The 16th season of Sacred Sundays is underway! Sixteen years of fantasy football… man how things have changed. Back in 2004, players were extolled for big hits and collisions in ESPN’s ‘Jacked UP!’ segment, and now those players draw fines and suspensions for those hits. In 2004, extra points were merely an afterthought after a touchdown, and now you’ve gotta hope and pray your kicker doesn’t F up an extra point and lose the game. In 2004, Tom Brady was just coming off of leading the Patriots to a Superbowl title, and now, well… so yeah, I guess not everything has changed.
Week 1 2019 belongs to Attack of Mahomes! Timmy had monster performances from Patrick Mahomes (30 pts), Dalvin Cook (23 pts) and his kicker, Harrison Butker (17 pts), to lead all scorers with 112 points! This is the exact opposite start to Timmy’s season from last year-- in Week 1 2018 he only scored 60 points and was the week's lowest scorer. Nice turnaround Timtim!! Let's go Chiefs!So this week we’ll take a look back at the Yahoo’s 2018 predictions to see how accurate they were, recap the draft with some additional stats and give out a Best Bench of a variety we haven’t seen in nearly a year. But first, some observations…
BIG TIME
-Sammy Watkins, WR – Attack of Mahomes – 40 pts – Epic day for Watkins finishing with 9 catches for 198 yards and 3 TD’s! It was the fifth best single-game receiving performance in Chiefs history. Fantasy-wise, this also ranked as the fifth best wide receiver performance since 2009, and is only the 36th time a player has scored over 40 points since 2009.
-Dak Prescott, QB – American BadAss – 36 pts – QB perfection was achieved on Sunday, and it wasn’t by someone named Rodgers, Brady or Brees. Nope, it was Dak, who completed 25 of 32 passes for 405 yards, 4 TD’s and zero picks, which equates to a QB rating of 158.3 (the highest QB rating possible).
-Austin Ekeler, RB – Vandelay Industries- 32 pts – Top running back performance of the week belonged to Ekeler (didn’t see that coming) who gashed the Colts to the tune of 154 yards and 3 TD’s. Melvin Gordon could not have been happy to see this one…totally reminds me of the Le’Veon Bell hold out last year when it was James Conner who went off.
-Lamar Jackson, QB – Vandelay Industries – 32 pts – Jackson didn’t need many passes to do his damage... he threw only 20 passes, completing 17 for 324 yards and 5 TD’s! He tied a record set by Peyton Manning for the most TD’s in an opening season game. (Caveat – His opponent was the Miami Dolphins, so may need to temper expectations just a bit.)
-Christian McCaffrey, RB – Longshanks – 32 pts – This is the definition of a workhorse: 19 rushes for 128 yards, 10 catches for 81 yards and 2 TD’s. Love it.
-San Francisco, DEF – Free Agent – 31 pts – The 49ers defense absolutely dominated the Bucs… 3 sacks, 3 interceptions, 1 fumble recovery, 2 4th down stops, 2 TD’s and only gave up 11 points. They’ve now got the Bengals next week…could we see another performance like this?
-John Ross III, WR – Free Agent – 30 pts – Coming into this week, the best game of Ross’ career was a 3 catch 52 yard performance. He tripled his yardage output this week, catching 7 balls for 158 yards and 2 TD’s.
-Patrick Mahomes, QB – Attack of Mahomes – 30 pts – Mahomes had what any other quarterback would consider a great game in just his first half. For the first half, Mahomes had 313 yards and 2 TD’s. Can you imagine? On pace for over 600 yards! He ending up adding just 60 yards but one more TD in the second, just for good measure.
COME ON MAN
-Mike Evans, WR – sprouts – 2 pts – Just a weak showing for Evans, catching only 2 passes for 28 yards.
-Philadelphia, DEF – Young Guns – 1 pt – Through 60 minutes of football, all the Eagles defense could muster was 1 sack. One measly sack.
-Joe Mixon, RB – Joe’s Pats – 1 pt – Mixon did get hurt in the game, but he was never ruled out. Up to the point when he got “injured” he had 6 carries for 10 yards, a whopping 1.6 yards per carry.
-OJ Howard, TE – Joe’s Pats – 1 pt – The Juice actually had 32 yards on the day, but lost a red zone fumble. And most of his dignity.
-Donte Moncrief, WR – Longshanks – 0 pts – For being someone who is paid to catch a football, Moncrief is not very good at it. He had multiple drops and the 3 he did catch only amounted to 7 yards.
-Denver, DEF – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 0 pts – Against Oakland, the Broncos had no sacks, no interceptions, no blocked kicks, no fumble recoveries, and gave up 24 points. Against Oakland.
Immediately following the draft, as they have done in prior years, the Yahoo! prediction machine predicted the season results for the entire upcoming season. At the bottom of this year’s Yahoo! predictions are Big Sack and Joe’s Pats, with predicted records of 1-11-1 and 2-10-1 respectively. At the top of the heap are sprouts and Attack of Mahomes with predicted records of 11-2 each. The team predicted to be highest scoring is sprouts with 1,520, and the lowest scoring team is the Coors Light Drunk Guys predicted to score only 1,320.
Now before you get too excited or depressed about how Yahoo! thinks your season will go, let’s look at how last year’s predictions fared. Last year’s projected highest scoring team was Young Guns with 1,400 points. Well, Young Guns finished with only 1,173 points ranking 7th. The Bubble Craps Bandits were projected to be the lowest scoring team (1,251) and have the worst record (2-11). Well the Bandits (renamed to Attack of Mahomes) ended up as the highest scoring team (1,299) with the BEST record (9-4). So Yahoo! didn’t do so hot with those predictions.
How about with playoff predictions? The top six predicted teams last season were: Young Guns, Sofa King Back, Vandelay Industries, Joe’s Pats, American BadAss and sprouts. Of those, Vandelay Industries and sprouts ended up missing the playoffs. So playoff teams were predicted correct on 4 out of 6 (66.6%). But the two teams not predicted to make the playoffs, Attack of Mahomes and Longshanks, finished 2nd and 4th respectively. (This season the top six teams predicted are: sprouts, Attack of Mahomes, Young Guns, Longshanks, Bella Dancers and American BadAss.)
But not all of the predictions made last year were wildly wrong… Joe’s Pats was picked to be the 2nd highest scoring team and finished as the 2nd highest scoring team, sprouts was predicted to have a record of 6-7 and finished with a record of 6-7, and the Coors Light Drunk Guys were predicted to finish 9th but finished 10th. (But lets be honest…predicting that the Coors Light Drunk Guys are going to finish at the bottom is not exactly a hot take. Hahaha! What do you know, Shawn!?!)
The most striking thing I noticed looking at the Yahoo! predictions from last year is how they predicted all scores to total 13,234, yet there were only 11,783 actual points scored. That is a difference of 1,451 points or nearly 91 fewer actual points scored per week than predicted.
This year every NFL team had at least one player picked in our draft, with Miami, Buffalo and Washington each having just a single player selected. On the other end of the spectrum, Kansas City led the way with 10 players picked, followed by Houston and LA Rams with 8, and Cleveland, LA Chargers, New England and New Orleans all had 7 players picked.
The most popular position picked was wide receiver with 50 taken, followed by running backs with 44. American BadAss, Young Guns and Attack of Mahomes each picked 6 wide receivers in the draft. There were only 18 quarterbacks selected because both Young Guns and Attack of Mahomes did not draft a back-up QB. Tampa Bay was the only NFL team to not have a running back selected. Four teams--Baltimore, Washington, Buffalo and Miami--did not have a wide receiver selected. Lastly, the Chiefs and the Saints were the only two teams to have players selected in all positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K and DEF).
BEST BENCH
There was a close battle for the first best bench of the season, as four teams had bench improvement totals greater than 30 points. Vandelay Industries, Joe’s Pats and American BadAss had improvement possibilities of 33, 31 and 30 points, but none could top the week’s high scorer… Attack of Mahomes! Yep, it is a Double Crown week for Timmy as he takes the Best Bench, with a 36 point improvement possibility, along with the Weekly High Score Prize! (Our last Double Crown winner was American BadAss in Week 3 last year).
Attack of Mahomes needed only two roster moves to get there: S. Watkins for K. Golladay (+30 pts) and L. McCoy for A. Jones (+6 pts). With those roster moves, Tim’s optimal line-up would have consisted of 6 Kansas City Chief players. Do it Timmy! Let’s see an all-Chiefs roster this season!!
Okay, so get those waiver claims in and get ready for Week 2!!
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