News:

Once again the final week of our fantasy season fell during our annual Clan McDonald Christmas gathering. It was nice to see many managers together in one place and even watching a bit of football together. With the Christmas day games, we had Wed, Thurs, Sat, Sun and Monday night football and that definitely didn’t make line-up decisions any easier (especially with NFL play-off scenarios looming).

With a full docket of games distributed across six days and even though there really is no such thing as a “lead”, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like BK had a pretty sizable one after the Seattle – Chicago game. We had a 6 – 3 final score and that’s pretty much where fantasy weeks go to die – unless you have one of the teams on DEF, which BK did (Sea). That lead continued and grew over the weekend and suffice to say by Sunday night it looked and seemed pretty bleak for old commish. Points wise though, I just needed Goff and Deebo to have very good games. Would Detroit rest players? Would I be starting Hendon Hooker for all the marbles? In the end it was “no” and “no”. The two teams went full out and it came down to a final kick return for Deebo and a fumble recovered by San Fran.

Honestly I’m still hesitant to say “it came down to” because we’re talking about 1.4 points and stat corrections may not be applied until Sunday but I don’t want to wait until then to get the newsletter out so we’ll assume that lead will hold and I’ll retract if it doesn’t.

Shark Move of the Week:

I deliberated over mentioning the Piper in the shark column versus the fantasy hell column but decided to do it here. 177 points is a hell of a finish (wish I could have done it) and it put an exclamation point on the toilet bowl game and a positive end to his season.

Welcome to Fantasy Hell Award of the Week:

Stakes considered, it has to be Brandon here (pending stat corrections). The James Connor injury was the first indignity he had to suffer and then it was the privilege of watching a point lead melt away into the wee hours of Monday night until the aforementioned ending. I watched the ending in disbelief and I hope Brandon’s mood wasn’t any worse than disbelief but that’s probably wishful thinking. We didn’t put up gaudy point totals but there was no shortage of drama at least and judging by the chat, more than a few of us stayed up to see the season ender.

In closing I wanted to thank you all (as I do each year) for playing, participating and being good sports as it relates to the sharks and guppies stuff. I also wanted to provide you with a heads up for next year on settings changes. Barring a strong negative reaction from you, I think we’ll try that alternative defensive scoring “formula” I mentioned a few weeks back. It should cause DEF scoring to behave more like other positions, with scores starting at zero and increasing as plays are made, rather than having to watch points slip away (as we often see today).

With that parting note, I will close the books on another season. Have a great 2025 and we’ll pick things up again in August!