We all know the feeling. It’s Monday night and you have a certain scenario you need to play out to win one (or more) of your fantasy matchups. Despite your fantasy football platform claiming you have a 35% chance of winning, it feels like you barely have a shot. At least once, you return from the bathroom hoping your starting wide received pulled in three catches for 50 yards in the time it took you to commit a drop of your own.
Every once in a while in this situation, your guy pulls it out. A late touchdown; a meaningless 15-yard catch inside two minutes with no timeouts and down by 12; a clock-killer inside run bounced outside for 11; the winning fantasy football play takes many forms. With four weeks having Monday Night doubleheaders in 2024 (Weeks 3, 4, 7, 15), we’re already ahead of schedule on amassing more Monday Night moments of fantasy football victory than ever before.
We’re also way ahead of schedule in amassing fantasy football trauma via unfulfilled paths to victory. That is a lot more common.
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Fantasy Games Won (FGW)
A quick Fantasy Games Won (FGW) primer:
- FGW is a statistic that converts fantasy points into fantasy wins.
- Players get positive FGW points for outscoring average fantasy starters and negative points for below-average scores.
- A player can score up to +0.5 FGW for increasing your chances of winning from 50% to 100% or down to -0.5 for dropping your chances from 50% to 0%.
- Percent started matters – 0% started throttles your FGW down to 0.
For a longer explanation, check out the 2023 FGW launch on my blog. The stat hasn’t changed since its inception.
Who Won the Week?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 1 | Saquon Barkley | RB | 32 | 100% | 0.35 |
| 2 | Derrick Henry | RB | 30 | 98% | 0.32 |
| 3 | Kyren Williams | RB | 31 | 92% | 0.31 |
| 4 | Ja’Marr Chase | WR | 27 | 99% | 0.30 |
| 5 | Josh Allen | QB | 35 | 100% | 0.28 |
| 6 | Jonathan Taylor | RB | 26 | 99% | 0.26 |
| 7 | Rashee Rice | WR | 23 | 96% | 0.23 |
| 8 | Malik Nabers | WR | 24 | 77% | 0.20 |
| 9 | New York Jets D/ST | DEF | 16 | 91% | 0.17 |
| 10 | Aaron Jones | RB | 23 | 76% | 0.16 |
| 11 | Amari Cooper | WR | 24 | 64% | 0.16 |
| 12 | Dak Prescott | QB | 32 | 67% | 0.15 |
| 13 | Dallas Goedert | TE | 22 | 53% | 0.14 |
| 14 | Zach Charbonnet | RB | 24 | 59% | 0.14 |
| 15 | Joe Burrow | QB | 28 | 79% | 0.13 |
- What a week to be an Eagles fan that inadvisably also drafted Saquon Barkley to their fantasy team. If you want a bad game to hurt twice as much, I recommend drafting your favorite team’s skill players on your fantasy team. I don’t believe Eagles fans do this a lot, though. Having lived periods of my fantasy-playing life in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, it seems like Patriots fans are the ones who most frequently stack their favorite team’s skill players on their fantasy team.
- To be specific, I mostly saw that when the Patriots actually had skill players on their roster.
- There’s still time for my Derrick Henry bold prediction to come true. Oof.
- Ja’Marr Chase did help me win a Monday Night matchup. He owes me after that bold prediction I made about him, after all.
- Dak Prescott and the Cowboys exploding in the fourth quarter against the Ravens is a nice reminder you should turn your fantasy football emotions off from around 1:00 to 7:30 p.m. every Sunday.
- I’m no scout, but he’s Zach “Stutter-Step” Charbonnet to me. It just seems like he takes too many steps for the yards he gets. Take that man’s Fitbit away.
Who Lost the Week?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 15 | Davante Adams | WR | 6 | 96% | -0.13 |
| 14 | Jameson Williams | WR | 1 | 57% | -0.14 |
| 13 | Zay Flowers | WR | 4 | 77% | -0.14 |
| 12 | Tyreek Hill | WR | 6 | 96% | -0.14 |
| 11 | Jake Elliott | K | 1 | 87% | -0.14 |
| 10 | Ka’imi Fairbairn | K | 1 | 90% | -0.14 |
| 9 | Rashid Shaheed | WR | 0 | 57% | -0.14 |
| 8 | Josh Jacobs | RB | 5 | 92% | -0.16 |
| 7 | Mark Andrews | TE | 0 | 89% | -0.17 |
| 6 | Mike Evans | WR | 3 | 91% | -0.18 |
| 5 | James Conner | RB | 3 | 86% | -0.19 |
| 4 | C.J. Stroud | QB | 11 | 87% | -0.19 |
| 3 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 11 | 95% | -0.21 |
| 2 | Rhamondre Stevenson | RB | 0 | 81% | -0.22 |
| 1 | Anthony Richardson | QB | 5 | 80% | -0.26 |
- Pardon if my Jets fandom is showing, but if Tim Boyle starts for the Dolphins in Week 4, you’d sooner find a dolphin in a landlocked lake on the Texas coast than in my starting lineup. Even if that Dolphin is Tyreek Hill.
- Even so, apparently it was the right fantasy start sit decision to keep Jaylen Waddle in over Demarcus Robinson. Never underestimate the Tutu Atwell factor.
- What in the name of all that is Isaiah Likely has happened to Mark Andrews?
- Post-30 Mike Evans finally starting to look like Late-20s Mike Evans.
- Anthony Richardson lost the week? Do players lose their talent when I name them in bold prediction articles?
Week 3 Junior Varsity All-Stars
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 1 | Jauan Jennings | WR | 41 | 12% | 0.39 |
| 2 | Cole Kmet | TE | 21 | 13% | 0.22 |
| 3 | Chuba Hubbard | RB | 25 | 17% | 0.21 |
| 4 | Diontae Johnson | WR | 22 | 20% | 0.18 |
| 5 | Rome Odunze | WR | 20 | 13% | 0.16 |
| 6 | Tre Tucker | WR | 19 | 0% | 0.16 |
| 7 | Andy Dalton | QB | 28 | 0% | 0.14 |
| 8 | Dallas Goedert | TE | 22 | 53% | 0.13 |
| 9 | Calvin Austin | WR | 18 | 0% | 0.12 |
| 10 | Jayden Daniels | QB | 30 | 37% | 0.12 |
| 11 | Sam Darnold | QB | 27 | 13% | 0.12 |
| 12 | Malik Willis | QB | 26 | 0% | 0.12 |
| 13 | Jakobi Meyers | WR | 18 | 8% | 0.12 |
| 14 | Brock Purdy | QB | 29 | 41% | 0.10 |
| 15 | DeAndre Hopkins | WR | 16 | 0% | 0.10 |
- Speaking of the Tutu Atwell factor, the ultimate Tutu Atwell this week was Jauan Jennings. He had the fourth-biggest bench-scoring week since I started tracking FGW in 2021. The only other players to soar off the bench to such a grand degree since 2021 are the Seattle Defense in Week 4 of 2023 (30 points at 0% started, 0.40 bFGW), Taysom Hill in Week 5 of 2022 (35.08 points as a 6% started tight end, 0.41 bFGW) and last season’s never-to-be-eclipsed De’Von Achane in Week 3 (49.3 points at 0% started, 0.48 FGW).
- Turns out Cole Kmet had to have a few bad games to get out of fantasy starting lineups before he was comfortable performing again. The year-long bFGW champ wins the Cole Kmet Sand Worm, after all.
- I am still 90% certain Tre Tucker was auto-generated when we let Madden franchise mode simulate the 2023 NFL Draft.
This is the End… My Only Friend, Tight End
Not to go unnoticed, but if you check the 2024 FGW Leaderboards, you’ll notice Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews are both in the bottom three for the season thus far. I can’t think of another time when the top two players at a position suddenly, at the same time, got old. It’s the real-life Matt Damon Private Ryan meme times two.
What to do? I guess we should check the wisdom of those who foretold of this event. Let’s see what Jim Morrison had to say in Verse 2 of The End…
Can you picture what will be? So limitless and free. Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand in a desperate land.
Stranger’s hand? Desperate land? You heard the man, Brenton Strange to the moon.
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