Fantasy Football is done. It’s finished. The 16-week sprint to glory has concluded, and with it, I hope you were able to bring home some championships and bragging rights. After all, it just isn’t fantasy football if you can’t brag about it for the next eight months until we start again.
Bienvenue and Welcome to the first-annual Deadspin Fantasy Football Superlatives Extravaganza!
Daaamn, look at you, all fancy in your new threads. Stefon Diggs went from an explosive but inconsistent option in Minnesota to a featured, true WR1 in Buffalo, and carried many teams to the fantasy championships. Diggs finished as the WR4 and finished tied for the most receptions in the league with 111. He and quarterback Josh Allen are going to make sweet sweet music for years to come.
If you were to tell me that you predicted James Robinson was going to be a top-5 running back, I would tell you that you’re lying. The undrafted rookie signed with the Jaguars and was easily the best waiver add of the season. He finished as the RB4 in PPR scoring with 1,114 scrimmage yards, 10 touchdowns, and an additional 49 receptions for good measure. I have no idea what will happen to his situation this offseason - if the Jaguars draft another running back, it could be trouble - but his 2020 season was a magical one.
This award is given to the person with the cleanest shoes, and to me, that sounds an awful lot like a quarterback that didn’t get hit very much. We can get into a whole conversation about the Steelers’ offense, but Ben Roethlisberger stayed clean all year, being sacked only 13 times on the season. Staying clean keeps your offense moving, and nobody this year was better at that than Big Ben.
Image: (Getty Images)
I don’t care how obvious it might seem, this one is going to Tyreek Hill pretty much every year until he retires. Nobody else in the league is a threat to score from any point on the field at any given moment quite like the Cheetah. He’s the fastest player on the field, always. If he gets behind the defense, he’s gone, always. Tyreek Hill is capable of changing the game, both for the Chiefs and for your fantasy roster, with a single play. He finished as the WR2 on the season just behind Davante Adams with 1,276 receiving yards and 15 TDs.
For the final four weeks of the fantasy season and through the playoffs, the RB1 was not Alvin Kamara, even with his 56.2 fantasy point explosion. It wasn’t Derrick Henry, or Aaron Jones, or Dalvin Cook. It was David Montgomery. Montgomery put up 100.9 fantasy points in four weeks, consistently giving you over 20 fantasy points in three of those four weeks. His lowest mark was 18.1. Montgomery’s final quarter of the season was reliable, consistent, and elite. You can’t ask for much more.
Honorable mention: Jonathan Taylor, who was right behind Montgomery as the RB2 over the same stretch.
Boy, did Carson Wentz sure make a mess of things this year. Since he stunk up the place so bad that he got himself benched, let’s not look at his overall season finish, but instead, at his weekly average. Of all quarterbacks, Wentz was the QB22 in average fantasy points per game. That’s hardly startable even in superflex formats and is atrocious for someone that went in the top-10 at the position in drafts last summer. Wentz rounded out his 12-game stinker of a campaign with a 57.4% completion percentage, 2,620 yards, 16 touchdowns, 15 interceptions, was sacked 50 times and fumbled six times. Ouch.
Alvin. Effing. Kamara. I will never remember the Christmas night miracle that saw Kamara tie an NFL-record with six rushing touchdowns in a single game. SIX. He posted a colossal 56.2 fantasy points and sealed the deal on many championship matchups before we even reached the weekend. It was truly a legendary fantasy performance, and here’s the kicker - he could have had seven had head coach Sean Payton not dialed up a sneak to his BFF Taysom Hill. How dare he deprive us of history like that.
Finally, for the one that potentially cost you a fantasy football championship — Baker Mayfield. Apparently not having your three starting wide receivers because of COVID close-contact tracing is a bad thing. Many believed that in a powder-soft matchup against the New York Jets, that Baker would still put up good numbers, thanks to his running backs and tight end options. That, however, was not the case. Not only did the Browns inexplicably lose the game, but Baker gave you an abysmal 8.0 fantasy points, aided by having no touchdowns. Truly a flop of majestic proportions.