Ville Fantasy Football 2014 (Second league added! PPR/IDP)

[Boss Llama]

Seasons are done, friends! Hope everybody had fun! Boss Llamas took the standard league, and Messin Sasquatches took the PPR-IDP league.

I think this will go down as the year of the surprise Wide Receiver, in both Standard and PPR. Sure, we see some well known names up there, but Odell Beckham Jr. finished the year as the number 5 WR, despite not playing in the first 4 games. T.Y. Hilton, considered an after-thought by many, ended up 10th, with Mike Evans right behind him. Golden Tate ended up ahead of Calvin Johnson, and who is this Kelvin Benjamin fellow?

It would be the year of the flop Running Back, but last year already offered that, so we can't claim to be surprised anymore. Still, four of our first 12 RBs selected in standard (first 13 selected in PPR) ended up outside the top 50 for the position, and it didn't get much prettier after that. That said, respectable performances (and even some pretty amazing ones) were able to be found in places we hadn't looked, with the likes of C.J. Anderson, Justin Forsett, Lamar Miller, and Jeremy Hill filling in gaps left by their higher-drafted team-mates. In PPR, Le'Veon Bell overtakes DeMarco Murray by a hair, and Forte edges Lynch, but the same names are generally seen in the same order. While the number of points is definitely higher in PPR, the legendary distinction between "pass catching RB" and "running RB" didn't manifest itself in a meaningful way near the top. Positions five through eleven are exactly the same in both scoring types - Foster, Lacy, Charles, Forsett, Miller, Hill, Anderson, in that order. At lower levels it could be felt a bit more, but it wasn't where the difference was usually made.

The QB situation certainly came back down to earth a bit, thank goodness, but was within expectations overall I think. Luck gave away the overall title by turning in his two worst games of the year in the last two weeks, allowing Rogers to slip through and take the crown (incidentally, Rogers topping the charts is exactly what most analysts predicted at the beginning of the year). Russell Wilson managed to have as many rushing TDs as Matt Forte, and nearly as many yards, which made up for mid-range passing and propelled him ahead of Peyton Manning on the year, who suffered a slide of his own at the end. Meanwhile, Ben Roethlisburger's occasional bursts of brilliance left him ahead of Drew Brees, while Tom Brady proved he's still solid, and folks like Ryan Tannehill and Matt Ryan proved themselves part of the conversation.

As far as TE... is it the new Kicker in standard leagues? Proving completely unpredictable, Gronkowski (who amazingly played the entire year, except the final game) is the only one who offered anything resembling consistent usability, while the vaunted Jimmy Graham ends up below the top ten kickers, despite still being third at TE and a first round draft pick to boot. The numbers are a lot less painful in PPR, where the frequent short passes the position sees turned in to respectable point totals for a much larger number of players at the position, but even so, it is only Gronkowski who is meaningfully separate from the D/STs and Ks. Are streaming TEs something we'll soon see? I gave it a try this year in several leagues, and found it was actually harder to predict TE results than D/ST and K results - it's pretty much a dart throw. Maybe next year will provide some clarity.

For the PPR-IDP league, the IDPs were a mix of results. DE J.J. Watt clearly took the cake, with a solid pack of LBs on his heels. I think a lot of folks weren't fully comfortable swapping around or making changes here, as the difference in points in any given game could be small, but it does add up over the year - especially with 3 IDP in play per team. There were players sitting on waivers consistently getting 50%-100% more points per game than ones who were in play, and the number of games over the year decided by fewer than 5 points is enough to say that these guys needed some love!

Again, thank you everybody for participating, and hopefully we'll see you again next year!