Last Place Wisdom: The Champ is dead, long live the Champ - 2017
It's fitting that the last Last Place Wisdom of the 2017 season comes on my last day working for the city, as my future employment or non-employment situations might not be so conducive to regular blog posts for some time. Looking back at the 2017 TFLOEG blogging season, I'm pretty happy how things ended up turning out. I managed to post fairly regularly (11 posts in the season isn't bad, room for improvement next year), and while I didn't quite reach the lofty goals I set of a continuing theme or weekly features in this year's column, on the whole it was a pretty good year in blogging output. I'm still wanting to finish a few things off in the coming weeks; I promised John a year-in-review in movies from the perspective of the common man (spoiler, it's going to be harder than ever for me to do a top 10 ranking, partly because I'm not sure I've seen 10 new movies in 2017), but I'm waiting on seeing The Last Jedi before I do my definitive rankings. I'd also like to do a quick look back on the draft and some of the most significant moves from the 2017 with an eye towards next season. Who knows when that might happen; maybe in August when it comes time to really start thinking fantasy once again, but overall I'm happy about the blogging output for this year.
Now, to what really matters, congratulations to Clarke on his 2017 Championship. Clarke put a plan in place going back to last season, stockpiling high draft picks with a eye towards winning it all this year, and that plan worked to perfection. Allen and Hunt managed to finish near the top of their positions, and being able to combine strong later round keepers with 1 or 2 early round draft picks seems to be a winning formula. Since we've switched to a keeper league, all the Championships have come from teams that have been able to add early round draft picks to their keepers. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the teams who are losing their first 4 rounds with keepers have some work to do to show that the strategy is capable of winning it all.
All that being said, Clarke's draft and planning might have all been for naught if he wasn't able to get his hands on the undisputed 2017 league MVP, Todd Gurley. It's crazy to think that the ultimate MVP was traded twice this season, but that's what happened. Gurley outscored Le'Veon Bell by 54 points to lead the position, and down years from Miller and Thomas made the trade a real steal from Clarke's perspective. It's not all bad for the teams that traded Gurley; Travis used Ingram to acquire Kamara, this year's breakout star and contender for best value in the league, while Dawson now has an early draft pick and the possibility of Mack and Foreman making a leap to look forward to.
The Gurley trade, and the trade for Howard was all Clarke needed to do to roll to the championship. Thanks to his draft, Clarke was far less active on the waiver wire than usual, however solid pickups of Cohen and Rivers did help improve his team from that aspect. Clarke's success this year is a good model to emulate, although by no means will it be easy. You just need 4 top 10 draft picks, 7th round keepers like Thomas and Evans, and to trade for 2 top 10 RBs (and the league MVP). Clarke is set up well for the future, and will likely be one of the favourites again with Gurley, Hunt, Evans, Thomas and Allen as likely keepers, although he should have a tougher road next season with slightly fewer advantages.
As for me, despite my moments of despair I really did give my best to repeat and challenge Clarke to the best of my ability. Going into the Championship game, if Clarke and I had played head to head each week, the series would have been 8-7 in Clarke's favour, showing that despite his incredible success he was by no means unassailable. Unfortunately, despite Bortles playing better than I could have expected and the power of burgers on my side, I wasn't able to make up for the loss of Antonio Brown and give Clarke the finals challenge he deserved. My own strategy for next year could use some improvement, ending up with Sanu and Agholor as my starting receivers in the finals game was not what I would have wanted in an ideal world. Overall though, it was a fun season, and is one that should be remember for how competitive it was.
For all of us other than Clarke, there's only one lesson to take from the season however;
On the next Last Place Wisdom
Now, to what really matters, congratulations to Clarke on his 2017 Championship. Clarke put a plan in place going back to last season, stockpiling high draft picks with a eye towards winning it all this year, and that plan worked to perfection. Allen and Hunt managed to finish near the top of their positions, and being able to combine strong later round keepers with 1 or 2 early round draft picks seems to be a winning formula. Since we've switched to a keeper league, all the Championships have come from teams that have been able to add early round draft picks to their keepers. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the teams who are losing their first 4 rounds with keepers have some work to do to show that the strategy is capable of winning it all.
All that being said, Clarke's draft and planning might have all been for naught if he wasn't able to get his hands on the undisputed 2017 league MVP, Todd Gurley. It's crazy to think that the ultimate MVP was traded twice this season, but that's what happened. Gurley outscored Le'Veon Bell by 54 points to lead the position, and down years from Miller and Thomas made the trade a real steal from Clarke's perspective. It's not all bad for the teams that traded Gurley; Travis used Ingram to acquire Kamara, this year's breakout star and contender for best value in the league, while Dawson now has an early draft pick and the possibility of Mack and Foreman making a leap to look forward to.
The Gurley trade, and the trade for Howard was all Clarke needed to do to roll to the championship. Thanks to his draft, Clarke was far less active on the waiver wire than usual, however solid pickups of Cohen and Rivers did help improve his team from that aspect. Clarke's success this year is a good model to emulate, although by no means will it be easy. You just need 4 top 10 draft picks, 7th round keepers like Thomas and Evans, and to trade for 2 top 10 RBs (and the league MVP). Clarke is set up well for the future, and will likely be one of the favourites again with Gurley, Hunt, Evans, Thomas and Allen as likely keepers, although he should have a tougher road next season with slightly fewer advantages.
As for me, despite my moments of despair I really did give my best to repeat and challenge Clarke to the best of my ability. Going into the Championship game, if Clarke and I had played head to head each week, the series would have been 8-7 in Clarke's favour, showing that despite his incredible success he was by no means unassailable. Unfortunately, despite Bortles playing better than I could have expected and the power of burgers on my side, I wasn't able to make up for the loss of Antonio Brown and give Clarke the finals challenge he deserved. My own strategy for next year could use some improvement, ending up with Sanu and Agholor as my starting receivers in the finals game was not what I would have wanted in an ideal world. Overall though, it was a fun season, and is one that should be remember for how competitive it was.
For all of us other than Clarke, there's only one lesson to take from the season however;
 |
| Just kidding. The lesson is to come back next year even hungrier. Clarke showed how much he wanted it, and the only response is to step yo game up. |
- Shocking movie rankings leave you all wondering if my scoring was actually all thanks to an alt-right plot or Russian bots.
- I recap the 2018 draft.
- I berate you all once again to stop giving Clarke your first round draft picks. He's already won once, he doesn't need your help to do it again.
Comments
Post a Comment