Week 5 Not So Serious Recap

Each week we'll dive into the 150,000+ teams synced on Fantasy Genius & dig up interesting & funny tidbits. We'll find the best & worst teams of the week, figure out how many matchups were swung due to weird stuff like the second guy in as many weeks inexplicably dropping the ball on the 1 yard line, Trevor Lawrence busting his ass and scoring on the same play, and bring you the silliest/most bizarre content we came across for the week.

If you're new around these parts, we are mainly here to point out stuff that we thought was interesting/funny. There's people that know more ball and are better at fantasy if you're looking for hard hitting stuff to give you an edge over your teammates. In short, we're just here for a good time.

Sankeys

Every Tuesday morning, I engage in my favorite pastime -- finding the most brutal ways that fantasy teams lost over the weekend. Every week, I wonder if it will finally be the week where everything sort of goes according to plan and I won't have anything to share here. That week will never happen. The NFL is chaos. And something hilarious happens every single week.

Standard sankey disclaimer: Yes, you never really lose on just one play. The points scored on Sunday at 1PM are just as consequential as Monday night. But emotionally....you lost on THAT play.

This week's primary Sankey target is Cardinals RB Emari Demercado who apparently didn't learn from last week and dropped the ball at the 1 yard line. Look, I get it -- this is like me on the golf course when I am tracking to break 90. It doesn't feel natural...sometimes you gotta triple bogey just to get back into your comfort zone. That's exactly what Demercado did here -- ran 71 yards and then the impostor syndrome hit.

"What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here. I don't belong here..."

Of the 13,000 teams in our database with Demercado rostered, 667 of those had their matchups flipped because of this play. As bad as that is for fantasy managers, it's still not as bad as the Cardinals finding a way to lose this game through this play and the Cam Ward interception turned fumble turned touchdown.

Travis Kelce, who recently had a song written about how big his hog is, caught an 11 yard pass with three seconds left in the NFL week. Totally inconsequential play in the Reality Football League but it flipped 306 matchups in our dataset.

In what was perhaps the funniest play I have ever seen (I'm not gonna kick Mark Sanchez while he's down..that's a Mark Sanchez-type of thing to do to someone), Trevor Lawrence ate shit TWICE and proceeded to run in the game-winning touchdown.

He also followed it up with an all-time quote in the post-game interview. I'm a T-Law guy now. Also, someone on Reddit called it "DUFALL" which is perfect. An entire book could be written about this play and I would read it.

If you were starting Trevor Lawrence in a relatively normal league, you were down bad so I'm glad that 319 of you won specifically because of this play.

Best/Worst Teams

My only correct football take of the past five years is that Javonte Williams has the necessary talent to be a top RB in the league and he's making me look very smart in that extremely narrow sense.

Yeah, this team forgot to sub out Brock Bowers. But this is a truly dreadful performance. Three flex spots and 57 points. We have redacted the name of this team -- they deserve privacy at this time.

Top Players by Win Rate

Worst Players by Win Rate

A couple of pretty big overreactions in here from fantasy managers here in RJ Harvey and Woody Marks. Brutal win rates after good games last week.

Overreaction Charts

I'm still playing around with the best way to present this data (most data analysts will probably throw up in their mouth looking at what I'm about to show...) but one of the funniest things in fantasy is managers seeing a guy have a big game, riding the hype train all week, plugging him in, and then he does absolutely nothing. And when I am making fun of "fantasy managers" and the "fantasy community" that includes myself. I fired up Woody Marks this week after a week of reading about his usage and a big game last week. "League winner" was tossed out multiple times.

You can see the absolutely massive jump in start rate up to 78% from 13% the week prior only to drop 2.4 points on all of us. Now the choice for us Marks owners is: do we "overreact" again by putting him on the bench? That nearly guarantees another great week. Or do we stay the course and view week 4 as more normal? No matter what we pick, it's going to be incorrect. That's how fantasy football works.

Here's a table for those that don't want to look at the spaghetti chart above

Great Week For Guys Getting Bonked On The Head

As we've learned more about concussions, CTE, and player safety in general over the years it has become increasingly difficult to enjoy big hits in the NFL. Could you argue that it didn't require hindsight to know that seeing your fellow human beings get wrecked and injured was...not great? Maybe. But I was 10 years old, so you'll forgive me if I still have fond memories of one of the most insane sports segments of all time.

The above does not apply to guys simply getting bonked on the head with the ball. That's pure fun that none of us have to feel weird about. And there was plenty of it this week!

Ordinarily, I wouldn't qualify this as a full Bonk -- more of a kiss off the dome under normal circumstances. But in The Week of The Bonk, I'm counting this. Watch closely: this pass from Sam Darold hits off the helmet of Logan Hall before getting picked off.

Spencer Rattler got a very solid bonk on the Giants defender here. Unfortunately he follows it up with an extremely high heart rate move and tries to throw the ball. Great bonk though.

Then there was Kyler Murray. He gets bonked by his own snap and then just sorta...stands there while the defense recovers what is very obviously a live ball. Yet another example of A Guy Who Doesn't Quite Know How To React After Getting Bonked.

This Guy Beat James Franklin

Penn State lost to UCLA over the weekend in what some are calling one of the worst losses of all time. Jerry Neuheisel, a guy without an image on his Wikipedia page, is the interim offensive coordinator for UCLA. Yes, interim. Their head coach and original offensive coordinator got fired in September. That's how poorly UCLA's season has gone.

C'mon, Wikipedia editors! His headshot is on the website!

It led to my favorite moment of this past weekend -- his father, Rick, was in the CBS studio watching the game and they caught his reaction to the final play of the game. Genuinely heartwarming to see how excited he is for his son. Or maybe he just really hates James Franklin. Either way, an all time moment that's a perfect example of Why We All Love Sports.

Eric Collins, the voice of the Charlotte Hornets and architect of the greatest announcing moment of all time, made his NFL debut calling the Panthers and Dolphins over the weekend. And he made the most of it. Eric is the greatest announcer in sports -- we need the NFL to play one game at a time and let Eric call all of them. Give him all the money in the world...this man is a delight.

That's all, folks! Thanks for reading!