I’ve always been a proponent of having a large number of fantasy football teams. Not just because it gives you more of a reason to check out my article every week — because that’s a perfectly fine reason to have many teams, as it is — but because there are emotional benefits to having many teams.
Fantasy football managers know that watching your team on Sunday can feel like watching a heartbeat monitor for an irregular heartbeat — mostly silence with a few dramatic BEEPS sprinkled in. When you only have one or two teams, those flatlines can be painfully long. You’re constantly wondering if your team is flatlining for good.
When you manage many fantasy football teams, those heartbeats start to blend together and create more of a proxy for watching the stock market. If you’re sufficiently diversified, you will have an emotionally stable day almost every Sunday. At least relatively so.
2024 has been a rough year for the fantasy football day traders. Week 5 was the first week this season where all fantasy players combined for a positive FGW number. If your stocks were plummeting through Week 4, Week 5 probably felt like things turned around a bit. Let’s buy the dip and see who joined in the bull market.
- Waiver Wire Advice
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
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 | Ja’Marr Chase | WR | 36.3 | 99% | 0.41 |
| 2 | Lamar Jackson | QB | 37.4 | 100% | 0.32 |
| 3 | Drake London | WR | 27.4 | 91% | 0.28 |
| 4 | Joe Burrow | QB | 38.8 | 72% | 0.25 |
| 5 | DJ Moore | WR | 25.0 | 85% | 0.23 |
| 6 | Garrett Wilson | WR | 22.6 | 92% | 0.21 |
| 7 | Tee Higgins | WR | 24.8 | 70% | 0.19 |
| 8 | Brock Bowers | TE | 19.7 | 77% | 0.18 |
| 9 | Mike Evans | WR | 20.7 | 92% | 0.17 |
| 10 | George Kittle | TE | 16.4 | 94% | 0.15 |
| 11 | Ka’imi Fairbairn | K | 16.0 | 90% | 0.15 |
| 12 | Younghoe Koo | K | 17.0 | 79% | 0.15 |
| 13 | Tucker Kraft | TE | 22.8 | 52% | 0.15 |
| 14 | Harrison Butker | K | 14.0 | 100% | 0.13 |
| 15 | Brandon Aiyuk | WR | 18.7 | 84% | 0.12 |
- Chase joins Christian McCaffrey and Tyreek Hill as the only players to have three games at 0.40 FGW or more since the start of 2021. Chase is probably the player I’ve touted the most since starting up FGW, so it’s great to see him up there. We have a miniature party at the Cobalt household whenever Chase has a big game. We’re going to keep having them unless my kids start to show signs of becoming inadvertent Bengals fans.
- The Bengals definitely inadvertently converted a few kids to the team with the big games from Chase, Burrow and Higgins; not to mention the “cool tiger uniforms” as my kids say.
- This was actually the first very good Bowers game. Which is odd, because he already felt like a clear top-5 tight end already. Apparently the bar for “top-5 tight end” this year was “not being terrible.”
- Despite only recently rising from the relative obscurity of a box of elbow noodles, Kraft is actually ahead of Bowers in FGW this year (0.15 vs. 0.06, respectively). He’s making Grandpa Robert proud.
Who Lost the Week?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 15 | Brock Purdy | QB | 14.1 | 60% | -0.09 |
| 14 | Dontayvion Wicks | WR | 3.0 | 50% | -0.10 |
| 13 | Diontae Johnson | WR | 4.4 | 63% | -0.11 |
| 12 | Jordan Mason | RB | 8.3 | 100% | -0.11 |
| 11 | Josh Allen | QB | 15.6 | 96% | -0.12 |
| 10 | Sam Darnold | QB | 4.3 | 36% | -0.12 |
| 9 | George Pickens | WR | 4.1 | 70% | -0.12 |
| 8 | DK Metcalf | WR | 5.5 | 93% | -0.13 |
| 7 | Patrick Mahomes | QB | 13.4 | 80% | -0.14 |
| 6 | Aaron Jones | RB | 5.8 | 93% | -0.15 |
| 5 | Marvin Harrison | WR | 4.6 | 96% | -0.16 |
| 4 | Breece Hall | RB | 5.2 | 97% | -0.17 |
| 3 | Chris Olave | WR | 2.0 | 88% | -0.19 |
| 2 | Deebo Samuel | WR | 2.5 | 95% | -0.19 |
| 1 | De’Von Achane | RB | 2.2 | 91% | -0.21 |
- So much for the Wicks hype train. No Watson, no Doubs, no difference.
- We might have to consider the possibility that Mason doesn’t quite have the talent to justify a 100% started rate. Even with the most football-y name in football.
- If you benched Patrick Mahomes for Darnold this week, I would like to apologize to you on behalf of the universe for that one. You at least get a pat on the back for a creative move. If you get a call from Woody Johnson today, maybe don’t answer it.
- If any training staff didn’t need to see another concussion this year, it was the Dolphins’. Achane and all the Dolphins are required guardian caps for the rest of the season.
Week 4 Junior Varsity All-Stars
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | bFGW |
| 1 | Kirk Cousins | QB | 38.4 | 14% | 0.29 |
| 2 | Tank Bigsby | RB | 25.4 | 5% | 0.24 |
| 3 | Darnell Mooney | WR | 27.0 | 22% | 0.24 |
| 4 | Darius Slayton | WR | 22.2 | 0% | 0.22 |
| 5 | Alec Pierce | WR | 20.9 | 0% | 0.19 |
| 6 | Joe Flacco | QB | 29.6 | 6% | 0.17 |
| 7 | Tucker Kraft | TE | 22.8 | 52% | 0.14 |
| 8 | Jalen Tolbert | WR | 18.2 | 3% | 0.13 |
| 9 | Charlie Kolar | TE | 14.1 | 0% | 0.12 |
| 10 | JuJu Smith-Schuster | WR | 16.5 | 0% | 0.10 |
| 11 | Isaiah Likely | TE | 14.8 | 23% | 0.10 |
| 12 | Joe Burrow | QB | 38.8 | 72% | 0.10 |
| 13 | Bo Nix | QB | 25.1 | 1% | 0.09 |
| 14 | Rico Dowdle | RB | 18.4 | 24% | 0.09 |
| 15 | Brian Thomas | WR | 20.7 | 54% | 0.09 |
- I expected to see Cousins and Mooney on the JV All-Stars this week. I also expected to see Pitts here, but he maintained 69% started this past week, meaning he only racked up 0.02 bench-FGW.
- If anyone gives Mason a run for most football-y name in football, it’s Bigsby. Though Tank’s name is less of a “Friday Night Lights character” and more of an “NFL Blitz create-a-player” name.
- The 24% of Dowdle managers relying on him pulling a touchdown out of his gizzard were rewarded with a”Job Well Done” speech from the Skipper Sunday night. I mean on Monday Morning.
The Chicken Mar-Saleh is Officially Roasted
Let’s pivot from flightless birds to grounded aircraft for a moment. If your favorite team – whether inadvertently chose as a kid or not – is as prone to emotional altitude changes as much as the Jets are, that’s just even more reason to have a ton of fantasy football teams. You need to make sure your overhead compartment is so full that your NFL team’s emotional baggage has to go in the cargo bay.
Another way to help put your emotions on autopilot is to follow along in the race for FGW Season MVP, which I’m tracking over on my X account. But when your team(s) eventually do flatline, just remember we’re all going down in this fantasy football ship together. Good luck in Week 6, and if you happened to lose to Bo Nix this past week, remember that your seat this week is in an emergency exit row.
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Follow Byron Cobalt on X if you want to hear a football dad rant about his neighbors every Sunday.