2022 Playoff Preview
The playoffs this year are wide open.
And not just because the top two teams in the final Power Rankings both missed the playoffs, but because the list of teams playing in the Poop Bowl bracket is a veritable who’s who of former Worst League champions. Literally, the top five winningest team owners in Worst League playoff history are staying home this year—Brandon (12 wins), Gray (8), Greco (7), Jess (6) and Alex (5). And the sixth team owner to miss is Beth Ann, who last year won her first championship in just her third season. All are former champions and together they have a combined playoff record of 40-26 with 33 appearances and 10 championships. Meanwhile, this year’s playoff teams are a combined 10-20 in playoff history with 15 previous appearances and Geoff as the only former champion.
Yes, it’s high time the Hall of Champions got some new blood. And the list of contenders this year are, no doubt, hungry for their taste of playoff glory. Nick and Erik have gone the longest—11 years of league service and counting—without a championship and just three playoff wins between them. Josh and Samantha are arguably the league’s most successful team owners without a championship. Josh is third all-time in career TW% and the only top-six team owner (excluding newbie Chelsie) without a title while Samantha leads the league in playoff rate, making the playoffs 80% of the time. Chelsie is the rookie here, daring to make her mark in a way that no newcomer ever has. And finally, Geoff, while he won a championship, has not won a playoff game since his 2016 run.
But in just a little over two weeks, one from that group—Samantha, Chelsie, Nick, Geoff, Josh or Erik—will wear the crown and have their name etched forever in the Hall of Champions.
Down with the old guard! The new kids are coming for the throne.
Playoff Bracket & Projections
Geoff will take on Josh and Nick will face Erik in the first round of the playoffs.
Thanks to her thrilling Week 14 win over Geoff, (1) Samantha has secured the one seed. She and (2) Chelsie will advance to the semifinals where they will play the winners of (4) Geoff vs. (5) Josh and (3) Nick vs. (6) Erik.
As we do during the regular season, I’ve dropped these six teams into the computer and simulated the playoffs 10,000 times using their TW%. This is the result with the probability of each team advancing throughout the playoffs.
Samantha is the favorite with a 39% chance to take home her first championship.
The Contenders
So let’s break down this year’s contenders one team at a time, starting with the long shots and moving toward the favorites.
6. Erik: 6.1%
8-6, .461 TW%, 108.2 ppg
Erik’s just lucky to be here.
Finishing ninth in the final rankings and scoring, Erik benefitted from a generous schedule that helped him to eight wins. As we noted in the Week 14 Power Rankings, that included four “lucky wins” in which he finished in the bottom half of the league in scoring but won anyway due to an opponent scoring 105 points or less. In fact, Erik played one of only two schedules this year that would have advanced him to the playoffs—his own and Beth Ann’s (with which he would have finished 9-5). Against any other team owner’s schedule, Erik would have won between five and seven games. And that’s not even the luckiest thing to happen to Erik this year who made the playoffs strictly because of Kyler Murray’s flukey Week 14 ACL injury, which cost Beth Ann the six seed.
All that being said, Erik is here. And when the playoffs start, we wipe the records clean. All that matters is what you do from here on out. And Erik has a roster capable of winning it all.
The strength of this team are the RBs. In fact, he has two top-12 RBs in Joe Mixon and Dalvin Cook. Among the other playoff teams, only Nick—who led the league in RB scoring—can also say that. Though both Mixon and Cook have struggled lately, they are immense talents on high-scoring offenses capable of big games. Look no further than Mixon’s 55.1 points in Week 9, the most points from a RB in league history and the third-most all time. Though it was a brief stretch, Mixon kickstarted a strong four-week run for Erik from Weeks 9-12 in which he ranked third in TW% (.636). And the good news? Mixon is back and healthy. If he and Cook can play at that level, perhaps they and Justin Herbert (21.5 ppg over the last four weeks) can carry this team.
The problem lies with the the pass-catchers, which are the weakness of this team. For the season, Erik ranked 10th in WR scoring with 32.8 ppg (league average was 37.1) and was ninth in receptions with 21.8 per game (league average was 23.5). Only Alex and Jess, this season’s Poop Bowl favorites, were worse. To add injury to insult, Tee Higgins (WR16) is dealing with a hamstring issue and is questionable for Week 15 after unexpectedly playing just one snap in Week 14. (That makes for a very tricky roster decision in the quarterfinals.) If there is a silver lining, it’s that DeVonta Smith (WR19) and JuJu Smith-Schuster are on good offenses and playing well (19.3 ppg and 14.5 ppg, respectively over the last two weeks).
And maybe, just maybe, Darren Waller can return to bolster the league’s third-worst team in TE scoring. After all, Erik’s real decline in production really started after the Waller injury. Before the Waller injury (Weeks 1-4), Erik was a respectable fifth in the Power Rankings. Since? He’s 10th. The official word is that Waller has been designated to return from IR, but it’s still unclear if he will be activated. For Erik’s sake, you hope he will be.
A lot depends on the health of Higgins and Waller, but I think this team has more than enough talent to make a deep run in this year’s playoffs. As the six seed, Erik will face off against Nick and eventually Chelsie. That’s a tough road. But Erik has faced similar odds and come out on top, considering he started the season 2-4 with just a 9% chance to make the playoffs. Now, the computer says he has a 6.1% chance to win it all.
It’s been a long time since Erik won a playoff game—the longest drought for any team owner. Erik’s last and only playoff win was against JT in the consolation game in 2012. That was nearly 10 years ago. But perhaps Erik has a little bit more luck up his sleeve.
5. Josh: 7.1%
8-6, .481 TW%, 111.3 ppg
Josh was not supposed to be here.
Here’s what we wrote in our draft observations:
Is this the team that will return Josh to the playoffs and finally take him to the promised land? I guess it depends on how you feel about Javonte Williams and Cam Akers. Selected in the second and third round of this year’s draft, Williams and Akers are two talented, young RBs who find themselves in committees of sorts. … They’re both tantalizing prospects with immense talent. But will the opportunity be there?
It turns out the answer was no, but not necessarily for the reasons we expected. Akers spent most of the season in Sean McVay’s dog house. Josh dropped him back in Week 10 after just one game of double-digit scoring. And Williams, while promising early, suffered a torn ACL in Week 4. Down his top two RBs with disappointing years for mid-round picks Darnell Mooney and Hunter Renfrow (neither of which rank in the top-50 at WR), Josh coasted initially based purely on Justin Jefferson and the early-season brilliance of Lamar Jackson (34.1 ppg through the first three weeks).
But after starting 3-0, the Javonte Williams injury sent Josh into a spiral. Over the next five weeks, he went 1-4 with a TW% (.236) and scoring average (93.9 ppg) that ranked dead last in the league. Despite his 4-4 record near the midpoint of the season, he ranked ninth in the Week 8 Power Rankings with just a 22% chance of making the playoffs.
If that trend had been allowed to continue, Josh would almost certainly be battling it out in the Poop Bowl bracket right about now. But Josh is not one to stand pat. In fact, no playoff team got more of his scoring from sources outside the draft than Josh who cobbled together 19.9% from free agency (notably Geno Smith and Zay Jones) and another 10% from trades (Josh Jacobs and Justin Fields). If we had given end-of-season awards, Josh would have gotten the honor for best trade, swapping Lamar Jackson for Josh Jacobs. Since that Week 11 deal, Jacobs has scored 107.7 points. Jackson? Just 39.86 and has been sidelined since a PCL sprain in Week 13.
Even without that injury to Jackson, it’s been a season-saver for Josh who now finds himself with two top-20 RBs (Jacobs and Kenneth Walker) despite striking out on Williams and Akers. In fact, since the deal for Jacobs, Josh has two runner-up finishes for the weekly prize and ranks third in scoring among playoff teams with 116.7 ppg. It was that strong finish that helped him to overcome the league’s most difficult end-of-season schedule with games against Gray, Geoff, Samantha, Brandon and Nick—all team owners who finished in the top half of the final Power Rankings. With his season on the line, Josh went 3-2 against that gauntlet, winning just enough games to squeak by and get into the playoffs.
And now that he’s here, it’s a whole new ballgame for Josh. I don’t think there’s any playoff team that has more players on their roster that can single-handedly win you a week than Josh has. In Fields, Jacobs and Jefferson, Josh is the only team owner with three top-five players at their position who have also led all of fantasy football in scoring in a single week this season. Fields did it in Week 10 (39.38 points), Jacobs in Week 12 (48.3 points) and Jefferson in Week 1 (39.4 points). This team can go absolutely NUCLEAR at any moment.
The problem is the depth. After that trio, it gets a little dicey. Kenneth Walker, while he looked strong immediately after taking over for Rashaad Penny, averaging 22.0 ppg in his first four games as the starter in Seattle, has averaged just 11.2 ppg in the three games since with an ankle injury mixed in. As for the rest of the roster, there’s no other top-25 WR (or TE for that matter) on the roster to fill three spots. Since the Zach Ertz injury and trading away Jakobi Meyers, it makes for a bit of an adventure at WR2, flex and TE.
Matched up against Geoff in the quarterfinals, a team owner who beat Josh by just 0.52 points in Week 11, Josh will be looking for revenge. From there, it’s a potential matchup with Samantha in the semifinals, against whom he secured his only playoff victory in 2019. And beyond? The championship awaits. As we noted up top, Josh is the best team owner (by career TW%) to have never won a title. If he’s able to do it this year, it would be especially impressive considering all that he’s overcome to get here. Back in the playoffs for the first time since his 2019 run to the championship game, the computer says Josh has just a 7.1% chance to seal the deal this time. But I’d count Josh out at your own peril.
4. Geoff: 9.9%
8-6, .526 TW%, 116.6 ppg
Geoff has back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in his career. But this year, it’s a completely different story from last season. You might recall that in 2021, Geoff coasted to a 9-2 record and a first-round bye before fading down the stretch, losing his final five games in a row while performing as one of the worst teams in the league. From our season preview:
Tied for the most wins in his career, Geoff rocketed to 9-2 and clinched the league’s first playoff spot with weeks to spare. Through the first 11 games, Geoff ranked third in TW% (.620) and scoring (125.4 ppg)…. But then the last three weeks happened. Inexplicably, Geoff’s team fell off a cliff. From Weeks 12-14, Geoff ranked last in TW% (.030) and scoring (72.4 ppg)…. In the end, he was unable to recapture his early-season magic and ultimately lost by 25 points to Alex in the semifinals and by nearly 30 to Nick in the consolation game.
But this year, Geoff finished strong after a 4-5 start. Weathering mid-season injuries to Dak Prescott, James Conner and Amon-Ra St. Brown, he won four of his last five games. Over the final three weeks of the regular season, Geoff ranked second in TW% (.818) and was first in scoring (140.5 ppg). Despite a disappointing 0.32-point Week 14 loss to Samantha that would have given him a first-round bye, Geoff has positioned himself as a solid contender and—unlike Josh and Erik—ranks among the top-six teams in the final Power Rankings with a season-long TW% above .500.
That being said, no team has been more volatile this year than Geoff’s. The winner of three weekly prizes, tied for the second-most this year, Geoff has as many games of 140+ points (three) as he does of 90 or less (also three). In fact, of the top-10 highest- and lowest-scoring games this season, Geoff is the only team owner with multiple appearances on both lists. This Jekyll and Hyde fantasy dichotomy was perhaps best illustrated in the first two weeks of the season when Geoff scored just 80.06 points in Week 1, a league-low, but then followed it up with 163.38 points in Week 2, a league-high. That poor Week 1 performance is why Geoff changed his team name to “Just hope we can win a game.”
But Geoff did win a game. And then seven more. Yes, two were by the narrowest of margins—wins against Nick (0.58 points) and Josh (0.52 points). But this is a team that can definitely make noise in the playoffs. That’s largely thanks to the pass-catchers. In fact, Geoff ranks second in WR scoring (45.4 ppg) and led the league by a wide margin in receptions (30.1 per game). In fact, the difference between Geoff and the second-place team in receptions (Gray) is even larger than the difference between Gray and the ninth-place team in receptions (Erik). That’s a wide gap. And in the three-year PPR era, no team has averaged more receptions per game than Geoff has this year. The next-closest is Beth Ann’s team from last year, which averaged 28.9 per game en route to a championship.
A big reason for Geoff’s success is not just his trio of top-12 WRs (Amon-Ra St. Brown, CeeDee Lamb and DK Metcalf)—the only team owner with three WR1s—but also RB1 Austin Ekeler who’s been averaging 7.2 receptions per game all by himself. Now, with James Conner and David Njoku healthy (18.6 and 12.2 ppg since returning), the biggest weakness on this team is QB where Geoff ranks 11th on the season with just 13.4 ppg. But if Dak Prescott can play like he has in years past, Geoff will be hard to beat.
If Geoff can avoid the duds that have plagued him all year long, he has a good shot to become just the third team owner in league history to become a multi-year champion. The competition is strong and the road is tough, but the computer gives him a 9.9% chance. Peaking at just the right time, Geoff is hoping for a better end to the season this time around.
3. Nick: 14.7%
8-6, .565 TW%, 119.1 ppg
One year after putting together a dominant team that spent nine weeks on top of the Power Rankings, Nick proved that 2021 was no fluke. Though he didn’t get back to the top spot this year, he spent most of the season in the top four of the rankings, reaching as high as second.
It wasn’t always easy. Nick started the year 1-4 with three “unlucky losses” in which he finished in the top half of the league in scoring but lost anyway. One of those was to Geoff in Week 5 by just 0.58 points. That slow start led Nick to put Saquon Barkley, the surprise early-season RB1, on the block in the group text. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. Or maybe, Nick just couldn’t find a buyer willing to pay his notoriously high price.
Either way, those threats must have lit a fire under Barkley and the rest of his team. Because after starting 1-4, Nick reeled off five straight wins and seven of his next eight to clinch a spot in the playoffs. In fact, until Week 14’s dud, Nick was the only team owner to score 100+ points in every game this season.
Like Nick’s team last year, its strength lies in its RBs. This year, Nick led all team owners in RB scoring with 38.5 ppg. Selected ninth overall, Barkley was picked 18.9 spots ahead of his ADP on draft day. But that proved to be a shrewd selection as Barkley finished the regular season as RB5. But it was the mid-to-late round picks of Travis Etienne (fourth round), Rhamondre Stevenson (eighth round) and Rachaad White (10th round) that proved especially prescient. They finished the regular season as RB19, RB9 and RB35 (but with 14.5 ppg since usurping Fournette), respectively. Despite reaching in the draft more than any other team owner besides Gray, Nick nailed his RB picks. Only Greco, before she traded away Josh Jacobs, had as many quality RBs.
With Joe Burrow (QB4) and Stefon Diggs (WR4) to complement his ground game, Nick’s only weaknesses this season have been at WR2 and TE. Despite nailing those RBs, Nick’s pass-catchers after Diggs were Kyle Pitts (TE26), Allen Robinson (WR66), Skyy Moore (WR123), Rondale Moore (WR64) and KJ Hamler (WR133). In short, not good. You could argue Pitts, taken 33rd overall, was one of the year’s biggest busts. For the season, Nick ranked dead last in TE scoring with just 5.6 ppg despite spending a third-round pick on the position. Currently, his best options at WR2 and TE were plucked off the waiver wire—Donovan Peoples-Jones (WR31) and Cole Kmet (TE12).
But all else being equal, I think Nick would be my pick to win it all. Of the playoff teams, he has the roster I’d want to go to war with. The only problem? This team is not playing its best right now. And it’s not just the season-low 63.46 points he scored in Week 14—the second-lowest score in the league this season. It’s that Rhamondre Stevenson is not fully healthy with an ankle injury he sustained in Week 14. And though they’ve been good for the balance of the season, Saquon Barkley and Travis Etienne have looked shaky recently, averaging just 11.7 and 5.4 ppg over their last four games, down a combined 11.8 points from their season-long averages. He needs that trio of RBs to carry his team otherwise he’s vulnerable to an upset.
Last year, Nick came oh-so-close to his first championship, losing to Beth Ann in the semifinals with an injury-depleted squad before crushing Geoff in the consolation game to finish third. This year, with the second-best team of his career and the second-highest ranked playoff team in the final Power Rankings, he has a chance to do what last year’s team couldn’t, and that’s win the whole thing.
2. Chelsie: 23.2%
9-5, .545 TW%, 118.9 ppg
Now that’s how you make an introduction!
In her rookie season, Chelsie certainly made a statement. With 148.3 points scored in Week 1, she won the first weekly prize of the year before rifling off eight wins in just her first nine games, essentially clinching her spot in the playoffs with five weeks to spare. Though she benefitted from three “lucky wins” (games in which she finished in the bottom half of the league in scoring but won anyway), tied for second-most in the league this year, she still finished fifth in the final Power Rankings and fifth in scoring and was more-than-deserving of a playoff spot.
A team led by its pass-catchers, Chelsie finished the regular season ranked first in WR scoring with 46.3 ppg. Yes, ahead even of Geoff and his three WR1s. In A.J. Brown (WR5), Jaylen Waddle (WR11) and DeAndre Hopkins (WR33 but WR7 in points per game), Chelsie has what I would consider to be the best group of WRs in the league. Waddle, as a sixth-round pick, and Hopkins in the 10th, were both steals as Chelsie’s team was built through the draft. In fact, no playoff team got a higher percentage of its scoring from players acquired through the draft than Chelsie with 91.2%.
Of course, Chelsie’s greatest source of consternation this year has been the play of her RBs. Najee Harris—taken 10th overall but WR17—has been a disappointment. And because Chelsie only drafted one starting RB, opting instead for backups who never quite popped like AJ Dillon, Kareem Hunt, Michael Carter and Kenneth Gainwell, her depth at that position has been seriously tested. For the year, she ranked 12th in RB scoring with just 22.2 ppg. That’s last by a mile, considering the 11th-place team owner (Gray) averaged 27.8 ppg and league average was 32.4 ppg, more than 10 points higher.
But if there’s a saving grace for Chelsie, beyond the pass-catchers, including the potential return of Dallas Goedert (TE9), and, of course, Patrick Mahomes (QB2), it’s her Week 11 trade of Justin Fields for Devin Singletary. Certainly, it’s not the haul (Josh Jacobs) that Josh got less than a day later for Lamar Jackson, but Singletary is a viable starter (RB22).
Thanks to her league-leading nine wins, the most by a newcomer since Josh went 9-3 in his debut season in 2014, Chelsie is the lucky recipient of a first-round bye and will advance to the semifinals where she will face the winner of Geoff vs. Josh. The computer gives her a 52% chance to win that game and then a 23.2% chance to win the whole thing. If she does, it would be a remarkable achievement, considering no team owner, outside of Brandon in the league’s inaugural season, has ever won the championship in their first season. Good luck, Chelsie. 😉
1. Samantha: 39.1%
9-5, .643 TW%, 120.8 ppg
Finally, we reach the top overall seed—Samantha.
With Brandon and Gray missing the playoffs, Samantha is not only the one seed, she’s the highest-ranked playoff team in the final Power Rankings. Finishing third for the second year in a row, this is arguably the best year of Samantha’s career in which she set career marks in wins (nine) and TW% (.643).
Of course, it didn’t start out that way for Samantha. In fact, it never does. Saddled with a double-digit position in the draft order for the fourth time in five seasons, Samantha started—as she literally does every year—0-2. But just as she has done for three years in a row now, she quickly rebounded to 3-2. Winning four straight games from Weeks 7-10, Samantha found herself on the precipice of the playoffs, finally pushing herself over the edge with a Week 13 victory over Gray followed by a dramatic comeback against Geoff in Week 14 to secure a first-round bye.
One of only four team owners who didn’t make a trade this year (the others being Geoff, Beth Ann and Jess), Samantha coasted on the strength of her draft. You might recall we did an unscientific poll in the preseason of who won the draft and Samantha came out on top with two out of five votes. (The other votes went to Nick and Brandon, all of which finished in the top four of the final Power Rankings. Wisdom of the crowd?)
But Samantha’s team has been led all year by Jalen Hurts. The QB1, Hurts was taken 59th overall in the fifth round behind Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert and Lamar Jackson. But Hurts outpaced them all, helping Samantha to lead the league at the position. As for the rest of the roster, Davante Adams (WR3) is a stud. Chris Godwin (WR24) was a steal in the sixth round. And T.J. Hockenson (TE3) has had his moments—most notably leading the league in scoring in Week 4.
Admittedly, the RBs have disappointed. I’m sure “Don’t Worry Kamarling” has been more than a little worried about team namesake Alvin Kamara, just RB16 with only ONE (?!) game in which he’s scored a TD this year. And Ezekiel Elliott (RB21), though much maligned, has been surprisingly adequate despite the Tony Pollard breakout, scoring at least 15 points in six straight games. Hey, at RB2, I’ll take it.
At first blush, there don’t seem to be a lot of world-beaters (outside of Jalen Hurts and Davante Adams) on this team despite the fact that Samantha is deservedly the one seed among this playoff crop. And maybe that’s been manifested to some degree by the fact that Samantha has not won a weekly prize this year. In fact, of the top-20 scores this season, just one (her season-high 152 points in Week 13) belongs to Samantha. But Samantha’s strength has been her quiet consistency. Since her 0-2 start, Samantha has finished with no-worse than the seventh-best score in a given week and eight times has finished with a top-four score. So yes, she may struggle to win a track meet, but she’s way less likely to lay an egg.
Given the fact that she has the best road, a first-round bye and is the top overall team by TW% and scoring in the playoffs, the computer rates Samantha as an easy favorite, giving her a 39.1% chance to win her first championship. But that’s certainly no sure thing. In 11 years, the one seed has won the championship just four times. But perhaps Samantha can make it five.
A Final Word about the Poop Bowl
Of course, these six team owners won’t be the only ones with something on the line these last three weeks. The other six non-playoff teams will also be hoping to avoid the Poop Bowl. For a full description of how it works, check out last year’s season preview, which has all the details on the consolation ladder. The big thing you need to know is that this week, the winners of the games between Beth Ann vs. Brandon and Gray vs. Greco will be safe. Plus, as we move through the playoffs, I’ll make sure to let you know when you’ve been “eliminated” from Poop Bowl contention.
That’s it for the preview. Good luck to all in the playoffs!
