Samantha Wins First Title — The Worst League

Before Damar Hamlin’s heart stopped, before the world stopped, before a real football game—let alone a fake football game—seemed suddenly so inconsequential in comparison to the life of a human being, we all thought we knew the stakes. With a fantasy championship on the line, we were abruptly reminded of how precious life is.

But thanks to the work of the first-responders, doctors and medical staff, and one Buffalo Bills athletic trainer who administered CPR for a harrowing eight minutes, Damar Hamlin is alive today. Even better, he was discharged from the hospital a few short days ago and is now back at home with his family in Buffalo, allowing the world to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Fantasy football is a community. And we were reminded of that again when in the wake of a near-tragedy, Hamlin’s charitable foundation racked up $8.9 million and counting. As is now legend, Hamlin’s first words when he woke up in the hospital were “did we win”—a phrase now emblazoned on shirts by Hamlin to benefit the UC Trauma Center. The doctor’s well-meaning albeit cheesy response was, “Yes, you won. You’ve won the game of life.” Nice one, doc.

With respect to the proper perspective-shifting of the medical professionals involved, I don’t think that’s exactly what Hamlin meant. He wanted to know who actually won the game. And after the Bills-Bengals game was postponed and then canceled altogether (and with Damar Hamlin’s health assured), many of us fantasy folks were left wondering the same thing—did we win?

Well…who did win?

Entering Monday night’s Bills-Bengals game, Samantha had poured on the points (143.56), giving her a commanding 67.56-point lead in the championship game. With all of Samatha’s players done, Nick needed Joe Burrow and Stefon Diggs to make up the difference. Not impossible. For the season, Burrow and Diggs have averaged a combined 41.71 ppg. Still, that’s more than 25 points short of what Nick needed. The ESPN projections on Monday night gave Nick just a 3% chance.

In fact, if we look back at the rest of the year, Burrow and Diggs had never combined for that many points in a single week this season. The closest they came was Week 6 when Burrow (32.5 points) and Diggs (30.8 points) combined for 63.3 points and ranked first and third among all players in fantasy points scored that week. But that’s still more than four points short! Even in Week 2 when Diggs led the league with 44.8 points—his career high and the fourth-most points by any player this season—it was not enough.

And you know what? It’s never been enough. I went back and looked at all 39 weeks in which both Burrow and Diggs have played in the NFL (dating back to Burrow’s rookie season in 2020), and they’ve never done it. 0 for 39. And that includes Week 18 this year (a substitute I’ve seen other fantasy football leagues make for Bills or Bengals players in championship games). Does that mean they couldn’t have done it this time? No. But I think it means, if you’re Nick, you can sleep a little easier at night without sweating the what-if of it all.

What actually happened of course is that Burrow and Diggs got off to a good start, combining for 10.88 points with 5:58 left in the first quarter. Could they have kept up that pace? At the moment the game was postponed, the ESPN projections still gave Nick just a 3% chance. Ultimately, we’ll never know. Injuries happen. That’s part of the unpredictability of fantasy football. And though this injury didn’t happen directly to either Burrow or Diggs, it impacted them in just the same way. Just as the Kyler Murray injury in Week 14 ended Beth Ann’s season, stealing what should have been a sure playoff berth, so too did the injury to Hamlin end Nick’s chances at a comeback. That’s fantasy.

With the game declared a no-contest, the box scores were wiped from the NFL’s official ledger. And so the final result is Samantha: 143.56, Nick: 76.0. After days spent monitoring Hamlin’s health and speculating on the NFL’s plans to potentially reschedule the game, we finally reached our season’s ultimate conclusion…

Samantha is your 2022 Worst League champion! 🎉

And a deserving champion she is. After a double-digit draft pick (her fourth in five years) and an 0-2 start (for the fifth year in a row), Samantha quickly rebounded. From Weeks 3-14, she had the best team in the league, leading the league in TW% (.697) and was second in scoring (123.0 ppg). Despite two “unlucky losses” (games in which she finished in the top half of the league in scoring but lost anyway) to Erik and Josh, she still garnered enough wins (nine) to secure a first-round bye. Then thanks to a blistering scoring pace of 136.4 ppg in four games down the stretch, she stole the top overall seed from Chelsie in the final week of the regular season.

In the final Power Rankings, she finished third in TW% (.643) and scoring (120.8 ppg), but was within just four true wins of Brandon and Gray for the top spot, a tier of three unto themselves. As the odds-on favorite entering the playoffs, she led all playoff teams in scoring in Weeks 16 and 17, averaging 144.1 ppg (and would have finished second only to Josh in Week 15 if she had set her lineup during the bye). That’s the second-highest scoring average in the playoffs in league history, surpassing Brandon’s mark from 2020 but falling short of Beth Ann’s heroics from last season.

And most impressively, she did all of that with her star player, Jalen Hurts (formerly the top-scoring player in all of fantasy at the end of the regular season), sidelined with a shoulder injury throughout the fantasy playoffs. Taken at the end of the fifth round, Hurts finished as QB3 despite the injury and was the 19th-ranked player overall by VBD or Value Based Drafting, which allows us to compare players at different positions. (For a refresher on VBD, check out the 2018 Draft Rewind.) Among players that finished in the top-20, Hurts was the fourth-best value, joining the likes of Josh Jacobs (3), Rhamondre Stevenson (16) and Tony Pollard (17) who were all taken in the fifth round or later.

Thankfully, Hurts wasn’t the only stud Samantha drafted. In fact, she was one of just three team owners this season to get over 90% of her scoring from the draft while not making a single trade (the others being Beth Ann and Jess who both missed the playoffs). Given that Samantha’s draft was so instrumental to her success, let’s take a look at her first seven picks with their overall rank by VBD. A green check means the player delivered value ahead of where they were drafted. A red ‘x’ means they underperformed.

11. Alvin Kamara: 29th ❌
14. Davante Adams: 7th ✅
35. DJ Moore: 64th ❌
38. Ezekiel Elliott: 39th ❌ (barely)
59. Jalen Hurts: 19th ✅
62. Chris Godwin: 45th ✅
83. T.J. Hockenson: 47th ✅

That’s four (almost five) “good” picks, including three top-30 players. In those critical first seven rounds when most team owners fill out their starting lineup, only Geoff had a better draft (by cumulative VDP). Hurts and especially Davante Adams were critical, but so too were Chris Godwin and T.J. Hockenson. Even DJ Moore—the worst of her first seven picks—was clutch, averaging 20.7 ppg throughout the playoffs. With Samaje Perine, Gardner Minshew and the Patriots D/ST providing some late-season pop off the waiver wire, Samantha was finally able to bring home her first championship.

So how does this team rate historically among other champions?

I’d say somewhere in the middle. Her team ranks sixth among 12 former champs in TW% (.643), trailing Brandon (2017), Gray (2013), Brandon again (2018), Jess (2014) and Beth Ann (2022) who ranks first. It’s also the lowest-scoring of the three champs in the PPR era. And all time, it’s “just” the 19th-best (out of 144 teams) by TW%, trailing 13 other non-champs.

That being said, Samantha peaked at the right time while weathering a key injury in the playoffs to arguably her best player. Though she never won a weekly prize—just the third team to win a title without ever leading the week in scoring during the regular season—this team was far from a fluke. The second-highest scoring playoff team in league history, Samantha earned her first title, besting worthy challengers in Josh and Nick. And even though Brandon and Gray finished at the top of the Power Rankings and missed the playoffs, Samantha would have outscored them both in all three weeks of postseason play.

She may have had to start from the back with the 11th pick—as she so often does—but Samantha finished on top in 2022, becoming our fourth female champion and second in a row. In the best season of her career, she brought home her first title in only five tries, joining Beth Ann as the only non-founding members of the league to win a championship.

Yes, there are many things that matter more in life than fantasy football. Life, especially, which we were reminded of this year. But there are also things that make life just a little bit sweeter. And coming home a champ is certainly one of them.

The Scoreboard

Here’s a look at the final box scores with a few notes on each game.

Samantha won her first championship, defeating Nick while Chelsie beat Josh in the consolation game, finishing third in her debut season.

Samantha Defeats Nick 143.56-76.0, Wins First Title

Though she was ultimately let down by Gardner Minshew and her RBs, Alvin Kamara and Ezekiel Elliott, Samantha’s WRs carried the day, combining for 79.0 points. That was more than enough to outpace Nick’s strength—his RBs. The league leader in RB scoring, Nick got just 37.4 points combined from Saquon Barkley, Travis Etienne and Rhamondre Stevenson, notably less than half of the production of Samantha’s WRs. The game, of course, was ultimately decided by the absence of Joe Burrow and Stefon Diggs, but even if they had played and played well, I think that would have been the story of the game.

For Nick, another terrific season ends just short of a championship. Last year, he lost to eventual champion Beth Ann in the semifinals before finishing third. This time, he falls to the champion again but in the title game. Still, it’s been an incredibly impressive two-year run following literally the Worst’s worst season of all time in 2020—a 1-12 season with a .203 TW%. Since then, he leads the league in wins (19) and scoring (123.4 ppg) and is second in TW% (.594) only to Samantha. Though he came up short, he’s put together the two best years of his career. And this year, he did it with a stellar draft that included three players that finished in the top-16 in VBD in Saquon Barkley (9), Stefon Diggs (12) and Rhamondre Stevenson (16)—the only team owner to do so. A team owner that averaged 6.0 moves per year (trades + free agent/waiver wire pickups) through his first 10 years in the league, Nick made 45 moves this year after 66 a season ago. Keep grinding like that and a championship is sure to follow.

Chelsie Takes Down Josh 121.22-71.3 in Consolation Game

In the consolation game, Chelsie defeated Josh to walk away with a third-place finish in just her first season. Thanks to Patrick Mahomes (25.52 points)—who many may have scoffed at (myself included) when he went 15th overall in this year’s draft but finished as the 8th overall player by VBD—plus unexpectedly sunny days from Najee Harris (20.3 points) and trade acquisition Tyler Allgeier (16.5 points), Chelsie easily walked away with the win despite down days for her usual studly pass-catchers. To finish third in her first season is an impressive accomplishment. In fact, it’s tied with Samantha in 2018 for the best debut for a league newbie in Worst League history. More than that, it was great to reconnect and she was a joy to have in the group text. I’m sure I speak for many others when I say that I look forward to more years of competition with Chelsie for seasons to come.

As for Josh, one of the best roster reconstructions this league has seen ultimately fell short in the playoffs. Perhaps most inexplicably, Justin Jefferson scored a season-low 2.5 points in Week 17, ending any hope Josh had of keeping pace with Chelsie for third place. Of course, Josh also played without Hayden Hurst whose 4.5 points were zeroed out after the Bills-Bengals game was canceled. Could Hurst have scored the 45.5 more points Josh needed to bring home the win? Gotta say that was an extreme long shot. Not only has Hurst never scored more than 18.2 points in a game in his career, but no TE has ever scored the requisite 50 points that Josh needed. All that being said, keep your head held high, Josh. Though he falls short of that elusive title and is now 2-8 in career playoff games (the second-lowest win percentage of any team owner in the league), Josh turned a clunker into a contender this season, finishing the year as the only team owner with two top-four players by VBD on his roster in Jefferson and Josh Jacobs. Salute. 🫡

Which now brings us to…

The Poop Bowl 💩

Alex picked one hell of a time to turn his season around. After easily the worst year of his career, Alex was suddenly superhuman in the consolation ladder. Despite unofficially breaking the record for most points scored in the postseason in Week 15, Alex’s loss in Week 16 still relegated him to the Poop Bowl. Nevertheless, Mike Evans exploded with 48.7 points—more than he’d scored in the previous five weeks combined. With Jerick McKinnon completing his late-season surge with 22.6 points (good enough to help him finish as the 37th overall player by VBD and the top undrafted player in the league this year), Alex had more than enough points to defeat Jess even with Josh Allen sidelined by the events of the Bills-Bengals game. Perhaps, this is the springboard he needs to shake off a forgettable year and right the ship in 2023.

That means this year’s Poop Bowl loser is…Jess.

Ironically, Jess was the preseason pick by the computers to win it all. Remember this chart from our draft observations column?

Jess was the preseason favorite according to the ESPN projections. Instead, she lost the Poop Bowl.

Well…that didn’t go according to plan. Unfortunately, this was a deserving Poop Bowl champ. Though she technically finished just ahead of Alex in the final Power Rankings by a mere two true wins and 35.84 points scored, Jess’ team was a shell of its former self, struggling throughout the consolation ladder while averaging just 75.7 ppg. In fact, her 44.26 points in Week 16 are the fewest points ever scored in a single game in the PPR era. Hard to blame her. Ultimately, injuries and a spree of bad draft picks did this team in a long time ago. Not a single player of hers finished in the top-25 by VBD (the only team owner who can say that). Traditionally a great drafter, Jess’ draft this year ranks 96th out of 108 drafts (since 2014 for which we have data). It’s also the worst draft since Nick’s worst team of all time. So yeah…nothing to do but take this season and flush it. 🚽

Of course, before she can do that, the punishment awaits. From the group text, this punishment received the most votes in the preseason:

“Loser has to watch a movie of the winner’s choice and deliver a book report via PowerPoint presentation to the league with time for Q&A.”

At least you’re not running a lemonade stand. (I believe, that’s the one Jess actually voted for.) Samantha, as the winner, will get to choose what movie Jess will have to report on, which—unless anyone objects—can be presented around next year’s draft. Can’t wait!

Closing Thoughts

If you won a weekly prize this season and did not send a Venmo request Alex’s way, make sure to do so. This year, seven team owners won weekly prizes. For reference, these are this year’s winners with the weeks they won:

Brandon: 4 (Weeks 3, 11, 13, 14)
Chelsie: 3 (Weeks 1, 8, 9)
Geoff: 3 (Weeks 2, 10, 12)
Alex: 1 (Week 4)
Gray: 1 (Weeks 5)
Nick: 1 (Week 6)
Greco: 1 (Week 7)

As we do every season, now is a great time to look at the updated All-time Power Rankings to see how things have changed with another season, our 12th, in the books. Also, because we’ve been discussing career wins this season (with Gray and Brandon reaching their 100th career wins), this year’s table is slightly different. In previous years, I excluded playoff wins and losses from this table. This year, those have been added to your win/loss totals.

Gray, Brandon and Josh lead the all-time rankings with Chelsie debuting at fourth.

Gray is still #1! What would it take for someone to unseat him in these career rankings? He still has a pretty big cushion. So he’d probably need a couple of down years or one really bad year with a big year for someone like Brandon or potentially Chelsie who has a small sample size.

After a disappointing season in which she finished 10th in the final Power Rankings, Beth Ann slips three spots to fifth in the all-time rankings. That allowed Brandon and Josh to move up with Chelsie debuting at fourth. Alex, despite a subpar season, joins them in sixth to complete the top half of the career rankings.

Meanwhile, in the bottom half, Samantha’s big year has helped her to narrow the gap between herself and the top group, though she remains in seventh. From there, it’s a bit of a drop to team owners with a TW% below .500. That includes Geoff, Jess, Greco, Erik and Nick. Many of these team owners moved down simply because Whitney was formerly 12th but has since left the league. But Jess, our Poop Bowl loser, experienced the biggest drop in 2022, falling three spots.

Next year, team owners with a chance at a big win milestone include Samantha with a chance to hit 50 wins plus Jess and Greco with an outside shot to get to 100 wins if they can make a run in the playoffs.

And that about wraps it up.

Thanks again for a fun and thrilling fantasy season. As always, I’ve enjoyed writing these recaps, reading your responses and chatting in the group text. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2023 for every one of you. See you in September and don’t be a stranger!