Season Recap: Adam's been the ostensible favorite pretty much since Week 1, when he threw down the gauntlet by throwing up 154 points. Lamar Jackson had 45 of those, and hasn't really let up since. Adam nabbed him in the 7th round, and has reaped the benefits all year. But it wasn't just nabbing Jackson, it was nabbing Jackson and not spending on another option. I'm sure a lot of teams are doing quite well with Rivers and Jackson, or some other mid-round QB on their roster, hedging that Jackson bet. Adam kinda needed him to be good, which meant he got to spend that draft capital on other positions. It's the combination of those two things that's propelled him to the top of the league.
His draft other than Jackson was solid: Julio's been pretty good, though his WR ranking (7th in our format) is a little misleading, since he just had a massive 31 points and a mere 18 separate 4th from 13th. Kelce's been the #1 tight end by a significant margin, however, and Sutton's the 17th-ranked WR despite being drafted in the 10th. To be a contender, you basically just need to have Jackson and not mess up your draft. Adam had Jackson, didn't spend draft capital on a backup plan, and had a significantly above-average draft even besides that. End result, naturally: top scoring team in the league and ostensible favorite in the finals. Oh, and he's got a six-match winning streak and hasn't lost consecutive games at any point in the season. Consistent, too, in that he's topped 130 points in eight of his 14 matchups. You heard that right: he's statistically been a little more likely to finish over 130 than under. And of those six "unders" he only scored below 100 twice, and never below 94.
Spaulding went different in the ostensible way of not drafting a top QB (his first signal caller was Rivers, in the 9th round), but made a similar sort of move in going WR-WR in the first two rounds and then taking Henry in the 3rd. Henry ended up being a tremendous value, but given that he was his first RB, he had to be. He finished basically tied with EE for 5th among running backs, and if he'd even been 10th (pretty good!), it's unlikely he'd be here.
On paper the draft as a whole doesn't look like you'd expect given his spot in the finals: huge on receivers, betting the house on Henry, and not a lot else. This is very much in keeping with Spaulding's style, which banks on nabbing a waiver gem (or two, or three) just about every year, and putting up solid totals. It worked better than usual this season, though, with Tompkins and Evans currently 3rd and 4th at receiver even with the latter missing Week 15. The iffier RB2 slot didn't end up hurting much, with handcuffs benefiting from key injuries and big point totals coming in at the right time. Take a look at this:
122-119, week 1, win
146-135, week 8, win
122-118, week 12, win
That's ~20 points marking the difference between 8-5 and 5-8. That's the kinda game we're playing more and more often. But interestingly, it's not how he usually plays. Historically Spaulding's teams have been more "score between 90 and 110 every week and make the playoffs with 7 or 8 wins," but this year's team has been swingier. The result ended up about the same, though, and with a higher point total than usual (third overall), thanks to the two stud receivers and Henry's huge year.
History: Spaulding's made the playoffs all five years he's been in the league, and this is his fourth consecutive trip to the MoFo Bowl, which ties the record I set in the league's first four years. He has a chance to become the third repeat winner, and the first back-to-back winner.
This is far and away Adam's best finish. It's his third winning record in six season, and just his second playoff berth. First time getting a bye, first time as the top scoring team, first time as the top-seeded team, and on and on. This is the height of his MoFo Fantasy Football career to date, win or lose.
The Matchup: Lamar Jackson is currently projected (by Yahoo) to score about 29 points. What's crazy is that seems pretty conservative; he's topped that total in 9 of 14 games. If Jackson explodes for 40 or 50, the ways Spaulding can win are so very, very few. If he's human and scores between 25 and 35, it gets a lot more plausible. The last time he played Cleveland, by the way, he scored about 30.
Adam's Robert Woods has a tough matchup against San Francisco, but other than that the matchups are all middling-to-good, with Sutton having the juiciest looking one, at least on paper. Julio Jones got an insane 20 targets last week en route to 31 points. And really, that's what this team is: it's a lot of high-volume, high-floor guys, along with two or three guys (Lamar, Kelce, Julio) who just explode sometime. As long as Josh Jacobs gets decent volume he's usually a safe 10 or so. This is a team that doesn't have bad weeks, and has a few rolls of the dice to have a great week if one or more of those guys goes off.
Spaulding, on the other hand, has some decisions. He's down Mike Evans, but his depth chart replacement, Perriman, scored an insane 32 points last week, and Spaulding ended up needing every single one of them to make the MoFo Bowl, too. I suspect he'll find his way into the lineup again, especially given the kinds of risk-reward ratio Spaulding's going to be looking for against a team like Adam's. The big concern is that Perriman, as good as he's been the last few weeks and last week in particular, is doing it on just a handful of targets. He's a risk, high-variance play. That's probably what you need in this situation, but comfortable it ain't.
He'll be rolling again with a gift-wrapped Ryan Tannehill (Merry Christmas!), who has at least 17 points in eight straight games, seven of which have been 22 or better, and has only scored 10 fewer than Jackson in the last two weeks combined.
The big question is just how much Hopkins is going to destroy Tampa, which has given up the most points to opposing receivers. Hopkins could have a very good game that amounts to 15-17 points, or he could have a similarly good game that tops 30, based on where a TD comes down or exactly how often they keep going to him if and when they rack up a lead against the Bucs. Henry has a great matchup, too, but is another high-variance play. He scored just 1.9 points last week, and just 2 points against Denver a couple weeks back. This Chargers offense just isn't right some weeks, and when it isn't, Henry can disappear. Freeman tends to put up at least usable totals, but as the season has gone on he's become more TD dependent, too.
In short, Spaulding certainly isn't a huge underdog, but he needs a lot of things to go right. He's got a couple fewer guys capable of winning weeks on their own, and a couple more guys capable of having the floor fall out from under them.
Prediction: It's probably Adam.
Congrats to both of you for making it this far and surviving the cruel mistress that is Fantasy Football. Here's to a great game.
Last edited by Yoda; 12-18-19 at 03:45 PM.