Fantasy Football 2011: A Guide to How You Ruined Your Fantasy Football Season

Russell PuntenneyJun 7, 2018

Sometimes in life you just can’t win, even when you’re supposed to.

Just ask the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles were supposed to be a championship contender this season.

They had the most hyped offseason in NFL history, re-signing their superstar quarterback to a long-term deal and adding four former Pro Bowlers (including the most sought after free agent on the market) to a team that had made the playoffs with a 10-6 record just one year prior.

They were christened a “Dream Team” before the season began and rightfully so: With that much talent compiled, they should have been among the best teams in football.

That’s what was supposed to happen.

What actually did happen is quite the opposite, as midway through the season the “Dream Team” label was dead, the Eagles were 3-5 on their way to a pedestrian 8-8 record and Michael Vick, the electric 31 year old quarterback they’d just inked to a lavish nine-figure contract over the summer, was one week away from cracking two of his ribs during a loss to the 2-6 Arizona Cardinals that would sideline him for almost a month straight.

What on earth went wrong?

It’s a question no Eagles fan can answer with confidence and it’s a question the majority of fantasy football players can relate to with frustrating ease.

Few fantasy football teams live up to the expectations their owners initially place on them.

For every no-name bench warmer that breaks out as a fantasy stud each season, after all, there’s some established fantasy force who completely flames out unexpectedly, and for every overachieving fantasy team that takes its league by surprise, there’s another who looks perfectly good on paper but just can’t seem to get it done on game day.

With so many fantasy leagues but so few champions, there’s a good chance your own team just met this very fate, and looking back on draft day now, it’s pretty clear things could have been different if only you’d have made some better decisions.

Read on to remember in horror how you totally blew it all this season, round by excruciating round.

Round 1: Chris Johnson, RB

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(Nerd Disclaimer: If you care, we’ll be building your team from the No. 4 position of an ESPN standard league snake draft. All ranks and statistics will also be based on the ESPN standard scoring format, and all decisions discussed must have been plausible at the time of the draft. Any references to Dungeons & Dragons, Klingons or TI-84 graphing calculators are purely coincidental.)

Pick No. 4: Chris Johnson, RB (Tennessee Titans)

Average Draft Position (ADP): 5.34

Total Fantasy Points: 157

With your first pick you chose Chris Johnson this year, because you’re a big dumb idiot and that’s what boneheads like you do.

Sound familiar?

If you drafted Chris Johnson this year you’ve been fighting mad about it since October, but it’s time to settle down.

And don’t be so hard on yourself, either. You had every right to draft Chris Johnson in the first round and you know it.

How could anyone have predicted the three-time Pro Bowler who became just the sixth player to rush for over 2,000 yards back in 2009 would fail so miserably this season?

How could anyone have known that Johnson, the young, healthy, explosive record-setter who recently put together a mind-boggling stretch of 15 100-yard rushing performances in a 17-game span between ‘09 and ’10, would cross the 100-yard threshold just four times all year?

You’re right, they couldn’t have, even if the former standout did miss training camp this year and even if the Titans did bring in a new head coach and starting quarterback in the offseason.

Nobody could have seen a collapse like this coming. Not ESPN, not Johnson himself and certainly not you, who took the back over 50 other players you could have drafted instead that would’ve scored you more fantasy points this season.

This is CJ2K we’re talking about here. The guy who dominated his position for two consecutive years and once challenged the fastest human on the planet to a footrace.

Who wouldn’t want a guy like that on their fantasy team?

Who You Should’ve Picked: LeSean McCoy, RB (Philadelphia Eagles)

ADP: 7.71

Total Fantasy Points: 270

Round 2: Hakeem Nicks, WR

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Pick No. 17: Hakeem Nicks, WR (New York Giants)

ADP: 20.65

Total Fantasy Points: 154

It’s not that Nicks was a complete bust this season, but he did get shown up by another receiver on his own team this year and he definitely wasn’t worth the high draft pick you used to select him back in August.

Nicks struggled with injuries throughout the season and found himself fighting for his quarterback’s attention ever since undrafted second-year receiver Victor Cruz broke out for 110 yards and two touchdowns against the Eagles in Week 3.

Cruz finished as the fourth-highest scoring wideout in fantasy football this season, while Nicks failed to even crack the top 10 thanks to nine single-digit fantasy performances on the year.

As with your first pick, you had every reason to expect Nicks would be worth a selection this early.

The three-year veteran was coming off a 1,000-yard, 11-touchdown performance at the time and seemed perfectly poised to improve upon those numbers in 2011, his first full season as the Giants' No. 1 receiver.

Not quite.

While his final stats from this year do look similar to 2010 (1,192 yards, seven touchdowns), they actually translate to an 11-point drop in fantasy production from last year and clearly don’t justify your choice to take the admittedly talented receiver over all the superior options still available at any point in the second round.

You could have had an absolute steal with this pick, and in a world where everything makes perfect sense and goes according to plan, that’s probably what would have happened.

But no, instead you had to sit back and watch as an unknown third-stringer with just three career games under his belt swooped in, stole as much of Nicks’ production as he could and ended up having the best statistical season for any receiver in franchise history.

This from a guy you could have just picked up off the waiver wire later on without even using a draft pick.

Just your luck.

Who You Should’ve Picked: Michael Turner, RB (Atlanta Falcons)

ADP: 21.58

Total Fantasy Points: 203

Round 3: Phillip Rivers, QB

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Pick No. 24: Phillip Rivers, QB (San Diego Chargers)

ADP: 24.29

Total Fantasy Points: 246

In Round 3 you solidified your quarterback position by adding one of the most consistent play-callers in all of fantasy football then promptly started patting yourself on the back for making such a wise move.

Five weeks into the season you were probably more likely to be found punching yourself over this pick than anything else.

Rivers was a fantasy phenomenon last season, outscoring Drew Brees, Matt Schaub and all but four other quarterbacks in the entire league.

Not this year.

Rivers did eventually turn things around and somehow put together a decent statistical season overall (4,624 yards and 27 touchdowns), but the usually consistent veteran was completely invisible for the entire first half of the year (he scored no more than 18 fantasy points in any of his first eight games) and he definitely wasn’t the elite fantasy player you thought you were getting when you cashed in this early draft pick to get him.

Even now, Rivers’ collapse this season is still tough to understand.

The Chargers did lose running back Darren Sproles in the offseason, but they already had a promising replacement on their roster in second-year back Ryan Matthews and you had to figure from a production standpoint, Rivers could have actually benefited more by not having the explosive, diminutive ball hog around to eat up all those precious yards anymore.

You’d have figured wrong if that were the case, and if so, that’s a lesson you and about ten million other fantasy football players probably had to learn the hard way this fall.

Oops.

Who You Should’ve Picked: Mike Wallace, WR (Pittsburgh Steelers)

ADP: 27.13

Total Fantasy Points: 162

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Round 4: Felix Jones, RB

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Pick No. 37: Felix Jones, RB (Dallas Cowboys)

ADP: 43.34

Total Fantasy Points: 71

Forget the injury that sidelined Jones for half the season and opened the door for newcomer DeMarco Murray to steal the spotlight in Dallas.

Jones was a draft pick you were already regretting long before Murray’s sudden rise to stardom, and it’s a pick you still feel you were justified in making despite how wrong you now know you were.

Felix was the leading scorer in a cluttered Cowboys backfield last year that suddenly shifted into focus in the offseason when former workhorse Marion Barber was released by the team.

Jones was all set to be the big dog in Big D this year, and fresh off a 2010 campaign in which he produced a career high 1,250 yards from scrimmage including an even 800 on the ground, you had every reason to expect he would pan out as a nifty pickup for you midway through your draft’s fourth round.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Jones appeared in 11 games this year and even though he was designated the Cowboys' No. 1 back in all of them, the fourth-year back out of Arkansas never scored more than 15 fantasy points in any game all season.

Your head was in the right place with this pick.

And if only your fantasy league handed out points for making sound decisions, you might still be happy about the choice right now.

Who You Should’ve Picked: Wes Welker, WR (New England Patriots)

ADP: 43.99

Total Fantasy Points: 206

Round 5: Mike Williams, WR

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Pick No. 44: Mike Williams, WR (Tampa Bay Buccaneers)

ADP: 41.72

Total Fantasy Points: 85

You couldn’t believe Williams fell into your lap at this position and after jumping at the chance to take him, you briefly stopped to wonder just what on earth the rest of your league was thinking letting him slip this far in the first place.

Now you know.

Williams was a pleasant surprise for all the fantasy teams he randomly wound up on in his rookie 2010 season (he fell just short of the 1,000-yard receiving mark while catching 11 touchdowns thrown to him by a second-year quarterback that everyone naturally expected would only improve this year), but his encore performance was anything but.

The 2011 version of Mike Williams was consistently irrelevant from start to finish and even included an abysmal stretch where he failed to score more than seven fantasy points in eight consecutive games.

He finished the season ranked as the No. 51 wide receiver in fantasy football (down a staggering 39 positions from his performance last year), while Josh Freeman, the quarterback he hooked up with on a weekly basis throughout 2010, slipped from a No. 7 position ranking last year to No. 17 this season.

What, you mean you really thought those two breakout stars from last season would do better in their second year?

Sounds like the real question on draft day might have actually been just what on earth were you thinking?

Who You Should’ve Picked: Matthew Stafford, QB (Detroit Lions)

ADP: 80.22

Total Fantasy Points: 333

Round 6: Dallas Clark, TE

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Pick No. 57: Dallas Clark, TE (Indianapolis Colts)

ADP: 56.8

Total Fantasy Points: 41

You knew this was a risky pick but you went ahead and made it anyway, probably because you saw all the elite tight ends were starting to go and you didn’t want to have to decide between Greg Olsen and Tony Scheffler five rounds later.

Big mistake.

Your sixth-round gamble haunted you all season long, as while Clark was busy totally sucking this year with nothing but backup quarterbacks throwing him the ball, tight ends taken up to 50 picks after him (the Saints’ Jimmy Graham was drafted as No. 77 on average while the Patriots’ Rob Gronkowski went around No. 105) were meanwhile blowing up for ridiculous, record-breaking numbers practically all season long.

Altogether a whopping 292 players wound up scoring more fantasy points this season than your sixth-round draft pick did, including 32 kickers, every single defense and every single other tight end taken during your league’s draft.

We all know what you were thinking—if Peyton Manning had played this season, Clark probably would have been a great value pick in this slot (when paired with Manning over the last four years, Clark averaged 56 yards per game and scored 30 touchdowns).

Does this really seem all that crazy looking back?

At the time of your draft, Manning had yet to miss a single game in his entire 13-year career and was still expected to play this year, too.

The second surgery that put Manning’s 2011 season in jeopardy didn’t even take place until Sept. 9 and Manning himself was still being drafted on average this fall ahead of stars like Tony Romo, Matt Ryan and brother Eli Manning, all of whom went on to finish as top 10 fantasy QB’s this season.

If Manning’s streak of consecutive starts would only have ended at 220 instead of 208, this pick might have paid off for you big time.

Instead it blew up in your face just a few days after you made it.

Live and learn.

Who You Should’ve Picked: Tony Gonzalez, TE (Atlanta Falcons)

ADP: 122.06

Total Fantasy Points: 123

Round 7: Ryan Grant, RB

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Pick No. 64: Ryan Grant, RB (Green Bay Packers)

ADP: 69.27

Total Fantasy Points: 86

This one really stings.

Grant was supposed to be your ace-in-the-hole.

The guy had fresh legs after sitting out virtually all of 2010 with an ankle injury that had been given plenty of time to heal, and before that setback he was coming off consecutive 1,000-yard rushing seasons while playing on one of the most explosive offenses in football.

You were banking on his comeback, you were banking on the rest of your league underestimating his impact and you were trusting that the Packers’ decision to designate him as their No. 1 running back this season actually meant something.

It didn’t, as the 61 carries Grant was given over the first half of the year paled in comparison to the 96 allotted to “backup” running back and average pick No. 107 James Starks, and your fantasy team suffered all year long as a result.

Ryan Grant didn’t produce a double-digit fantasy score until Week 14 this year, and if you were dumb enough to still have the 29-year-old Notre Dame grad on your roster at the time, you were handsomely rewarded with a performance against Oakland that nearly doubled Grant’s entire fantasy production on the season in just one game.

Actually, chances are those points probably went to another fantasy owner who picked up Grant when Starks got injured late in the season, just weeks after you gave up on the disappointing running back and finally released him from your team.

Was the universe just out to get you this season or what?

Who You Should’ve Picked: Marshawn Lynch, RB (Seattle Seahawks)

ADP: 79.45

Total Fantasy Points: 203

Round 8: Steelers Defense

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Pick No. 77: Pittsburgh Steelers Defense

ADP: 88.32

Total Fantasy Points: 129

You know you jumped the gun taking a defense this early, but if any premature defensive selection could be justified, this was clearly it.

The Steelers were the best fantasy unit in the league last season and they display the kind of year-to-year consistency only Baltimore can compete with.

Pittsburgh had just ridden that stingy defense all the way to Super Bowl XLV roughly six months before your draft, too (a run that produced four turnovers and included holding the aforementioned Ravens to 126 total yards in the Divisional Round), and with no significant changes in the offseason there was no reason to expect the Steel Curtain would be any easier to penetrate this year than it has in years past.

For all practical purposes the Steelers were actually better this year (they led the league by allowing 273.9 total yards per game this season, three fewer than what they gave up in 2010), but from a fantasy perspective, they saw a 50-point drop in total scoring and quickly lost favor with any sucker who added them to their lineups well before they should have in this year’s draft.

Like you, for example.

Nine defenses outscored the Steelers in fantasy football this season, including several that nobody in your league even used a draft pick on (like Seattle, Houston or Cincinnati), and if you really feel like torturing yourself now that the season is over, just consider that even at this point in the draft you could have still been boosting your roster with breakout stars like Jordy Nelson (No. 2 overall WR available until pick No. 123), Michael Bush (No. 11 RB available through pick No. 126) or Aaron Hernandez (No. 3 TE available at No. 134) if you wanted to.

Any chance that thought had already crossed your mind at some point this season?

Maybe just a couple thousand times?

Who You Should’ve Picked: Steve Smith, WR (Carolina Panthers)

ADP: 97.27

Total Fantasy Points: 175

Rounds 9 – 14: Whatever

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About a half hour into the draft you completely lost interest and just started clicking any old name you happened to recognize.

You figured all the important players were taken already and knew with your All-Star starting lineup already in tack, the rest of this was really just a formality anyway.

You should have known better.

Now you do.

Round 9

Pick No. 84: Joseph Addai, RB (Indianapolis Colts)

Who You Should’ve Picked: Mike Tolbert, RB (San Diego Chargers)

Round 10

Pick No. 97: Mike Thomas, WR (Jacksonville Jaguars)

Who You Should’ve Picked: San Francisco 49ers Defense

Round 11

Pick No. 104: Brandon Jacobs, RB (New York Giants)

Who You Should’ve Picked: Willis McGahee, RB (Denver Broncos)

Round 12

Pick No. 117: Kevin Kolb, QB (Arizona Cardinals)

Who You Should’ve Picked: Cam Newton, QB (Carolina Panthers)

Round 13

Pick No. 124: Lee Evans, WR (Baltimore Ravens)

Who You Should’ve Picked: James Jones, WR (Green Bay Packers)

Round 14

Pick No. 137: Greg Olsen, TE (Carolina Panthers)

Who You Should’ve Picked: Dustin Keller, TE (New York Jets)

Round 15: Matt Bryant, K

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Pick No. 144: Matt Bryant, K (Atlanta Falcons)

ADP: 167.10

Total Fantasy Points: 133

Completely drained and increasingly eager to finally get this thing over with, you just grabbed some random kicker with your final pick of the 2011 draft, quietly sighed in total self-satisfaction and went on your merry way.

Next stop: championship.

There’s no sense fretting about it now, as we all know you had every right to feel confident about the team you built this season and we all know there were factors at play derailing your team’s success that were way beyond your control.

It’s a feeling every fantasy player experiences at one time or another, and it’s a feeling every fantasy player learns to ignore if they know what’s good for them.

Just ask the Philadelphia Eagles.

No, really—go ahead and ask them.

It’s not like they have anything else going this time of year, now do they?

Who You Should’ve Picked: David Akers, K (San Francisco 49ers)

ADP: 178.54

Total Fantasy Points: 182