Happy New Year everyone! If you’re wondering whether I spent New Year’s Eve compiling FGW statistics, just know that it was either that or arguing with strangers about probability math problems.
Rather than bust out my old combinatorics textbook, we’re busting out the red carpet for the Fantasy Games Won Awards. I’ll be referring to the awards throughout the article today for the readers who wish fantasy football had its own version of the NFL Awards.
- Waiver Wire Advice
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
Fantasy Games Won (FGW)
Fantasy Games Won (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 zero.
For a longer explanation, check out the 2023 FGW launch on my blog. The stat hasn’t changed since its inception.
Who Won Week 17?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 1 | Tee Higgins | WR | 34.6 | 90% | 0.36 |
| 2 | Joe Burrow | QB | 40.0 | 84% | 0.30 |
| 3 | Trey McBride | TE | 24.3 | 91% | 0.28 |
| 4 | Jonathan Taylor | RB | 26.6 | 98% | 0.27 |
| 5 | Mike Evans | WR | 25.7 | 96% | 0.27 |
| 6 | Malik Nabers | WR | 32.6 | 66% | 0.25 |
| 7 | Jahmyr Gibbs | RB | 24.3 | 100% | 0.23 |
| 8 | Baker Mayfield | QB | 39.6 | 61% | 0.22 |
| 9 | Derrick Henry | RB | 23.5 | 97% | 0.21 |
| 10 | Bijan Robinson | RB | 23.3 | 98% | 0.21 |
| 11 | Lamar Jackson | QB | 31.4 | 95% | 0.21 |
| 12 | Philadelphia | DEF | 19.0 | 80% | 0.19 |
| 13 | Jayden Daniels | QB | 34.8 | 67% | 0.19 |
| 14 | Travis Kelce | TE | 18.4 | 91% | 0.19 |
| 15 | DeVonta Smith | WR | 27.0 | 58% | 0.18 |
- After a regular season where the correct Bengal nearly every week was Ja’Marr Chase, the correct tactic for the championship was the Higgins & Burrow stack. If you trotted out that combo, you had a 99.1% chance of bringing home the bacon.
- Nice home stretch for Jonathan Taylor. His below-expectation regular season meant his managers probably missed the playoffs. But if you made the playoffs with him, you won the whole thing 68% of the time.
- Looking ahead to next year, Jahmyr Gibbs has to get some #1 overall pick love, right? Saquon is probably the favourite to be the top pick, but I could see some Jahmyr believers come out of the woodwork. I wonder if there’s a parallel between Gibbs/David Montgomery and Chris Johnson/LenDale White, where it turned out Johnson was actually the better goal-line back and had one of the greatest seasons ever when he finally got the full workload.
- Speaking of edging out Saquon, Lamar Jackson was the player that gave you the best chance of winning a title this past season. He was a bit short of Ja’Marr and Saquon for Regular Season MVP, but his great playoffs combined with the fact that he was a 3rd/4th round pick meant his performance was ultimately the most impactful.
Who Lost Week 17?
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | FGW |
| 15 | Jaxon Smith-Njigba | WR | 4.7 | 73% | -0.12 |
| 14 | Rhamondre Stevenson | RB | 0.1 | 45% | -0.12 |
| 13 | Ka’imi Fairbairn | K | 0.0 | 70% | -0.13 |
| 12 | Rachaad White | RB | 3.9 | 63% | -0.13 |
| 11 | Isiah Pacheco | RB | 1.8 | 53% | -0.13 |
| 10 | CeeDee Lamb | WR | 0.0 | 51% | -0.13 |
| 9 | Breece Hall | RB | 5.8 | 81% | -0.13 |
| 8 | Cooper Kupp | WR | 3.4 | 78% | -0.15 |
| 7 | Indianapolis | DEF | -4.0 | 60% | -0.15 |
| 6 | Brandon Aubrey | K | 1.0 | 94% | -0.15 |
| 5 | Joe Mixon | RB | 4.9 | 85% | -0.16 |
| 4 | De’Von Achane | RB | 4.8 | 96% | -0.18 |
| 3 | Jalen Hurts | QB | 0.0 | 48% | -0.18 |
| 2 | James Conner | RB | 1.8 | 82% | -0.20 |
| 1 | Terry McLaurin | WR | 1.0 | 88% | -0.21 |
- A sneakily painful player to have this year was Iasiah Pacheco. He was never the same after coming back from injury and gave managers only a 2.4% chance of winning the championship. Now I know who to blame for my work league team’s failure.
- Last year’s Playoff MVP was CeeDee Lamb. I hope you didn’t put too many lamb chops in your egg basket this year.
- Jalen Hurts somehow had a 48% start number in Week 17. This is almost certainly because if you had him in Week 16, you had nothing to play for in Week 17.
- Talk about a sour note to end on for Terry McLaurin. This was his first positive FGW season since I started recording the data in 2021, and it capped off with a decently high chance he lost your finals matchup.
Week 17 Junior Varsity All-Stars
| # | Player | Pos | Pts | %St | bFGW |
| 1 | Drew Lock | QB | 38.4 | 0% | 0.34 |
| 2 | Marvin Mims | WR | 26.2 | 0% | 0.29 |
| 3 | Ricky Pearsall | WR | 24.7 | 0% | 0.26 |
| 4 | Zach Ertz | TE | 22.2 | 20% | 0.22 |
| 5 | Alec Pierce | WR | 21.2 | 0% | 0.20 |
| 6 | Tyler Conklin | TE | 17.7 | 0% | 0.19 |
| 7 | Michael Pittman | WR | 21.4 | 11% | 0.18 |
| 8 | Adam Thielen | WR | 25.5 | 36% | 0.18 |
| 9 | Olamide Zaccheaus | WR | 19.3 | 0% | 0.16 |
| 10 | Jalen McMillan | WR | 20.5 | 24% | 0.14 |
| 11 | Brock Purdy | QB | 33.3 | 46% | 0.14 |
| 12 | Baker Mayfield | QB | 39.6 | 61% | 0.14 |
| 13 | Malik Nabers | WR | 32.6 | 66% | 0.13 |
| 14 | DeVonta Smith | WR | 27.0 | 58% | 0.13 |
| 15 | Jameson Williams | WR | 22.0 | 45% | 0.12 |
- Drew Lock‘s 0.34 bench FGW is the highest mark I have on record for a QB. While I don’t necessarily agree Giants fans should have been rooting for a loss against the Colts – I don’t think it’s self-evident that tanking helps your team in the long term – I feel bad for the Giants fans also starting the Colts defense in fantasy.
- A handful of 20-burgers here that we’ll point to when looking for breakouts next year: 26.2 for Marvin Mims, 24.7 for Ricky Pearsall, 21.1 for Alec Piece, and 20.5 for Jalen McMillan, too.
- Olamide Zaccheaus was started 0% again. He’s 1 game away from 4 years without a percent start rate of 1% or higher.
- What a Junior Varsity season for Baker Mayfield. He had already amassed a near-record total of bench-FGW by Week 8 (0.76, which would have been the most for the full season in 2021 and 2023) and finished off the season with another 0.32 bench-FGW in the last 4 weeks. The greatest JV season of all time means that in future seasons, I will be awarding the bench-FGW season leader an award named the Baker Mayfield Hayfever Cake.
- I decided against naming it the Zyn cake and instead went with a play on his last name.
Chances of 2024 Repeating Itself: ~0%
Thank you for following along in 2024! While I can’t see from my perspective if you won your fantasy title, I can say that if you had Lamar or Saquon, there’s about a 1/4 chance that you did. 2024 was a challenging year for fantasy managers in the early season, as many of the high draft picks took a few weeks to get going. Congrats to those who weathered the rocky seas.
If you didn’t pull out the big win, I’m happy to help calculate the probability that you will pull it off in 2025. Now it’s time to enjoy the real NFL playoff race. See you next Fantasy season.
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