The fantasy football playoffs have arrived! Full disclosure: I am in 35 season-long leagues; 25 are dynasty, and 10 are redraft. Most of my redraft leagues are charity-driven since I mainly focus on dynasty and DFS during the season. My teams run the gamut. I have some last-place squads that either succumbed to mass injuries or simply stunk.

I have a couple of teams that finished with 6-8 records and snuck into the playoffs. I am sad to announce that one of my best teams, which finished as the third-highest-scoring team in the league, missed the playoffs with a 7-7 record. There are a few squads that are locked and loaded and ready to chase a ‘ship. They are my pride and joy and the ones that I will proudly display to my internet friends on social media.

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For those of you who are not playoff-bound, I wish you the best of luck in the mean streets of DFS. You can certainly get your fix that way. As for the rest of you, the fantasy season has blossomed into a quest to dodge an injury minefield with a mixture of guys you drafted and a few faces peeled off the waiver wire. You have done your job to drag that merry band of misfits into the playoffs. Now that the playoffs have begun, the thirst for luck is unquenchable. Quite literally anything can happen over the next three weeks, so don’t rest on your laurels with an undefeated one-seed or fret about your chances with a 6-8 six-seed. League champions can take any shape; usually, it’s the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I learned to tell stories from my Grandpa Willie. He was quite the angler; there’s still a cove named after him where the Chinook salmon run on the Sacramento River. “The camera adds ten pounds, so what’s a couple more on a fish when you’re telling the tale?” He would nudge me with a crooked smile as he lit the wood chips in his Little Chief smoker. He could always set the scene so well that you could hear the ospreys screech. If I reel in some fantasy football trophies, I’ll give my best effort to do my lineage justice. Here are the top storylines for Week 15: the quarterfinals.

Christian McCaffeinated

Remember when Christian McCaffrey was “injury-prone?” Yeah, me neither. The same goes for this season’s RB5, Saquon Barkley. Nevertheless, CMC is still the best fantasy RB of this era, continuing the legacies of Marshall Faulk and LaDainian Tomlinson with a lethal duality tailor-made for PPR leagues. McCaffrey is averaging more than 20 fantasy points per game this season and is currently RB3 overall, just behind Austin Ekeler and Josh Jacobs. His trade to San Francisco has united him with offensive mastermind Kyle Shanahan, who has already deployed him as the terrifying weapon he has always been.

CMC is also playoff-bound this season, which has only happened once in his illustrious career. He has been saved from the throes of Carolina’s ineptitude. My favorite part of all is that if you had faith in his health, CMC was a fantastic first-round pick who has carried you to this point in the season. Better yet, his Week 15 matchup is against the Seattle Seahawks. They haven’t stopped an RB since the Legion of Boom days.

Thirst Trap QB

Justin Herbert was referred to as “The Social Media QB” by media blowhard Emmanuel Acho. What he meant was that Herbert wasn’t as good as we tout him to be and that his “occasional unbelievable throws” were the shaky foundation that couldn’t support him as an elite signal caller in the same realm as Patrick Mahomes and others. I’m here to tell Mr. Acho (and all the other doubters) that the pride of Eugene, Oregon, is absolutely bleeping elite in every sense of the word.

Herbert was nearly perfect on Sunday night versus the Miami Dolphins. For the first time this season, his top three receivers were on the field at the same time. Keenan Allen and Mike Williams on the outside and Austin Ekeler out of the backfield were the recipients of countless perfect passes, despite the 6-foot-6 QB running for his life behind a tattered offensive line. Yes, they made us social media zombies quiver in excitement.

The real football degenerates pulled up the All-22 tape and watched his pass to Keenan Allen on a quick out at the sticks on loop through bloodshot eyes until the wee hours of the next morning. Justin Herbert is a demigod at real and fantasy football and checks all the boxes to go viral on a weekly basis for those who have “perfect passes” in their Instagram algorithm. His Week 15 date with the Tennessee Titans and their abysmal secondary will be trending, Mr. Acho.

The Wilkes to Win

Don’t look now, but the Carolina Panthers are only one game behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for first place in the NFC South. They are only 5-8 this season and have gone to great lengths to overtly signal a rebuild, but there is a Moxy to this team from Charlotte. Sam Darnold has looked pretty decent as the third QB-turned-starter. The emphasis of the post-McCaffrey offense is, ironically, the running game, led by the bruising D’Onta Foreman. The young receiving corps around DJ Moore has also stepped up. Terrace Marshall and Shi Smith have been plenty serviceable.

The real mark of this team, coached by one-time Cardinals’ head coach Steve Wilkes, is their swarming defense. All-Pro edge rusher Brian Burns is an unstoppable force, while second-year pro Jeremy Chinn has all the ball-hawking chops of Tyrann Mathieu. The Denver Broncos were given all sorts of credit for their selection of Patrick Surtain, but the player selected right before the Alabama star is quietly excelling for Carolina. Jaycee Horn, son of former Saints WR Joe Horn (the guy with the famous flip phone touchdown celebration), has been spectacular since returning from his latest nagging injury. His two interceptions on Sunday capped off a wonderful win over the Titans. Arizona unceremoniously fired Wilkes for a failed college coach, but there are signs of life on this team. There are also more valuable fantasy assets on this squad than meet the eye.

Much to My McVay

The Baker Mayfield saga is as epic as it gets. The Heisman winner and top overall pick by the Browns has certainly had his tribulations over the past couple of years. Mayfield was awesome in 2020, leading Cleveland to its first playoff win in ages. Unfortunately, 2021 was a disaster; Mayfield combined his hilarious insurance commercials with playing through a ripped-up throwing shoulder and really struggled. His fanbase abandoned him post haste. The franchise also cast him aside to pay a king’s ransom for a man who hadn’t fielded an NFL snap in over a year and was embroiled in a nasty legal matter.

His arrival in Carolina this year saw him clash with the dysfunctional Matt Rhule regime. The Panthers soon tore the whole thing down and released Mayfield on Monday. He was claimed by the Los Angeles Rams on Tuesday. The embattled QB took a leap of faith and had his plane tickets to Southern California ready to go. Two days later, Mayfield dropped a plum in the bucket to Van Jefferson against press coverage to culminate a 98-yard drive to beat the Raiders at the buzzer.

I am hard-pressed to come up with a more compelling football story in recent memory. I am rooting for Baker Mayfield. Whether his future lies with Sean McVay and the Rams or elsewhere, he can be a vocal leader and win games in this league. Who knows? Maybe Baker Mayfield can be the streaming QB who helps you win your fantasy championship in the year 2022. What a story that would be…

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