by Kevin Burton
Something truly bizarre happened to my fantasy football teams last week. They won, all six of them.
My K&J Tornados team won by 35.08 points. All the others won by more than that! Now maybe that’s not such a great big deal. After all, one point – or in fantasy a fraction of a point – gets you the win. The margin doesn’t matter.
It’s just that all that pacing and sweating over nail-biter games that my wife Jeannette is accustomed to seeing from me, did not happen.
In fact, this was a little unnerving. As the games unfold on an NFL Sunday, I usually give a report to Jeannette. So many are going to win, so many are toast, so many are still up for grabs. I gave no report last Sunday. I was afraid to speak of it, afraid another shoe was going to drop.
But even though Kyler Murray went off against me for 28.54 points, it didn’t come close to mattering. This just doesn’t normally happen in fantasy, trust me.
Some part of me could almost hear the screeching tires, but the car wreck never happened.
Last year there was a week when all five of my teams won and I was quick to write about it, reasoning that I may never get a chance to write that again. Same thing now, even more so.
Four of my teams won by 40 or more points including the team where I have Patrick Mahomes, which won by 65 (not thanks to Mahomes, but to Alvin Kamara.).
Maybe I should have retired from fantasy on the spot!
In fantasy as in the actual NFL, you don’t get long to celebrate wins. And even before the final number were in last week, my problems in the form of injuries to my key players were mounting.
Fantasy analysts are calling this the worst stretch of injuries they have ever seen. So I am not alone.
My K&J Vipers team in a 16-team league is especially hamstrung. That team will do without Deebo Samuel and Cooper Kupp this week. And with 16 fantasy manager mouths to feed, waivers offered no relief. What a mess!
I am going to need Taysom Hill to have one of his famous boom weeks and score about 25 points to have any chance to win. Like the real-life L.A. Rams, that team’s season may be over already, because of injuries.
But the same Deebo trouble that is working against me there is working for me in my 12-team league. The win percentages are identical: 63 percent against me in the former, 63 percent for me in the latter.
I also have Christian McCaffrey out and on IR. I’m not crying over that one as much as many others are.
He was my number one overall pick. The 49ers at first put his injury designation as “calf” then later, we find out it’s “calf-achillies.” That displeased me. I would not have drafted him had I known the achillies was involved. I would have drafted Breece Hall in that spot.
I hear people talking about having wasted that number one pick draft capital, on a player who may not be around until the end of the season, or maybe not at all.
But because I jumped on McCaffrey’s replacement Jordan Mason so quickly, I got three shares of him, one on my McCaffrey team and two others.
Incredibly I got a fourth share of Mason after week two, because he was still sitting on waivers in one other league. Unbelievable! Always check the waiver wires!
I have drafted McCafferty twice now with a high draft pick and each time I have drafted two great running backs in rounds two and three, in case he got hurt. This year I got Jahmyr Gibbs and Devon Achane. With those two and because Mason has done so well, I haven’t noticed any drop off.
So thoroughly has fantasy taken over my NFL viewing habits and priorities, that I did not go into gloom after my Bengals lost, at home, to the Patriots in week one. I’m just rooting for their kicker, Evan McPherson, to do well, because he is on three of my teams.
Page 7 