Tez Johnson for MVP: Week 6 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 Jared Goff getting a receiving touchdown called back for illegal formation, 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.

Shameless Plugs

I tend to get a lot of questions about where this data is sourced from and the answer is: right here on this website! Our main gig is syncing fantasy leagues and providing a rich analytics hub and weekly content like newsletters and previews. This week is extra special as we had Rodger Sherman write up our league-specific recaps. And for this week, you can get your league synced for free and see every stat imaginable for your league as well as Rodger's recap!

Sankeys

Every Tuesday morning, I sit down and look at how bad my fantasy team got beat over the weekend. The only thing that consistently makes me feel better is knowing that someone out there has it worse than me (Would this be considered gratitude? Not sure, still only about a year into talk therapy. Pretty sure this is healthy.)

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 Bills QB Josh Allen who had a pretty mediocre week by his standards (QB18). You would have been better starting off Jacoby Brissett who is mainly known as a perennial backup. That's not all that interesting. What makes this particularly f̶u̶n̶n̶y̶ painful for fantasy managers is that he threw an interception with 51 seconds left in the game. These are my favorite plays because they force you to say completely irrational stuff like "They were down 10! They should have just handed the ball off! You CANNOT throw an interception there!"

Well anyways, that critical mistake cost 278 owners in our dataset their matchups.

The 171 owners that benched Josh Allen for some reason

The other highlight is Jared Goff who had a receiving touchdown called back after almost bobbling it into the Chiefs hands. Would have been a bizarre way to score some fantasy points and it's called back after a lengthy discussion from the officials. 642 Goff managers who thought they could rely on Jared for a receiving touchdown this week were hoodwinked by the illegal motion penalty.

Best/Worst Teams

Some of y'all play in strange leagues. I am too old for all this newfangled stuff like "multiple quarterbacks". But much like my dishwasher, I am unable to ignore it simply because I don't understand it. Again, who knows what these points settings are but the players on this team were ridiculously good this week. If only this bum Puka wasn't in the starting rotation, it could have been something truly special.

This team looks incredibly similar to my own. I just dropped the worst week in the league this season, replacing myself from week 2. Unfortunately, all of this is very easy to see in my league's dashboard.

*That's So Raven voice* Yep, that's me!

Starting the Eagles D when they're going up against this guy? Should have seen this coming...

Top Players by Win Rate

Sub-90% start percentage for the GOAT?!

Genuinely shocked to only see a couple of my players on here...

Overreaction Charts

Okay, here's where things get fun. Let's pick on Matthew Stafford. One of my favorite things is fantasy managers slowly building up trust in a guy only to be completely let down. Look at the steady creep up in start % over the year as people come to realize Matthew can still spin it. Finally gets to 75% start rate, good for 10th highest in the league only to drop a 9.3 point stinker

Similar story for Stefon Diggs who had a monster revenge game against Buffalo, leading to a start percentage of nearly 90% (almost double the starts he was getting at the beginning of the season). And then BOOM....drops like a rock in week 6 and only puts up 5.8 points. Disaster.

Could I find charts like these that make the opposite point, like fantasy managers staying on top of news and benefitting by reacting to new information and trends? Sure, but that wouldn't be nearly as funny as laughing at the people who started old men and then had those players play like old men.

Have the self belief of Tez Johnson

The most inspiring play of this week was in the Tampa Bay game -- Tez Johnson made an incredible catch on a 46 yard pass from Baker Mayfield. The catch was great, no doubt about it...

But the true inspiration came in the postgame interview, where Tez admitted that he thought the "MVP" chants that followed this play were for him.

There are 5 distinct parts about this that make me love Tez:

1. The lack of impostor syndrome to believe that the crowd would be chanting MVP for a man who just passed the 100-yard mark on the season.

2. To simultaneously have the humility/down-to-earthness to ask a teammate "Why were they chanting that about me? It doesn't make any sense..."

3. To essentially get clowned on by his teammate, accept new information, and go "Ah, yeah. That makes more sense."

4. The lack of embarrassment to tell this story to the reporter.

5. To bring it back around to his teammate "Yeah, but he is the MVP though"

Nobody has ever made me like them faster than Tez Johnson did in the 20 second clip above.