Lineup Advice: Week 17 – Championship Week!

Week 17 - (PLEASE READ)

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday with family and friends! In the end, our life's work and those we hold close to us are what it's all about.

No Thursday games this week, we all get a little breather from the short week.

First a little recap of my teams:

Of the 10 dynasty teams I have been tracking, eight made the playoffs. Of those, three made the championship game. A couple of surprises here. Firstly, one of the teams that did NOT make the playoffs is a monster of a team, it's a second-year team from the DLF SafeLeagues format we started a couple years ago. Far and away the points leader throughout the season and ending with 300 points more than the next closest team. Just like last year however, I lost in the semi-finals when my big guns including Alvin Kamara, Tyreek Hill and DK Metcalf didn't get the job done. This team has been a bit cursed in the playoffs in two straight years.

On the positive surprise list, my team that had lost Leonard Fournette, Derrick Henry, DeAndre Swift, Chris Godwin, Julio Jones and Pat Freiermuth secured a two point win over a much stronger opponent, due to the explosion of Saturday pick-up Rex Burkhead. In week 15, it moved on due to Duke Johnson. Somewhat laughable to be honest but that is fantasy football in 2021.  Other losses were about as expected due to injuries and Covid designations. I was surprised that my pool-play (all-play format) playoff team in one of my longest running leagues was eliminated due to finishing fourth in total points during the week of the five remaining points, leaving my all-play record as the one to get eliminated. Matt Stafford laid an egg for many of us and I couldn't overcome the loss of Dalvin Cook. My two running backs were Saquon Barkley and Kyle Juszczyk certainly weren't going to strike fear in the hearts of my opponents.  All is not lost as, because of the format of this league, there's actually more payout for total points through week 17 and I'm still in second place in that regard - somehow.

All-in-all, while I was hoping for at least four of my teams to make it to the championship game, I'll have to settle with three along with two third place games. I will be including one more of my teams in the tracking for next season since it will be year-three of the rebuild and it is getting close to where I want it to be. Another one of the orphan adoptions from this year will be tracked probably starting in 2023.

The surprisingly bad performance of the week came from Matt Stafford, who picked a horrible time to put up his worst score of the year, by far. His 11 points sunk a lot of fantasy teams. On the flip side, Tee Higgins single handedly ushered many teams into the championship. As it turns out, I played vs. Stafford and Higgins in quite a few of the leagues this week. Hurting teams with Isaiah McKenzie, Rex Burkhead or Justin Jackson were flying high while those with Alvin Kamara, Saquon Barkley, Tyreek Hill, James Robinson, Miles Sanders, Terry McLaurin, Van Jefferson, Tyler Lockett, Adam Thielen, etc. etc. were left singing the blues. Unfortunately, the list of high-profile players laying eggs this past week is far longer than those rising to the challenge. It's just been that kind of year.

But welcome back A.J. Brown!

With recent trends not panning out, this weeks lineup advice is going to be difficult and I'm going to have to go deeper to see if I can find hidden match-up gems or metrics that suggest production this week. Thankfully, the questions will be far less which will provide more time for me to go down the rabbit hole on each of your questions. I love interacting with each of you, but I love giving accurate advice even more and I hate being wrong. More time should equal better results but, as they say, only time will tell.

Good luck in your championship game! Next week we'll do a wrap-up as well as answer more questions from those of you with something to play for in week 18. I'll be taking the advice column into the off-season as well so we can keep the pedal to the metal while there is still work to be done.

As always, get your questions in early and be sure to label your scoring system and any "TNF" players if applicable.

Please focus on these following items this week for me to help me get to all the questions:

• Put "TNF" as the top line for any question involving Thursday Night Football games
• Include your scoring format  (PPR, Non-PPR, etc.)
• Keep your questions as brief as possible - I won't have the screens I'm used to over the next three weeks
• I always try to keep up with responses but, when in doubt, if you have an update post a new question
• Include your "lock" picks of the week who I should be betting on for this week's games

Have a great week!