Week 14 was the last week of the Fantasy Regular Season for most leagues. While some leagues wait an additional week to start the playoffs, thankfully, it’s pretty rare to start playoffs a week early.
Any league that did start playoffs a week early probably had more upsets than a daycare drop-off in Panthers’ country.
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Fantasy Games Won (FGW)
I go over the FGW statistic in Week 8’s article. For a deeper dive, check out my blog. TL;DR: 0.15 = 15% increase in your chances of winning a fantasy matchup.
Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Have Good Players
One of the fun things about tracking FGW is you can easily put different weeks into perspective. For example: Was Week 14 an especially crazy week?
If you had a top 20 fantasy player on your team, and especially if you had a few of them, it most certainly was.
| Week | Top 20 Combined FGW |
| Week 1 | 0.84 |
| Week 2 | 1.39 |
| Week 3 | 1.57 |
| Week 4 | 1.69 |
| Week 5 | 0.95 |
| Week 6 | 1.37 |
| Week 7 | 1.75 |
| Week 8 | 2.38 |
| Week 9 | 0.66 |
| Week 10 | 1.74 |
| Week 11 | 0.42 |
| Week 12 | 2.91 |
| Week 13 | 1.90 |
| Week 14 | -0.23 |
Week 14 has been the only week this season where the top 20 fantasy players combined for a negative score. This means that, on average, the top 20 fantasy players produced less than average fantasy starters on a typical week.
To be fair, the rest of the fantasy universe didn’t do great in Week 14 compared to a typical week (all of fantasy combined for -0.82. Which is bad, but not astronomically so). Still, this much perturbation at the top means we have some unexpected fantasy teams moving onto Week 15 and the playoffs.
Before we get to Week 15, let’s gather wood and oil for Week 14.
Who Won The Week?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 1 | Deebo Samuel | WR | 30.5 | 93% | 0.33 |
| 2 | Brandon Aubrey | K | 22.0 | 100% | 0.28 |
| 3 | Evan Engram | TE | 27.0 | 76% | 0.26 |
| 4 | Lamar Jackson | QB | 34.6 | 84% | 0.23 |
| 5 | New Orleans | DEF | 21.0 | 80% | 0.22 |
| 6 | DJ Moore | WR | 23.8 | 88% | 0.22 |
| 7 | David Njoku | TE | 24.1 | 56% | 0.17 |
| 8 | Raheem Mostert | RB | 22.5 | 81% | 0.16 |
| 9 | Saquon Barkley | RB | 21.6 | 88% | 0.16 |
| 10 | Cooper Kupp | WR | 21.5 | 74% | 0.15 |
| 11 | Rachaad White | RB | 20.5 | 94% | 0.15 |
| 12 | Joe Mixon | RB | 20.0 | 91% | 0.14 |
| 13 | George Kittle | TE | 15.1 | 94% | 0.13 |
| 14 | DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 21.9 | 59% | 0.13 |
| 15 | James Cook | RB | 22.6 | 61% | 0.12 |
- Deebo with the back-to-back weekly wins! Deebo’s total FGW for Weeks 1-12 was -0.10, so he was bullying your team from time to time. Especially that Week 4 – Week 6 stretch when he scored less than 12 total points. He gets his end-of-season redemption arc in.
- With an awesome week, Brandon Aubrey is actually knocking at the door of the MVP top 20. If you adjust for where he was picked (i.e., the last round, hopefully), he’s ninth overall. As it turns out, getting Aubrey was an even better choice than getting Sam LaPorta…which is more proof the fantasy football kicker needs to be retired. I mean, come on. Ditch the kicker.
- David Njoku with his first appearance on the FGW leaderboard! Only 56% started seems on-point, so he needed an awesome week to get on here. Back in the 2018 Hard Knocks season, there was a scene where undrafted/featured tight end Devon Cajuste brought something like his mother’s homemade cookies to the tight end meeting room. Fellow tight end Seth DeValve declined the offer to have some. Njoku walks in and is like, “You don’t have to ask me twice.” I think about that scene a lot.
- The battle for RB2 from an FGW standpoint is now down to Raheem Mostert vs. Alvin Kamara. It is mathematically impossible for Christian McCaffrey to fall behind either of them in one week.
- I’m trying to think up a metric to measure fantasy football strangeness, where player performance that doesn’t make sense grades highly. James Cook would have a high score there. He’s no Gabe Davis (check out Week 12 for that one), but just to give an idea, his worst week (3.6 pts, Week 5) was also his highest percentage started (91%).
Who Lost The Week?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 15 | Jordan Love | QB | 9.9 | 47% | -0.11 |
| 14 | Zack Moss | RB | 7.6 | 97% | -0.12 |
| 13 | Patrick Mahomes | QB | 14.6 | 89% | -0.13 |
| 12 | D’Andre Swift | RB | 3.9 | 70% | -0.14 |
| 11 | Josh Jacobs | RB | 6.0 | 93% | -0.15 |
| 10 | Justin Jefferson | WR | 3.7 | 86% | -0.16 |
| 9 | Stefon Diggs | WR | 4.4 | 95% | -0.16 |
| 8 | Ja’Marr Chase | WR | 4.4 | 98% | -0.16 |
| 7 | Nico Collins | WR | 1.8 | 76% | -0.17 |
| 6 | Amon-Ra St. Brown | WR | 3.6 | 98% | -0.18 |
| 5 | C.J. Stroud | QB | 3.6 | 55% | -0.19 |
| 4 | Tua Tagovailoa | QB | 9.1 | 78% | -0.20 |
| 3 | Mike Evans | WR | 1.3 | 88% | -0.20 |
| 2 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 8.9 | 94% | -0.24 |
| 1 | Justin Herbert | QB | 1.8 | 75% | -0.27 |
- Justin Herbert putting an exclamation point on an unfortunate year. He also fell to second in the Herbert Power Rankings, which is also last place in the Herbert Power Rankings. Khalil wins the Herbie this year.
- Jalen Hurts fulfilling his namesake to the greatest degree we’ve seen from him. This is his worst FGW week since I started recording FGW in 2021, and I doubt if we had data for 2020, he’d have a week as bad as this one. His previous low was Week 12 of 2021, when we scored 6.9 points, but was only started 72% of the time.
- The players dropping in the MVP (most FGW) race this week are Jalen Hurts (seventh to 10th overall), Stefon Diggs (11th to 13th), Mike Evans (12th to 20th) and Justin Jefferson (16th all the way to 23rd).
- In retrospect, it may have been better for fantasy teams if Justin Jefferson did not come back this week and instead “continued to heal.” Thankfully, he could be back in Week 15.
Week 13 Junior Varsity All-Stars
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | bFGW |
| 1 | Minnesota | DEF | 20.0 | 18% | 0.21 |
| 2 | Ezekiel Elliott | RB | 23.5 | 9% | 0.20 |
| 3 | Greg Zuerlein | K | 17.0 | 5% | 0.18 |
| 4 | Hunter Henry | TE | 17.5 | 6% | 0.18 |
| 5 | Chicago | DEF | 14.0 | 0% | 0.14 |
| 6 | Drake London | WR | 24.2 | 45% | 0.14 |
| 7 | David Njoku | TE | 24.1 | 56% | 0.13 |
| 8 | Desmond Ridder | QB | 26.4 | 1% | 0.12 |
| 9 | Odell Beckham | WR | 17.7 | 9% | 0.12 |
| 10 | Denver | DEF | 14.0 | 19% | 0.12 |
| 11 | Lucas Havrisik | K | 13.0 | 0% | 0.11 |
| 12 | Isaiah Likely | TE | 16.8 | 38% | 0.11 |
| 13 | Matthew Stafford | QB | 26.7 | 14% | 0.11 |
| 14 | Chase Brown | RB | 18.0 | 0% | 0.11 |
| 15 | Las Vegas | DEF | 12.0 | 3% | 0.10 |
*bFGW is the FGW total lost due to low percent started numbers. Essentially, points scored on fantasy benches or free-agent lists.
- Don’t ever forget that Patriots running backs are impossible to understand. Zeke is just the latest example of this, going off at 9% started.
- Speaking of strangeness, Drake London actually rewarded an uptick in percentage started (14% to 45%) with a big week. It’s like we know what we’re doing sometimes!
- Desmond Ridder will undoubtedly get some streaming looks in Week 15. Expect his percentage to start to jump up from that paltry 1%.
Leaderboard Updates
The Tyreek vs. McCaffrey battle is very much up for grabs.
The best picks after the first round were either Dallas (Defense) or Allen (Keenan).
Najee will win some sort of award this year, that’s for sure.
It turns out your main job was to avoid drafting Najee, Joe Burrow or Nick Chubb.
So Passes Week 14, Son of Week 13
Hopefully, you have something to play for in Week 15. I’m a huge fan of having multiple fantasy teams — helps to avoid fixating on certain players throughout Sunday afternoon — so if you’re a fellow believer in that, you probably have at least one of two still alive.
If you don’t, hopefully, Fantasy Games Won is at least putting your season into proper context. Let it be a coping mechanism.
Whether for fantasy football or whatever pastime replaced it for you every winter, good luck in Week 15.
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