Alex
Man that trade stinks. —Gray
This trade hurt the integrity of the league. —Josh
Plus this GIF from Samantha, which pretty much summed up the events of the day.
In the words of The Good Place, a lot of people thought the trade was forkin’ bullshirt. So what made it so controversial? Should the trade have been allowed? And what recourse do we have in the future to better handle controversial trades like this one? Let’s take those questions one at a time.
1. Why is this a controversial trade?
Put simply, JT traded a good player for a statistically less-good player at the same position.
So often in fantasy football, it’s hard to decipher who is getting the better end of a deal. Despite the numbers, evaluations are subjective and opinions about players vary. And frequently, the evaluation is made more complicated by the fact that rarely do the players play the same position.
How rare? In over eight years, we’ve had 54 trades in league history (not counting that time Gray swapped picks with Nick in the draft order). Of those 54, just four involved a one-to-one exchange of two players who both play the same position. Those trades were:
2011: Knowshon Moreno, RB (Trevor) for Ben Tate, RB (Brandon)
2014: Shane Vereen, RB (Jess) for Matt Asiata, RB (Gray)
2016: Kenneth Dixon, RB (Greco) for Mike Gillislee, RB (Brandon)
2017: George Kittle, TE (Geoff) for Greg Olsen, TE (Josh)
In the case of Moreno and Tate, it was an exchange of bench depth for a handcuff (Trevor owned Arian Foster). Ditto for Kenneth Dixon and Mike Gillislee, which was a late-season exchange of two handcuffs. Shane Vereen for Matt Asiata was at least a little more interesting with Jess trading her fifth-round pick, who was off to a slow start, for the new starter in Minnesota following a suspension to Adrian Peterson. But at the time of the trade, those two players had been really even (19 points for Vereen vs. 20 for Asiata).
And then lastly there’s Kittle for Olsen, which was a little controversial last year given that, like Carson Wentz, George Kittle was the much better player at the same position. I wrote a whole blog post trying to make sense of it. But the explanation was fairly simple—the schedule. Kittle was on bye that week, Olsen wasn’t, and Geoff couldn’t afford to lose another game. Josh saw an opportunity and pounced.
But in the case of Carson Wentz and Gardner Minshew, there’s no handcuff, no bye week to explain the difference in the caliber of player. Truthfully, it’s hard to argue with the fact that at this point in their careers Carson Wentz is just a much better player. He’s already a proven commodity with a Pro Bowl appearance. And entering Week 5 of this season, Wentz was already a top-5 QB. Minshew wasn’t even top-15, trailing Wentz by 4.0 ppg, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but actually does make a big difference over the course of a season.
And yet despite all the stats, you are certainly entitled to believe that Minshew will have the better season this year than Wentz. He just might. No one can predict the future. After all, Minshew is a former sixth-round pick who usurped the job from an injured starter. Who’s to say he’s not the next Tom Brady?
But what’s not up for debate is the fact that JT sold his star QB for a fraction of the price. That’s what caused the controversy. Not that he traded away Wentz, but that he did it for pennies on the dollar.
As QB5, Wentz could have easily commanded a higher price. Jess, in fact, had already set the price she was willing to pay for a QB when she traded two WRs, including a seventh-round pick for Drew Brees—a QB drafted three rounds later than Wentz. By that math, Wentz might have been worth Tyler Lockett (a fourth-round pick) or possibly Minshew plus a throw-in (think eighth-rounder Curtis Samuel).
Instead, JT traded for him straight up. And he might end up winning the trade. But that doesn’t change the fact that he left money on the table.
So when people say things like this trade “hurt the integrity of the league,” I get what they mean. For team owners that are trying really hard to win the league, it can feel unfair. Why should I try so hard, one might say, if others are just going to give away their best players to my toughest competitors? What’s the point?
And if people stop caring about the league, it stops to matter.
2. Should this trade have been allowed?
First of all, yes. Let me get that out of the way. You know, I’m unabashedly anti-veto. I think trades are good for the league. It encourages activity. No veto means no two-day voting period. And fundamentally, I believe we should trust our league mates to manage their own teams the way they see fit. I’m glad we didn’t put it to a vote Saturday because that would have been unfair to JT and Jess as there’s no protocol for such a vote in our post-veto world.
But second of all, also yes.
Despite everything I said above, JT has a right to trade Carson Wentz for Gardner Minshew if he wants. If he believes Minshew makes his team better, then by all means, trade for Minshew. Did he leave money on the table? I think he did. But it’s not always about money.
After all, the reason we play fantasy football is for fun. And for whatever reason—God love him—JT loves the Glitter Kitties. So it makes sense he’d want to get rid of Carson Wentz (who he rightly points out has a history of injuries) and trade for Gardner Minshew.
This is just how JT plays. I agree with what he said in the chat that this is very on-brand for him. He’s an emotional player. He loves WRs. He drafts defenses early. In fact, this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. Four years ago, he traded away DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews, just days after the draft to Josh because the two Eagles were auto-drafted to him. What can I say? The man hates Eagles.
If you don’t like it, there’s a simple remedy. Take advantage of it. Stock up on Jaguars and Cowboys and turn the screws in the trade. Try to steal Zach Ertz or DeSean Jackson for pennies since you know he probably hates those guys too. Part of winning your league is knowing your league mates. And this is just another case of JT being JT.
So long as he’s sincerely trying to make his team better and fielding the team that he enjoys best (and not just watching the world burn), I’m all for it. And I think that’s the case here.
3. What do we do next time?
Lastly, while I trust all of you implicitly, it’s probably a good idea to have a plan in place for the next time something like this happens, so that we’re not all just shouting at each other in the group chat. Nobody likes that. (Okay, Nick probably likes it. He was noticeably silent in the chat, but I’m sure he was loving it.)
So where’s the line? There has to be a point where your decision to trade for a player because you think it’s “fun” is not fun for everybody else. After all, it’s not fun to play in a game you can’t win. For example, what do we do if next year I trade away Christian McCaffrey for Duke Johnson just because his name is Duke and I’m Jewish? Clearly, that’d be an unfair trade. But right now, we have no recourse to handle such insanity.
I’m open to ideas, but here’s my suggestion—Challenge Flags. It’s like those red challenge flags the coaches throw, but for fantasy. Here’s how it works:
If anyone thinks the deal is shady, they have 24 hours to formally request that the league investigate. (Each team owner gets one of these per year, so use it wisely.) Once the request is received (🚩), the commish puts the decision to a vote of the Competition Committee (cool, a new committee!), which is comprised of last year’s six playoff teams. They have 24 hours from the time of the initial request to deliberate and vote. If there’s a tie, the person who just missed the playoffs breaks it. All votes are public. Majority rules.
The only criteria that should be considered is this—did each team owner make the trade in an honest effort to improve his/her own team?
If the answer is yes, the trade is upheld. The burden of proof is on the person making the complaint to demonstrate collusion has occurred or was done in bad faith. All trades are innocent until proven guilty. Not the other way around. If the Competition Committee votes to overturn the trade, the commish will retroactively adjust rosters and scores as necessary.
Final note: In the event that one or both of the players involved in the trade is on the Competition Committee, he/she will be recused from voting and be replaced by the next best team in the final regular season standings.
I’m open to how we structure this, but just wanted to put a plan out there.
In the end, I see both sides of this one.
JT should have gotten more for Carson Wentz. But it’s his team. And if he loves Gardner Minshew, then he should be allowed to trade away a player he hates for the one he loves. And yes, I have overanalyzed this thing like only Chidi would. (Seriously, go watch the show.)
And so that brings me all the way back around to Jason. He’s one of the best characters on the show. It’s just not The Good Place without Jason. And this wouldn’t be the Worst League without JT. We need players with unorthodox strategies, who zig where others zag and aren’t afraid to mix things up. It’s better for the league. Ultimately, it just makes things more fun.
You may think of JT as a failure. But I don’t. As Jason would say, he’s just “pre-successful.”
Jaguars Rule!!!!
