Some things shouldn’t surprise us. A prequel to a musical being a musical: not surprising.
Trading all your picks and having it not work out because at the end of the day it’s a slot machine, equally unsurprising. I’m not surprised I lost. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have won either. For more on the anguish of the moment, for more on the complete stages of grief re: losing the championship, scroll up to Sunday’s portion of the league chat.
I should have started Lamar. I got tunnel vision, hyperfocused on winning, and tried to play the highest-scoring lineup, as if such a thing is predictable, as if it’s not a slot machine. Starting Lamar isn’t like an “obviously he was gonna score more points” situation. It’s a “this is fantasy football; at some point the game is about making your own personal dream team.” Yes, we want to score the most points and win. But within our control, we want to like our team. It’s why I don’t add assholes. I should have known my season was cursed when I drafted Alvin Kamara, who’s not (as far as I know) the specific type of asshole that I normally avoid, but when you compare his moral compass to that of the rest of my team, he reaks of asshole.
So I’ve learned the lesson before and forgotten it and maybe this lesson is my Sisyphian boulder, I don’t know. But with no choice but to have fun next year (i.e., because I have no shot of winning), I hope the lesson will finally get under the skin.
Congratulations to Sean, the first back-to-back champion in league history. He shouldn’t have been able to win without a first, third, or fourth pick, but here we are. He kept Jalen Hurts and picked up Puka Nacua Brian Robinson from free agency. Reed Blankenship and TJ Edwards were dropping double-digit points every week. Danielle Hunter was in the DPOY discussion for a while. Sean made one deadline pick-trade, acquiring Deebo for a 2nd, and Deebo was the difference as Sean narrowly beat Evan in Round 2 of the playoffs.
For the second year in a row, Evan might have been. That’s all I can really say about that. He might have been.
Corey went from losing five in a row to winning three in a row and securing the #1 pick. Max outscored Corey in the first two rounds, but he has to settle for the #2 pick after his team fell apart one last time.
I really can’t pretend the games for third and ninth place matter in some larger context, but winning the final game of the year is good. You leave the season with a good taste in your mouth.
Shelby got absolutely destroyed by kickers in the final two weeks.
Well it’s the bimonthly time to wonder: do the Bucs actually suck? Is Baker the guy? Is it time to change course as a franchise? The Bucs made it a game with the Saints, but only kinda sorta. Losing the first half 20-0 is pitiful. Needing the final weke of the season to lock up the division is a bad sign for your playoff hopes. I would rather make the playoffs than miss them. It’s good for morale. But if I knew in advance we were going to lose the playoff game, it might change my mind, but if I knew in advance we would miss the playoffs because we lost to the Panthers, I would go back to wanting to make the playoffs.
But to the more important question, should we keep Baker, which I was totally for last week, I’m back to being against, with the caveat that it depends on the dollar amount. If the number is 25-30 million, it’s too much for a QB who is too small and gets hurt too often. It’s cool that he’s willing to play hurt, but it’s also just, like, idk, he’s a Toyota Camry. He’s affordable, durable, reliable, not bad to look at… If we can afford more, we should probably get more? And not all players get comp’d to cars. A free agent QB is almost always a car because he’s almost always going to depreciate in value over time. A rookie QB probably can’t be as good as Baker right now; like, I’m not positive CJ Stroud is better than Baker right now. But it’s real close, and even if he has a sophomore slump, Stroud will be better than Baker for a solid ten years. So my hope is that the Bucs have good enough draft standing to get a QB with potential (so not a Kenny Pickett or a Mac Jones). I’m fine with a project. Hell, I’m fine with letting Baker walk, starting Trask, and tanking for Shedeur Sanders or a Jaxson Dart. Who doesn’t want to root for a QB named Dart?
The most important thing to me as a Bucs fan is keeping my favorite players. We should be cutting costs elsewhere in order to retain HOF’ers Mike Evans and Lavonte David and young superstars Tristan Wirfs and Antoine Winfield. Vita Vea and Chris Godwin are somewhere in the middle and should be retained as well. I am comfortable kissing every other veteran goodbye. Barrett, Davis, Dean, Devin White, thanks for the memories, but we really can’t afford you, and teams prove every year that you can develop a defense as the season goes along.
Which brings us to Todd Bowles, who has gotten this defense to outplay its paper resume at times. At. Times. We can blame money for our lack of depth, but who has improved as the season as progressed? Thanks to Dave Canales, we’re seeing offensive players improve, maybe not in leaps and bounds, but Luke Goedeke is a legitimate right tackle now. Mauch and Goedeke are going to play out their entire rookie deals as starters on our line. On defense, I don’t know that anyone has improved. Kancey, Diaby, and Izien are good young players, but one can argue they were good on arrival. My beef with Bowles: why isn’t Joe Tryon-Shoyinka any good? Like even if he wasn’t worth a first-round pick, wouldn’t a good defensive coach get him to at least be better than Anthony Nelson by now? At this point, I’d rather go back to Carl Nassib than watch Tryon-Shoyinka still trying to figure it out in year three. I will say: Bowles played defensive back, and our defensive backs are damn good considering all of them are, let’s say, defective in some way.
If it comes down to the choice between keeping Bowles and promoting Canales, I guess I’d rather promote Canales. I don’t want to start over on offense. My ideal version of our defense loses enough pieces that it doesn’t really matter if we have conitnuity at coordinator, as long as the coordinator is competent. None of this Sean Desai/Matt Patricia garbage the Eagles are trying.
So my ideal Bucs offseason would be:
Let go of Baker, Barrett, Carlton, Dean, and Devin.
(Carlton and Dean should fetch Day 2 picks)
(Barrett pay-cut is on the table)
Extend Evans, Wirfs, and Winfield.
Sign Drew Lock for $5 million*
Draft:
QB, OL, or WR in the 1st
DB in the 2nd
Assuming an extra 3rd: OL and LB
4th and 5th: RB and WR
6th and 7th: special teams
Sign cheap veteran depth on defense and OL.
*The NFC South is broken, and I really think we can compete with Drew Lock as our QB. Lock is 6’4, 230, moves at least as well as Baker, and has two years of experience in Canales’ style of offense. I think if we get him behind a solid O-line, or give him three star WRs to throw to, or bring in a good rookie QB to compete with him, he can be at least 80% of what Baker was this year, with a better running game to support him. For what it’s worth, Baker threw 43 TDs his senior year in the Big 12; Lock threw 44 TDs in his junior year in the SEC. More like S-E-X.
1. Sean
2. Doak
3. Evan
4. Cameron
5. Oliver
6. Kennedy
7. Corey
8. Max
9. Coleman
10. Shelby
11. Spencer
12. Brian
1. Corey
2. Max
3. Coleman*
4. Shelby
5. Spencer*
6. Brian
7. Oliver*
8. Kennedy
9. Cameron
10. Evan*
11. Brian (via Doak)
12. Sean
*indicates that player has the option of two picks
The Revenge of the Sith Award:
Krompbopulos Michael
In the fashion of Anakin Skywalker having his arms and legs cut off, being left to die on lava planet, Coleman traded away arguably his best two players, then spent at least half the season in last place, then traded away the rest of his arms and legs for draft picks, and then somehow finished in third place (behind the Emperor and eventually Luke Skywalker, if we’re milking this metaphor dry). Well, not third place, but third pick, which is as good as third place if you were already playing for 2024. So in place of human arms and legs, he gets four second-round picks to build a red-lightsaber wielding menace of a team next year.
The King of Moral Victories:
Lamb of SunGod
For the second year in a row, Evan arguably should have won the championship. He finished the season in first place, and he scored the most points in Championship Week. Only, probably because I went all-in, Sean finished in fourth and was able to play Evan in the second round instead of the third. Had I left well-enough alone and settled for leading the league in points but missing the playoffs, which also would have cascaded into me selling CMC for a 1st, probably, sigh, Sean would have finished 2nd or 3rd and not played Evan until the championship. Evan can hang his hat on not trading away any picks and also walking away with no money.
Most Cash Wins:
Jag’s JAGs
(as sung by ABBA)
He is the Gambling Kiiiing
Regretting
an all-Jaguar teeeeam
Gambling Kiiing
loves the ding of the Venmo piiing
Oooh yeah
You can win
Your money back
Rigging the game for the cash
Ooh, even when
He’s losiiing
He is the Gambling Kiiiing
The Wolf of Wall Street Award:
Piss Master
Sell me this 33-yo WR whose team just fired their offensive playcaller, despite the proof that when someone else calls plays, this dude doesn’t get the ball, like, at all. Oh, and sell me on trading you a 24-yo QB with electric legs, a rocket arm, and a keeper year. Thielen for Fields was the best trade Max made, but all of Max’s trades were good. The Breece-LaPorta deal doesn’t look amazing after Breece torched the fantasy playoffs, but Max would have lost to Corey even with Breece’s Week 17 output, and now Max is looking at the best rookie TE of the century as his late keeper while Breece Hall is back in the draft pool. A trade that completely came out in the wash was Keenan Allen for Kamara and Diontae, but what I like about all of these trades is that they didn’t lean on draft capital. Player-for-player trades need to make a comeback, and I appreciate Max for not succumbing to draft-pick temptation. Oh, I also appreciate that the reason he had Thielen was because he refused to move picks for a better late keeper.
The Boiler Room Award:
Pretty F’d Up Ooh La La
Yeah, we all know I shouldn’t have traded all those picks. I was living the sweet life for a few weeks, only to show up one morning and find everything gone except for the landlines and a few broken chairs. Not only did it not win me the championship, it poisoned me against starting a lineup I would have had more fun rooting for. But the stupidest part of all is that I wanted to go into a draft without my top five picks. I wanted the thrill of it. I feel like I’m just going to lose all of my games and learn nothing.
The Saltburn Award:
Chasin a Win
Sorry in advance for the imagery and innuendo, but this award was inspired by the line that Jacob Elordi “bottomed his way to the top” after his performance/appearance in Saltburn, and I just felt that turn of phrase applied to Corey’s bust-boom of a season. He spent a solid six weeks being the butt of all of our jokes, and now he’s in position to have the best player next year.
The “We Have Snacks at Home” Award:
Ghostface killers
Shelby started the year with Dak Prescott and Jordan Love as her QBs. She drafted Dak high and then scooped Love out of free agency. She wasn’t getting much from either, to the point that, when she was 2-4, she traded George Kittle and a 6th for Justin Herbert. Almost immediately, Dak became an MVP candidate, and the Chargers completely fell apart. Shelby dropped Jordan Love, and a few weeks later, he became a top-10 fantasy QB. Herbert rebroke his finger or something and eventually missed the final month of the season. Shelby might have started him once or twice. My takeaway is that, despite pumping up the value of QBs in my pre-draft note this season, I’m back to believing QBs are mostly interchangeable. Yes, Sean won with the #2 QB, but he also won with a top-10 WR he got for free.
The Billy Beane Award:
You Don’t Pay With Money
For his best player, Sean didn’t pay at all. Having won the league last year and picked 12th in the draft, Sean started the season with top waiver priority. As a result, after Puka Nacua drew 15 targets in a Rams upset over the Seahawks in Week 1, Sean had no trouble picking up. What was crazy is that he made a big stink about not being able to pick up Brian Robinson pregame, and then he ended up also snagging Robinson off that first Wednesday waiver wire. You get two everyweek starters for free, two top-10 players for most of the year, you should win the league. And he did. And we’re all complicit.
The End of Iron Man 3 Award:
The Infirmary, Pt. 2
First off, the Iron Man trilogy is probably the best sequence in the Marvel catalog. We have Iron Man to blame for the monster that is present-day Marvel and for the subsequent Marvelizing of the Star Wars catalog. So whichever way you want to look at it, either Brian’s team was the end of Iron Man 3, where Tony calls on all these awesome suits to hepl him fight evil, and pretty much every suit is destroyed as soon as Tony touches it, or it’s everything that came after Iron Man 3, the overload of superheroes and star power and the hype that was impossible to live up to and the ultimate failure of the franchise to live beyond the box office. Brian assembled a superteam, and as is the fate of all NFL superteams, this one never even got off the ground.
The Lesser Evil Award:
teeny tiny tony
Thank you to Cameron for letting me shit on him every week without taking it personally. For that, and for failing to be as despicable as Sean and Evan, Cameron is out of the league-villain discussion for at least one year. Kinda feels like Corey will take up that mantle, at least in my heart.
Comeback Player of the Year:
Tag-Man
Oliver went into the draft with the least capital, his superstar QB had a down year, he had some rough injury luck, he even lost four straight between Weeks 8 and 11 to plummet to 4-7. But he spent his draft picks wisely, he scored in free agency with Kyren Williams and Nico Collins, he made the playoffs for the second year in a row, and he heads into 2024 with momentum.
Team Name of the Year:
Bobby Time
I’m not even a fan of the pun on a player’s name genre of team names, so what Kennedy did with this is really remarkable. First he drafted a couple of whatever-grade LBs back-to-back at a point in the draft when we should be taking sleeper/breakout RBs and WRs, then he named his team after them both having the same first name, THEN they were integral to him going undefeated longer than any other team to start the season, THEN he tied the name to a Rick and Morty reference, a deep-cut from the goat episode Interdimensional Cable at that, THEN they kept producing for him all season and even helped him to the playoffs! Amazing! Incredible! And this was all on the back of a season of revolving Roy team names that was also amazing. Standing ovation. Tears streaming. Gorgeous. Bravo.
Corey
Pick 1.01
Extra 2nd via Cameron (2.04)
Notable Early Keeper Options:
Jaylen Waddle
Terry McLaurin
Tyler Lockett
Kyle Pitts
Fred Warner
Notable Late Keeper Options:
Baker Mayfield?
Devin Singletary?
Tyler Boyd?
David Njoku
Best combo: McLaurin & Njoku
Max
Pick 1.02
Notable Earlies:
Justin Fields
Alvin Kamara
Michael Pittman
Diontae Johnson
Notable Lates:
Matthew Stafford
Gus Edwards
Sam LaPorta
Best combo: Fields & LaPorta
Coleman
Pick 1.03
Extra 2nds via Doak, Oliver, & Sean
(2.01, 2.02, 2.05)
Extra 5th via Oliver (5.07)
Extra 6th via Shelby (6.09)
Notable Earlies:
Ken Walker
Rhamondre Stevenson
Michael Thomas?
Notable Lates:
Purdy Cock
Raheem Mostert
Zach Charbonnet
Rashee Rice
Jahan Dotson
Odell Beckham
Wan’Dale Robinson
Best Combo: Walker & Rice
Shelby
Pick 1.04
Extra 2nd via Brian (2.07)
Extra 3rd & 4th via Doak (3.11; 4.02)
Minus 6th to Coleman
Notable Earlies:
Dak Prescott
Rachaad White
DJ Moore
Jordan Addison
Notable Lates:
Zeke Elliot?
Elijah Moore?
Tutu Atwell?
Gerald Everett?
Patrick Queen
Khalil Mack?
(it’s bad)
Best Combo: Moore & trade
Spencer
Pick 1.05
Extra 3rd via Kennedy (3.08)
Extra 7th via Oliver (7.07)
Notable Earlies:
Javonte Williams
James Cook
Garrett Wilson
Calvin Ridley
Dalton Kincaid
Notable Lates:
Roschon Johnson
Tank Dell
Josh Downs
Dalton Kincaid
Terrel Bernard
Best Combo: GW & Tank
Brian
Pick 1.06
Extra 1st & 5th via Doak (1.11; 5.11)
Notable Earlies:
Khalil Herbert
Drake London
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Mark Andrews
Brian Burns
Derwin James
Jalen Ramsey
Notable Lates:
Geno Smith
Jaylen Warren
Chuba Hubbard
Jerome Ford
Chase Brown
Best Combo: Andrews & Warren/Hubbard
Oliver
Pick 1.07
Minus 2nd & 5th to Coleman
Notable Earlies:
Isiah Pacheco
Brandon Aiyuk
Chris Godwin
DeAndre Hopkins
Foye Oluokun
Notable Lates:
Kyler Murray
Kyren Williams
Nico Collins
Jayden Reed
Best Combo: Aiyuk & Kyren
Kennedy
Pick 1.08
Minus 3rd to Spencer
Notable Earlies:
David Montgomery
Christian Watson
Micah Parsons
Notable Lates:
CJ Stroud
Joe Flacco
Dameon Pierce
Tyler Allgeier
Romeo Doubs
DJ Chark
Best Combo: Montgomery & Stroud
Cameron
Pick 1.09
Minus 2nd to Corey
Notable Earlies:
Tony Pollard
De’Von Achane
Tee Higgins
Brandin Cooks
TJ Hockenson
Maxx Crosby
Notable Lates:
Jared Goff
Bryce Young
Isaiah Likely
Brandon Aubrey
Best Combo: Achane & Aubrey
Evan
Pick 1.10
Minus 8th to Doak
Notable Earlies:
D’Andre Swift
George Pickens
Evan Engram
Nick Bosa
Notable Lates:
Tua Tagovailoa
Jordan Love
Ty Chandler?
Jameson Williams
Lavonte David
Best Combo: Pickens & Tua/Love
Doak
Pick 6.02
Minus 1-5 to Brian, Shelby, Coleman
Extra 8th via Evan (8.03)
Notable Earlies:
Mike Evans
Keenan Allen
Zay Flowers
TJ Watt
Myles Garrett
Notable Lates:
Russell Wilson
Josh Palmer
Cole Kmet
Darren Waller
Antoine Winfield
Kyle Hamilton
Best Combo: Evans/Flowers & Kmet/Hamilton
Sean
Pick 1.12
Minus 2nd to Coleman
Notable Earlies:
James Conner
Deebo Samuel
Amari Cooper
Hollywood Brown
Dallas Goedert
Notable Lates:
Tyjae Spears
Brian Robinson
Puka Nacua
Courtland Sutton
Trey McBride
Best Combo: Deebo & Puka
1. Coleman
Three extra 2nds, Ken Walker, and Rashee Rice. Option to keep Purdy over either.
2. Oliver
Might be down a 2nd, but he has elite keepers.
3. Sean
Down a 2nd, elite keepers, picks five spots after Oliver.
4. Corey
First overall pick, solid keepers, and an extra 2nd.
5. Max
Potentially amazing keepers, plus the second overall pick.
6. Shelby
Trash late keepers, but extra 2nd-4th picks and a good 1st.
7. Spencer
Extra picks and good keepers.
8. Evan
Decent keepers, good at drafting.
9. Brian
Extra 1st, down a 2nd, uninspiring keepers. Bad at drafting?
10. Kennedy
Down a 3rd, and Stroud might only be QB10-15 in fantasy.
11. Cameron
Down a 2nd, rough keepers. Higgins might be the surest thing.
12. Doak
Totally fucked. Looking forward to it.
